CAUSAL LEARNING

The world has a causal structure in the sense that some events make other events happen. Although understanding causal structure is essential for predicting and controlling the environment causal structure is at least usually not obvious from superficial perceptual cues. How then do our minds infer this structure? In the last few years questions about causal inference and learning have become an important focus of investigation in many different disciplines - developmental psychology cognitive psychology ethology philosophy and computer science. As is common in scientific research there has been relatively little interaction on the topic between these disciplines. However in spite of the minimal interaction a general review of the research shows the beginning of a formal way of determining how in principle the problem of causal inference and learning can be solved and a wealth of methods for determining how it is in fact solved by children adults and animals. This volume brings together this research and provides a more sophisticated understanding of causal inference and learning.