Causal Interaction in Bayesian Networks

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Philosophy of Science share a fundamental problem - that of understanding causality. Bayesian network techniques have recently been used by Judea Pearl in a new approach to understanding causality and causal processes (Pearl 2000). Pearl's approach has great promise, but needs to be supplemented with an explicit account of causal interaction. Thus far, despite considerable interest, philosophy has provided no useful account of causal interaction. Here we provide one, employing the concepts of Bayesian networks. With it we demonstrate the failure of one of philosophy's more sophisticated attempts to deal with the concept of causal interaction, that of Ellery Eells' Probabilistic Causality (1991).