Cause and Effect: Can Large Language Models Truly Understand Causality?
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Abstract (arXiv)
With the rise of Large Language Models(LLMs), it has become crucial to understand their capabilities and limitations in deciphering and explaining the complex web of causal relationships that language entails. Current methods use either explicit or implicit causal reasoning, yet there is a strong need for a unified approach combining both to tackle a wide array of causal relationships more effectively. This research proposes a novel architecture called Context Aware Reasoning Enhancement with Counterfactual Analysis(CARE CA) framework to enhance causal reasoning and explainability. The proposed framework incorporates an explicit causal detection module with ConceptNet and counterfactual statements, as well as implicit causal detection through LLMs. Our framework goes one step further with a layer of counterfactual explanations to accentuate LLMs understanding of causality. The knowledge from ConceptNet enhances the performance of multiple causal reasoning tasks such as causal discovery, causal identification and counterfactual reasoning. The counterfactual sentences add explicit knowledge of the not caused by scenarios. By combining these powerful modules, our model aims to provide a deeper understanding of causal relationships, enabling enhanced interpretability. Evaluation of benchmark datasets shows improved performance across all metrics, such as accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 scores. We also introduce CausalNet, a new dataset accompanied by our code, to facilitate further research in this domain.
Key facts. Cited by 23 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 22 of its 36 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 28 Feb 2024.
Builds on
22 of 36 references.
References · 22
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- 2016ConceptNet 5.5: An Open Multilingual Graph of General Knowledgecited by 1,065
- 2023Causal Reasoning and Large Language Models: Opening a New Frontier for Causalitycited by 348
- 2022Large Language Models are Better Reasoners with Self-Verificationcited by 304
- 2023Causal Parrots: Large Language Models May Talk Causality But Are Not Causalcited by 146
- 2023Can Large Language Models Infer Causation from Correlation?cited by 142
10 more
- 2023CLadder: Assessing Causal Reasoning in Language Modelscited by 102
- 2019Counterfactual Story Reasoning and Generationcited by 87
- 2023Understanding Causality with Large Language Models: Feasibility and Opportunitiescited by 53
- 2022e-CARE: a New Dataset for Exploring Explainable Causal Reasoningcited by 47
- 2021COM2SENSE: A Commonsense Reasoning Benchmark with Complementary Sentencescited by 40
- 2023CRAB: Assessing the Strength of Causal Relationships Between Real-world Eventscited by 27
- 2021Causal Direction of Data Collection Matters: Implications of Causal and Anticausal Learning for NLPcited by 21
- 2023The Magic of IF: Investigating Causal Reasoning Abilities in Large Language Models of Codecited by 21
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- 2023Leveraging Large Language Models for Topic Classification in the Domain of Public Affairscited by 13
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Citing papers per year: 2024: 9; 2025: 10; 2026: 4.
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- 2025AI Agents vs. Agentic AI: A Conceptual Taxonomy, Applications and Challengescited by 167
- 2025Unveiling Causal Reasoning in Large Language Models: Reality or Mirage?cited by 36
- 2024ALCM: Autonomous LLM-Augmented Causal Discovery Frameworkcited by 29
- 2024Causality for Large Language Modelscited by 24
- 2024CLEAR: Can Language Models Really Understand Causal Graphs?cited by 14
- 2024Reasoning Elicitation in Language Models via Counterfactual Feedbackcited by 14
- 2024Failure Modes of LLMs for Causal Reasoning on Narrativescited by 12
- 2024C2P: Featuring Large Language Models with Causal Reasoningcited by 8
- 2025A Survey on Enhancing Causal Reasoning Ability of Large Language Modelscited by 8
- 2025Think in Games: Learning to Reason in Games via Reinforcement Learning with Large Language Modelscited by 7
- 2025Causal-aware Large Language Models: Enhancing Decision-Making Through Learning, Adapting and Actingcited by 6
- 2024Estimating Causal Effects of Text Interventions Leveraging LLMscited by 4
11 more
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- 2025Event Causality Identification with Synthetic Controlcited by 2
- 2024OCDB: Revisiting Causal Discovery with a Comprehensive Benchmark and Evaluation Frameworkcited by 1
- 2025Causal Reflection with Language Modelscited by 1
- 2025InfoCausalQA:Can Models Perform Non-explicit Causal Reasoning Based on Infographic?cited by 1
- 2026Benchmarking LLMs for Pairwise Causal Discovery in Biomedical and Multi-Domain Contextscited by 1
- 2026Retell, Reward, Repeat: Reinforcement Learning for Narrative Theory-Informed Story Retellingcited by 0
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- 2026Contextual Causality with Large Language Models: A Surveycited by 0
- 2026Contextual Causality with Large Language Models: A Survey18 Sep 2026
- 2026DKCD: Domain Knowledge-Enhanced Causal Discovery from Unstructured Data10 Jul 2026
- 2026Retell, Reward, Repeat: Reinforcement Learning for Narrative Theory-Informed Story Retelling23 Jan 2026
- 2026Benchmarking LLMs for Pairwise Causal Discovery in Biomedical and Multi-Domain Contexts21 Jan 2026
- 2025Event Causality Identification with Synthetic Control16 Sep 2025
- 2025Think in Games: Learning to Reason in Games via Reinforcement Learning with Large Language Models29 Aug 2025
- 2025InfoCausalQA:Can Models Perform Non-explicit Causal Reasoning Based on Infographic?8 Aug 2025
- 2025Causal Reflection with Language Models6 Aug 2025
- 2025Unveiling Causal Reasoning in Large Language Models: Reality or Mirage?26 Jun 2025
- 2025Causal-aware Large Language Models: Enhancing Decision-Making Through Learning, Adapting and Acting30 May 2025
- 2025Causal Distillation: Transferring Structured Explanations from Large to Compact Language Models26 May 2025
- 2025AI Agents vs. Agentic AI: A Conceptual Taxonomy, Applications and Challenges15 May 2025
11 more
- 2025A Survey on Enhancing Causal Reasoning Ability of Large Language Models12 Mar 2025
- 2025ExpliCa: Evaluating Explicit Causal Reasoning in Large Language Models21 Feb 2025
- 2024Learning by Analogy: Enhancing Few-Shot Prompting for Math Word Problem Solving with Computational Graph-Based Retrieval25 Nov 2024
- 2024Failure Modes of LLMs for Causal Reasoning on Narratives31 Oct 2024
- 2024Estimating Causal Effects of Text Interventions Leveraging LLMs28 Oct 2024
- 2024Causality for Large Language Models20 Oct 2024
- 2024Reasoning Elicitation in Language Models via Counterfactual Feedback2 Oct 2024
- 2024C2P: Featuring Large Language Models with Causal Reasoning25 Jul 2024
- 2024CLEAR: Can Language Models Really Understand Causal Graphs?24 Jun 2024
- 2024OCDB: Revisiting Causal Discovery with a Comprehensive Benchmark and Evaluation Framework7 Jun 2024
- 2024ALCM: Autonomous LLM-Augmented Causal Discovery Framework2 May 2024
- 2025Unveiling Causal Reasoning in Large Language Models: Reality or Mirage?cited by 36
- 2024ALCM: Autonomous LLM-Augmented Causal Discovery Frameworkcited by 29
- 2024CLEAR: Can Language Models Really Understand Causal Graphs?cited by 14
- 2024Reasoning Elicitation in Language Models via Counterfactual Feedbackcited by 14
- 2024Failure Modes of LLMs for Causal Reasoning on Narrativescited by 12
- 2024C2P: Featuring Large Language Models with Causal Reasoningcited by 8
- 2025A Survey on Enhancing Causal Reasoning Ability of Large Language Modelscited by 8
- 2025Think in Games: Learning to Reason in Games via Reinforcement Learning with Large Language Modelscited by 7
- 2025ExpliCa: Evaluating Explicit Causal Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 3
- 2025Causal Distillation: Transferring Structured Explanations from Large to Compact Language Modelscited by 2
- 2025Causal Reflection with Language Modelscited by 1
- 2025InfoCausalQA:Can Models Perform Non-explicit Causal Reasoning Based on Infographic?cited by 1
- 2025Think in Games: Learning to Reason in Games via Reinforcement Learning with Large Language Models29 Aug 2025
- 2025InfoCausalQA:Can Models Perform Non-explicit Causal Reasoning Based on Infographic?8 Aug 2025
- 2025Causal Reflection with Language Models6 Aug 2025
- 2025Unveiling Causal Reasoning in Large Language Models: Reality or Mirage?26 Jun 2025
- 2025Causal Distillation: Transferring Structured Explanations from Large to Compact Language Models26 May 2025
- 2025A Survey on Enhancing Causal Reasoning Ability of Large Language Models12 Mar 2025
- 2025ExpliCa: Evaluating Explicit Causal Reasoning in Large Language Models21 Feb 2025
- 2024Failure Modes of LLMs for Causal Reasoning on Narratives31 Oct 2024
- 2024Reasoning Elicitation in Language Models via Counterfactual Feedback2 Oct 2024
- 2024C2P: Featuring Large Language Models with Causal Reasoning25 Jul 2024
- 2024CLEAR: Can Language Models Really Understand Causal Graphs?24 Jun 2024
- 2024ALCM: Autonomous LLM-Augmented Causal Discovery Framework2 May 2024
- 2024Causality for Large Language Modelscited by 24
- 2025Causal-aware Large Language Models: Enhancing Decision-Making Through Learning, Adapting and Actingcited by 6
- 2024Estimating Causal Effects of Text Interventions Leveraging LLMscited by 4
- 2024Learning by Analogy: Enhancing Few-Shot Prompting for Math Word Problem Solving with Computational Graph-Based Retrievalcited by 4
- 2025Event Causality Identification with Synthetic Controlcited by 2
- 2024OCDB: Revisiting Causal Discovery with a Comprehensive Benchmark and Evaluation Frameworkcited by 1
- 2026Benchmarking LLMs for Pairwise Causal Discovery in Biomedical and Multi-Domain Contextscited by 1
- 2026DKCD: Domain Knowledge-Enhanced Causal Discovery from Unstructured Datacited by 0
- 2026Contextual Causality with Large Language Models: A Surveycited by 0
- 2026Contextual Causality with Large Language Models: A Survey18 Sep 2026
- 2026DKCD: Domain Knowledge-Enhanced Causal Discovery from Unstructured Data10 Jul 2026
- 2026Benchmarking LLMs for Pairwise Causal Discovery in Biomedical and Multi-Domain Contexts21 Jan 2026
- 2025Event Causality Identification with Synthetic Control16 Sep 2025
- 2025Causal-aware Large Language Models: Enhancing Decision-Making Through Learning, Adapting and Acting30 May 2025
- 2024Learning by Analogy: Enhancing Few-Shot Prompting for Math Word Problem Solving with Computational Graph-Based Retrieval25 Nov 2024
- 2024Estimating Causal Effects of Text Interventions Leveraging LLMs28 Oct 2024
- 2024Causality for Large Language Models20 Oct 2024
- 2024OCDB: Revisiting Causal Discovery with a Comprehensive Benchmark and Evaluation Framework7 Jun 2024
Similar, not cited
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- 2024Counterfactual Causal Inference in Natural Language with Large Language Models
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- 2024CausalBN-Bench: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Causal Learning Capability of LLMs
- 2023Enhancing Causal Reasoning in Large Language Models: A Causal Attribution Model for Precision Fine-Tuning
- 2025Causal MAS: A Survey of Large Language Model Architectures for Discovery and Effect Estimation
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