Systems with Switching Causal Relations: A Meta-Causal Perspective
Moritz Willig Tim Tobiasch Florian Peter Busch Jonas Seng Devendra Singh Dhami Kristian Kersting
Most work on causality in machine learning assumes that causal relationships are driven by a constant underlying process. However, the flexibility of agents' actions or tipping points in the environmental process can change the qualitative dynamics of the system. As a result, new causal relationships may emerge, while existing ones change or disappear, resulting in an altered causal graph. To analyze these qualitative changes on the causal graph, we propose the concept of meta-causal states, which groups classical causal models into clusters based on equivalent qualitative behavior and consolidates specific mechanism parameterizations. We demonstrate how meta-causal states can be inferred from observed agent behavior, and discuss potential methods for disentangling these states from unlabeled data. Finally, we direct our analysis towards the application of a dynamical system, showing that meta-causal states can also emerge from inherent system dynamics, and thus constitute more than a context-dependent framework in which mechanisms emerge only as a result of external factors.
Meta-Causality, Meta-Causal Reasoning, Agent Behavior, System Dynamics
This paper introduces meta-causal states to capture changing causal dynamics emerging from agents and environmental behaviors in dynamical systems.