Is Causal Reasoning Harder than Probabilistic Reasoning?
Not on the map. Why?
Abstract (arXiv)
Many tasks in statistical and causal inference can be construed as problems of entailment in a suitable formal language. We ask whether those problems are more difficult, from a computational perspective, for causal probabilistic languages than for pure probabilistic (or "associational") languages. Despite several senses in which causal reasoning is indeed more complex -- both expressively and inferentially -- we show that causal entailment (or satisfiability) problems can be systematically and robustly reduced to purely probabilistic problems. Thus there is no jump in computational complexity. Along the way we answer several open problems concerning the complexity of well known probability logics, in particular demonstrating the existsℝ-completeness of a polynomial probability calculus, as well as a seemingly much simpler system, the logic of comparative conditional probability.
Key facts. Cited by 10 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 27 Nov 2021.
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Citing papers per year: 2023: 3; 2024: 1; 2025: 5; 2026: 1.
10 papers.
- 2023Comparing Causal Frameworks: Potential Outcomes, Structural Models, Graphs, and Abstractionscited by 11
- 2023A Survey of Methods, Challenges and Perspectives in Causalitycited by 6
- 2023The Hardness of Reasoning about Probabilities and Causalitycited by 4
- 2024On Probabilistic and Causal Reasoning with Summation Operatorscited by 2
- 2025Modeling Discrimination with Causal Abstractioncited by 2
- 2025Probabilistic Modelling is Sufficient for Causal Inferencecited by 2
- 2025Probabilistic and Causal Satisfiability: Constraining the Modelcited by 1
- 2025Interleaving Logic and Countingcited by 0
- 2025Gateways to Tractability for Satisfiability in Pearl's Causal Hierarchycited by 0
- 2026Certifying Interventional Agreement Among Observationally Equivalent Causal Modelscited by 0
- 2026Certifying Interventional Agreement Among Observationally Equivalent Causal Models26 Sep 2026
- 2025Probabilistic Modelling is Sufficient for Causal Inference29 Dec 2025
- 2025Gateways to Tractability for Satisfiability in Pearl's Causal Hierarchy11 Nov 2025
- 2025Interleaving Logic and Counting7 Jul 2025
- 2025Probabilistic and Causal Satisfiability: Constraining the Model28 Apr 2025
- 2025Modeling Discrimination with Causal Abstraction14 Jan 2025
- 2024On Probabilistic and Causal Reasoning with Summation Operators5 May 2024
- 2023Comparing Causal Frameworks: Potential Outcomes, Structural Models, Graphs, and Abstractions25 Jun 2023
- 2023The Hardness of Reasoning about Probabilities and Causality16 May 2023
- 2023A Survey of Methods, Challenges and Perspectives in Causality1 Feb 2023