The Oxford Handbook of Causal Reasoning

by Michael Waldmann

Overview

Causal reasoning is one of our most central cognitive competencies, enabling us to adapt to our world. Causal knowledge allows us to predict future events, or diagnose the causes of observed facts. We plan actions and solve problems using knowledge about cause-effect relations. Although causal reasoning is a component of most of our cognitive functions, it has been neglected in cognitive psychology for many decades. The Oxford Handbook of Causal Reasoning offers a state-of-the-art review of the growing field, and its contribution to the world of cognitive science.
The Handbook begins with an introduction of competing theories of causal learning and reasoning. In the next section, it presents research about basic cognitive functions involved in causal cognition, such as perception, categorization, argumentation, decision-making, and induction. The following section examines research on domains that embody causal relations, including intuitive physics, legal and moral reasoning, psychopathology, language, social cognition, and the roles of space and time. The final section presents research from neighboring fields that study developmental, phylogenetic, and cultural differences in causal cognition. The chapters, each written by renowned researchers in their field, fill in the gaps of many cognitive psychology textbooks, emphasizing the crucial role of causal structures in our everyday lives. This Handbook is an essential read for students and researchers of the cognitive sciences, including cognitive, developmental, social, comparative, and cross-cultural psychology; philosophy; methodology; statistics; artificial intelligence; and machine learning.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199399550
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/27/2017
Series:	Oxford Library of Psychology
Pages:	768
Product dimensions:	10.10(w) x 7.10(h) x 2.00(d)

About the Author

Michael R. Waldmann, PhD, is Professor of Psychology at the University of Göttingen, Germany. He has received the early career research award from the German Society for Psychology, and is a Fellow of APS. Currently he is serving as an associate editor of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, and as chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Max Planck Institute of Human Development, Berlin. The focus of his research is on higher-level cognitive processes across different species and cultures.

Table of Contents

Contents

1. Causal Reasoning: An Introduction
Michael R. Waldmann

Part I: Theories of Causal Cognition
2. Associative Accounts of Causal Cognition
Mike E. Le Pelley, Oren Griffiths, and Tom Beesley
3. Rules of Causal Judgment: Mapping Statistical Information Onto Causal Beliefs
José C. Perales, Andrés Catena, Antonio Cándido, and Antonio Maldonado
4. The Inferential Reasoning Theory of Causal Learning: Toward a Multi- Process Propositional Account
Yannick Boddez, Jan De Houwer, and Tom Beckers
5. Causal Invariance as an Essential Constraint for Creating a Causal Representation of the World: Generalizing the Invariance of Causal Power
Patricia W. Cheng and Hongjing Lu
6. The Acquisition and Use of Causal Structure Knowledge
Benjamin Margolin Rottman
7. Formalizing Prior Knowledge in Causal Induction
Thomas L. Griffiths
8. Causal Mechanisms
Samuel G. B. Johnson and Woo-kyoung Ahn
9. Force Dynamics and Causation
Phillip Wolff and Robert Thorstad
10. Mental Models and Causation
P. N. Johnson- Laird and Sangeet S. Khemlani
11. Pseudocontingencies
Klaus Fiedler and Florian Kutzner
12. Singular Causation
David Danks
13. Cognitive Neuroscience of Causal Reasoning
Joachim T. Operskalski and Aron K. Barbey

Part II: Basic Cognitive Functions
14. Visual Impressions of Causality
Peter White
15. Goal-Directed Actions
Bernhard Hommel
16. Planning and Control
Magda Osman
17. Reinforcement Learning and Causal Models
Samuel J. Gershman
18. Causation and the Probability of Causal Conditionals
David E. Over
19. Causal Models and Conditional Reasoning
Mike Oaksford and Nick Chater
20. Concepts as Causal Models: Categorization
Bob Rehder
21. Concepts as Causal Models: Induction
Bob Rehder
22. Causal Explanation
Tania Lombrozo and Nadya Vasilyeva
23. Diagnostic Reasoning
Björn Meder and Ralf Mayrhofer
24. Inferring Causal Relations by Analogy
Keith J. Holyoak and Hee-Seung Lee
25. Causal Argument
Ulrike Hahn, Roland Bluhm, and Frank Zenker
26. Causality in Decision- Making
York Hagmayer and Philip M. Fernbach

Part III: Domains of Causal Reasoning
27. Intuitive Theories
Tobias Gerstenberg and Joshua B. Tenenbaum
28. Space, Time, and Causality
Marc J. Buehner
29. Causation in Legal and Moral Reasoning
David A. Lagnado and Tobias Gerstenberg
30. The Role of Causal Knowledge in Reasoning About Mental Disorders
Woo-kyoung Ahn, Nancy S. Kim, and Matthew S. Lebowitz
31. Causality and Causal Reasoning in Natural Language
Torgrim Solstad and Oliver Bott
32. Social Attribution and Explanation
Denis Hilton

Part IV: Development, Phylogeny, and Culture
33. The Development of Causal Reasoning
Paul Muentener and Elizabeth Bonawitz
34. Causal Reasoning in Non-Human Animals
Christian Schloegl and Julia Fischer
35. Causal Cognition and Culture
Andrea Bender, Sieghard Beller, and Douglas L. Medin


Index

Editorial Reviews

"For Kant, causality was one of the pure categories of understanding, hence something of unsurpassable importance for human cognition. This is the first and indeed most comprehensive handbook collecting the rich but widespread psychological research on the cognitive role of the concept of causation. Timely, long-needed, and most useful for many years to come!"

— Wolfgang Spohn, PhD, Department of Philosophy, University of Konstanz

"[This Handbook] provides a valuable mix of comprehensive reviews and brilliant insights centered on learning and reasoning about causal systems, and into topics as diverse as developmental psychology, moral reasoning, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. This book is essential reading for anyone who wants an entry point into the empirical facts, theories, and applications of these important scientific advances."

— Reid Hastie, PhD, Professor of Behavioral Science, University of Chicago

"If you want to understand how people think about what makes the world go round, you have to understand how people reason about causality. In this handbook, Michael Waldmann has outdone previous efforts in offering a complete picture of the available body of knowledge about causal reasoning in a single volume. . . . This volume tells you everything you need to know about the psychology of causal reasoning."

— Steven Sloman, PhD, Professor of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences, Brown University

"This is an absolutely terrific, state-of-the-art volume that comprehensively covers a large range of topics in the psychology of causal reasoning. The chapters are of uniformly high quality and the volume as a whole will be of great interest not just to psychologists but to other scholars interested in empirical aspects of causal reasoning, including philosophers, statisticians, and computer scientists."

— Jim Woodward, PhD, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh

From the Publisher