Guest Lecture Series by Professor Joseph Halpern from Cornell University, USA
TAU Institute of Advanced Studies invites you to a lecture series by Lowy Distinguished guest professor Joseph Halpern, Joseph C. Ford Chair of Engineering, Computer Science Department at Cornell University (New York, USA).
"My research focuses on the interface between game and decision theory and computer science, on reasoning about knowledge and uncertainty, and on causality. I've also done work and continue to think actively about security, (fault tolerant) distributed computing, and modal logic." —Professor Joseph Halpern
The lectures will be part of the Computer Sciences Colloquium and Machine Learning Seminar.
Three lectures will cover certain aspects of reasoning about uncertainty and decision-making.
Lecture 1: Actual Causality: A Survey
The lecture will be part of the Computer Sciences Colloquium
What does it mean that event C "actually caused" event E?
The problem of defining actual causation goes beyond mere philosophical speculation. For example, in many legal arguments, it is precisely what needs to be established in order to determine responsibility. (What exactly was the actual cause of the car accident or the medical problem?)
The philosophy literature has been struggling with the problem of defining causality since the days of Hume, in the 1700s. Many of the definitions have been couched in terms of counterfactuals. (C is a cause of E if, had C not happened, then E would not have happened.)
In 2001, Judea Pearl and Professor Halpern introduced a new definition of actual cause, using Pearl's notion of structural equations to model counterfactuals. The definition has been revised twice since then, extended to deal with notions like "responsibility" and "blame", and applied in databases and program verification. Professor Halpern will survey the last 15 years of work here, including his joint work with Judea Pearl, Hana Chockler, and Chris Hitchcock.
The talk will be completely self-contained.
WHEN: February 4, 2024, 11:00 AM
WHERE: Checkpoint Building, Hall 001
Light refreshments will be served before the lectures.
No prior registration required.
