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Mining counterfactual antecedents became a valuable tool to discover knowledge and explain machine learning models. It consists of generating synthetic samples from an original sample to achieve the desired outcome in a machine learning model, thus helping to understand the prediction. An insightful methodology would explore a broader set of counterfactual antecedents to reveal multiple possibilities while operating on any classifier. Therefore, we create a tree-based search that requires monotonicity from the objective functions (a.k.a. cost functions); it allows pruning branches that will not improve the objective functions. Since monotonicity is only required for the objective function, this method can be used for any family of classifiers (e.g., linear models, neural networks, and decision trees). However, additional classifier properties speed up the tree search when it foresees branches that will not result in feasible actions. Moreover, the proposed optimization generates a diverse set of Pareto-optimal counterfactual antecedents by relying on multi-objective concepts. The results show an algorithm with working guarantees that enumerates a wide range of counterfactual antecedents. It helps the decision-maker understand the machine learning decision and finds alternatives to achieve the desired outcome. The user can inspect these multiple counterfactual antecedents to find the most suitable one and better understand the prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The type of mood or tense marking that causes counterfactuality inferences—as figuring prominently, but far from exclusively, in counterfactual conditionals—has not yet received a comprehensive and compositional analysis. Focusing on four languages, the paper presents under-appreciated facts and a novel theory where the mood serves to activate alternatives to modal operators, particularly one: the identity operator, often giving rise to counterfactual implicatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People can think about hypothetical impossibilities and a curious observation is that some impossible conditionals seem true and others do not. Four experiments test the proposal that people think about impossibilities just as they do possibilities, by attempting to construct a consistent simulation of the impossible conjecture with its suggested outcome, informed by their knowledge of the real world. The results show that participants judge some impossible conditionals true with one outcome, for example, "if people were made of steel, they would not bruise easily" and false with the opposite outcome, "if people were made of steel they would bruise easily", and others false with either outcome, for example, "if houses were made of spaghetti, their engines would (not) be noisy". However, they can sometimes judge impossible conditionals true with either outcome, for example, "if Plato were identical to Socrates, he would (not) have a small nose", or "if sheep and wolves were alike, they would (not) eat grass". The results were observed for judgments about what could be true (Experiments 1 and 4), judgments of degrees of truth (Experiment 2), and judgments of what is true (Experiment 3). The results rule out the idea that people evaluate the truth of a hypothetical impossibility by relying on cognitive processes that compare the probability of each conditional to its counterpart with the opposite outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The northern high latitudes have experienced the strongest warming in the world and substantial changes in streamflow and hydrological extremes. However, there have been limited attribution studies of changes in streamflow and hydrological extremes in this region. This study provides the first trend detection and attribution assessment on 33 hydrological variables for 50 Norwegian catchments in the period 1961–2019, using observed and simulated runoff data from four hydrological models driven by factual (observed) and counterfactual forcing data. Significant increasing trends are detected in observed annual, spring and winter runoff in most catchments and significant trends towards earlier spring floods are found in 40% of catchments. The four hydrological models show similarly good performance in terms of daily discharge in both calibration and validation periods, and they can reproduce 62% of the observed significant trends considering both trend direction and significance. The counterfactual forcing data were generated by the ATTRICI model, which removed all warming trends and most significant trends in precipitation in the factual time series. Ninety-four percent of the simulated significant trends driven by the factual forcing data are insignificant under counterfactual conditions, with trend slopes approaching zero. Thus, based on the model performance in trend reproduction and the difference of significant trends under factual and counterfactual conditions, we conclude that about 58% of the observed significant trends in Norwegian catchments can be attributed mainly to climate change. The comparisons of the historical extreme events under factual and counterfactual conditions show that more than 65% of floods and droughts in the 2010s could have been magnified by climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Safety climate evolves in reflection of the effectiveness of organizational safety management efforts. The present study identified patterns of safety climate change over time and examined the role of error disclosure climate and counterfactual sharing in relation to safety climate change patterns. Online surveys were administered in a Chinese hospital three times at approximately 1-month intervals; the final sample included 451 healthcare workers nested within 62 teams. A latent growth mixture modeling approach was adopted to identify representative patterns of safety climate change at both individual and team levels and the predictors of those patterns. Three patterns of safety climate trajectories, declining (16%), improving (39%), and maintaining (45%), were identified at the individual level. Positive error disclosure climate and counterfactual sharing were significantly associated with increased probability of membership in the improving and maintaining trajectories compared to the declining trajectories. Counterfactual sharing mediated the relation between error disclosure climate and membership of safety climate trajectories. At the team level, two patterns of safety climate change, declining (15%) and improving (85%), were identified. Team counterfactual sharing was significantly associated with increased probability of membership in the improving trajectories compared to the declining trajectories. The current study demonstrated that an open and non-judgmental culture and the practice of sharing errors can contribute to improving safety climate over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research has pointed to the decreasing effect of revolutions and wars on income inequality. It is unclear whether this reduction is the result of ongoing changes before revolutions and wars or if the results are standalone effects. In this study, we focus on the case of the Iranian Revolution of 1978–1979 and the subsequent Iran–Iraq war from 1980 to 1988. We use the synthetic control method to study the effect of revolution and war on changes in income inequality levels. Had there been no revolution and war in Iran, how would income inequality have developed? Utilizing the synthetic control method, we create a counterfactual Iran that reproduces the socioeconomic characteristics of Iran before the Islamic revolution. Then, we compare the income inequality of the counterfactual Iran without the revolution and war to the factual Iran under a new political regime for the period of 1970–1988. Our results, based on two different indicators of Iran's Gini index, show a significant effect of the revolution and war on reducing income inequality. Over the entire 1979–1988 period, on average and per year, the Gini index of Iran was reduced by approximately three standard deviations of the index. The main findings are robust to a series of tests, including placebo tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An evidence-based approach to the conservation management of a species requires knowledge of that species' status, distribution, ecology, and threats. Coupled with budgets for specific conservation strategies, this knowledge allows prioritisation of funding toward activities that maximise benefit for the species. However, many threatened species are poorly known, and determining which conservation strategies will achieve this is difficult. Such cases require approaches that allow decision-making under uncertainty. Here we used structured expert elicitation to estimate the likely benefit of potential management strategies for the Critically Endangered and, until recently, poorly known Night Parrot (Pezoporus occidentalis). Experts considered cat management the single most effective management strategy for the Night Parrot. However, a combination of protecting and actively managing existing intact Night Parrot habitat through management of grazing, controlling feral cats, and managing fire specifically to maintain Night Parrot habitat was thought to result in the greatest conservation gains. The most cost-effective strategies were thought to be fire management to maintain Night Parrot habitat, and intensive cat management using control methods that exploit local knowledge of cat movements and ecology. Protecting and restoring potentially suitable, but degraded, Night Parrot habitat was considered the least effective and least cost-effective strategy. These expert judgements provide an informed starting point for land managers implementing on-ground programs targeting the Night Parrot, and those developing policy aimed at the species' longer-term conservation. As a set of hypotheses, they should be implemented, assessed, and improved within an adaptive management framework that also considers the likely co-benefits of these strategies for other species and ecosystems. The broader methodology is applicable to conservation planning for the management and conservation of other poorly known threatened species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mediation analysis is an important statistical method in prevention research, as it can be used to determine effective intervention components. Traditional mediation analysis defines direct and indirect effects in terms of linear regression coefficients. It is unclear how these traditional effects are estimated in settings with binary variables. An important recent methodological advancement in the mediation analysis literature is the development of the causal mediation analysis framework. Causal mediation analysis defines causal effects as the difference between two potential outcomes. These definitions can be applied to any mediation model to estimate natural direct and indirect effects, including models with binary variables and an exposure–mediator interaction. This paper aims to clarify the similarities and differences between the causal and traditional effect estimates for mediation models with a binary mediator and a binary outcome. Causal and traditional mediation analyses were applied to an empirical example to demonstrate these similarities and differences. Causal and traditional mediation analysis provided similar controlled direct effect estimates, but different estimates of the natural direct effects, natural indirect effects, and total effect. Traditional mediation analysis methods do not generalize well to mediation models with binary variables, while the natural effect definitions can be applied to any mediation model. Causal mediation analysis is therefore the preferred method for the analysis of mediation models with binary variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goals of emergency management are to restore human safety and security, and to help the authorities understand what causes such events. It requires information that is both highly accurate, and can be generated very quickly. This research addresses these concerns with a machine learning model based on cause-and-effect using a Bayesian belief network. This employs human critical thinking and amplified context to encode the model structures, which contribute towards its imitation of human-intelligent understanding, and the model parameters are fitted using social media data. The results show that our model is a natural fit for a real-world environment required emergency management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our goal was to study how people understand the negation of counterfactuals (such as "Antonio denied/said that it is false that if Messi had played, then Barcelona would have won") and semifactuals (such as "Antonio denied that even if Messi had played, Barcelona would have won"). Previous studies have shown that participants negated basic conditionals using small-scope interpretations by endorsing a new conditional with the negated consequent, but also by making large-scope interpretations, endorsing a conjunction with the negated consequent. Three experiments showed that when participants were asked whether the negation of a counterfactual (Experiments 1 and 2) or semifactual (Experiment 3) conditional was followed by a new conditional, they made a small-scope interpretation, endorsing the same conditional with the negated consequent (e.g., "if/even if Messi had played, Barcelona would not have won"). However, they also accepted the conditional with the negated antecedent for semifactuals (e.g., "even if Messi had not played, Barcelona would have won"). When participants were asked whether the negation of a counterfactual or semifactual conditional is followed by a conjunction, they endorsed the conjunction with both the negated antecedent and the consequent (e.g., "Messi did not play and Barcelona did not win"), but again they accepted the conjunction with the negated antecedent only for semifactuals (e.g., "Messi did not play and Barcelona did win"). These results have implications for the main theories of reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the export impact of the Indian government's surprise move to invalidate 86% of existing currencies overnight. This 'demonetization' was undertaken in an attempt to eliminate illegal and untaxed transactions, and to make the financial system more reliant on electronic transactions. This policy was implemented within a production structure that significantly depended on cash and informal credit sources, and a banking infrastructure that did not reach all corners of the economy. Due to the unexpectedness of this policy, the impact is predicted to have been stronger in the short run than the long run as the economy adjusted to the new system. The synthetic control method (SCM) achieves this, and with its ability to accommodate scenarios where the policy impact may vary across post-treatment periods, provides a suitable tool for our analysis. Additionally the unexpectedness of the policy circumvents anticipation issues making the scenario an ideal candidate for SCM analysis. No long-term improvements though significant short-term losses in exports values due to this policy are uncovered that are robust across alternate specifications and estimation methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on a recent challenge brought forward against the interventionist approach to the meaning of counterfactual conditionals. According to this objection, interventionism cannot account for the interpretation of right-nested counterfactuals, the problem being its strict interventionism. We will report on the results of an empirical study supporting the objection. Furthermore, we will extend the well-known logic of intervention with a new operator expressing an alternative notion of intervention that does away with strict interventionism (and thus can account for some critical examples). This new notion of intervention operates on the valuation of the variables in a causal model, and not on their functional dependencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Of all natural disasters, those especially liable to exhaust capacity are those that occur without a precedent, and cause surprise to public administration officials. This paper addresses this issue. Surprise can be mitigated by considering downward counterfactuals, which can be viewed as contributing to surprise management. These are alternative realizations of historical events, where things turned for the worse. Disaster risk may be mitigated by focusing on downward counterfactuals. Particular focus is given to the earthquake and volcanic risk at Campi Flegrei, in the Naples region of Italy, where the bradyseism crisis of 1982–1983 is considered from a downward counterfactual perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adolescent involvement in risky behavior is ubiquitous and normative. Equally pervasive is the rapid decline in risky behavior during the transition to adulthood. Yet, for many, risky behavior results in arrest. Whereas prior research finds that arrest is associated with an increased risk of experiencing a host of detrimental outcomes, less understood is the impact of an arrest on the developmental course of offending compared to what it would have looked like if no arrest had occurred—the counterfactual. This study examines the developmental implications of an arrest early in the life course. The sample (N = 1293) was 37% female, 42% non-white, with a mean age of 13.00 years (SD = 0.82, range = 12–14) at baseline and followed annually for 15 years. Analyses combine propensity score matching and multilevel modeling techniques to estimate the impact of early arrest (i.e., 14 or younger) on the development of offending from adolescence into adulthood. The results indicate that early arrest alters the developmental course of offending in two primary ways. First, early arrest heightens involvement, frequency, and severity of offending throughout adolescence and into early young adulthood even after controlling for subsequent arrests. The detrimental influence of early arrest on the developmental course of offending is found regardless of gender or race/ethnicity. Second, even among youth with an early arrest, offending wanes over time with self-reported offending among all youth nearly absent by the mid- to late-twenties. The findings advance understanding of the developmental implications of early arrest beyond typical and expected offending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quality of philosophical diagnosis within the philosophy of science will be greatly improved if the original distinctions of applied mathematics are employed instead of the inadequate substitutes provided by the logical empiricists. The problem of evaluating counterfactual claims is examined from this point of view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we will present an analysis of the Oswald example (‘If Oswald did not shot Kennedy, then somebody else did’/‘If Oswald had not shot Kennedy, then somebody else would have’) that takes a closer look at the antecedents of the Oswald minimal pair. We will argue that diverging foci in the antecedents of the Oswald example result in different truth conditions of the conditionals, explaining the difference in truth values between the two sentences. Although the explanation will incorporate aspects of Stalnaker’s theory of conditionals, it will go beyond Stalnaker’s analysis of the Oswald example on one crucial point. The difference in focus assignments between the two sentences will not be explained by a difference in appropriateness conditions between indicative and subjunctive mood. Instead, the diverging foci will stem from pragmatic requirements imposed on the presuppositions of indicative and subjunctive antecedents. This analysis will be further confirmed by extending it to similar examples with ascriptions of hopes and wishes, pointing towards a more clear-cut separation of and the effect of the Oswald example conditionality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following semantics for counterfactuals is fairly standard: for a counterfactual to be true, the closest antecedent worlds have to be consequent worlds. Closeness is measured by overall similarity of worlds to an evaluation world. There is a range of interrelated challenges to this account: counterfactual scepticism, 'Hegel'-, 'Sobel'-, and 'Heim'-sequences. So far there is no unified solution to these challenges. I discuss a solution that preserves the standard semantics by writing the shifty parameter into pragmatics. The solution has been suggested by Križ for Sobel- and Heim-sequences, yet I argue that it can be generalized to counterfactual scepticism. Conditionals are subject to a pattern which is familiar from descriptions. Everyday counterfactuals are semantically homogeneous and pragmatically non-maximal. Homogeneity: a counterfactual is neither true nor false if only some but not all closest antecedent worlds are consequent worlds. Non-maximality: in many contexts, not all but only practically all closest antecedent worlds have to be consequent worlds for the utterance of a counterfactual to say something true if the difference does not matter for the purposes of conversation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We offer effective ways to write interview protocol "prompts" that are generative of the most critical types of information researchers wish to learn from interview respondents: salience of events, attributes, and experiences; the structure of what is normal; perceptions of cause and effect; and views about sensitive topics. We offer tips for writing and putting into practice protocol prompts that we have found to be effective at obtaining each of these kinds of information. In doing so, we encourage researchers to think of an interview protocol as a series of prompts, rather than a list of questions, for respondents to talk about certain topics related to the main research question(s). We provide illustrative examples from our own research and that of our students and professional colleagues to show how generally minor tweaks to typical interview prompts result in richer interview data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The assessment of causality is fundamental to epidemiology and biomedical sciences. One well-known approach to distinguishing causal from noncausal explanations is the nine Bradford Hill viewpoints. A recent article in this journal revisited the viewpoints to incorporate developments in causal thinking, suggesting that the sufficient cause model is useful in elucidating the theoretical underpinning of the first of the nine viewpoints—strength of association. In this article, we discuss how to discern the causal mechanisms of interest in the sufficient cause model, which pays closer attention to the relationship between the sufficient cause model and the Bradford Hill viewpoints. To this end, we explicate the link between the sufficient cause model and the potential-outcome model, both of which have become the cornerstone of causal thinking in epidemiology and biomedicine. A clearer understanding of the link between the two models provides significant implications for interpretation of the observed risks in the subpopulations defined by exposure and confounder. We also show that the concept of potential completion times of sufficient causes is useful to fully discerning completed sufficient causes, which leads us to pay closer attention to the fourth of the nine Bradford Hill viewpoints—temporality. Decades after its introduction, the sufficient cause model may be vaguely understood and thus implicitly used under unreasonably strict assumptions. To strengthen our assessment in the face of multifactorial causality, it is significant to carefully scrutinize the observed associations in a complementary manner, using the sufficient cause model as well as its relevant causal models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reward prediction error, the difference between the expected and obtained reward, is known to act as a reinforcement learning neural signal. In the current study, we propose a model fitting approach that combines behavioral and neural data to fit computational models of reinforcement learning. Briefly, we penalized subject-specific fitted parameters that moved away too far from the group median, except when that deviation led to an improvement in the model's fit to neural responses. By means of a probabilistic monetary learning task and fMRI, we compared our approach with standard model fitting methods. Q-learning outperformed actor-critic at both behavioral and neural level, although the inclusion of neuroimaging data into model fitting improved the fit of actor-critic models. We observed both action-value and state-value prediction error signals in the striatum, while standard model fitting approaches failed to capture state-value signals. Finally, left ventral striatum correlated with reward prediction error while right ventral striatum with fictive prediction error, suggesting a functional hemispheric asymmetry regarding prediction-error driven learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Using the Panel Data Approach (PDA) of Hsiao et al. Journal of Applied Econometrics, 7(5), 705-740 (2012) in combination with the LASSO method, this article aims to measure the effect of the Brexit process on the United Kingdom's real economy up to 2019Q2. The results are twofold: Firstly, compared to the existing literature, the PDA improves the measurement of the impact of Brexit on the real economy regarding computation intensity, the feasibility of statistical inference and a wider application area. Secondly, the estimated counterfactuals for the UK show that the Brexit process has played a crucial role in the UK's economy, leading to lower GDP (growth rates), lower private consumption, lower gross fixed capital formation (GFCF) and higher exports. On average, GDP growth has declined between 1.3 and 1.4 percentage points, whereby the cumulative loss ranges between 48 and 54 billion British pounds. Moreover, private consumption in the UK has declined 4.7 billion British pounds quarterly on average. The predicted counterfactuals show that the impact of the Brexit process on GFCF has begun in 2018Q1, whereby the average treatment effect amounts to −2.9 billion British pounds. The UK's exports increased since the referendum, most likely due to the depreciation of the British pound post-Brexit. The average quarterly effect of the Brexit process on exports is estimated here at 4.8 billion British pounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely alleged that metaphysical possibility is "absolute" possibility (Kripke in Naming and necessity, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1980; Lewis in On the plurality of worlds, Blackwell, Oxford, 1986; van Inwagen in Philos Stud 92:68–84, 1997; Rosen, in: Gendler and Hawthorne (eds) Conceivability and possibility, Clarendon, Oxford, 2002, p 16; Stalnaker, in: Stalnaker (ed) Ways a world might be: metaphysical and anti-metaphysical essays, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003, pp 201–215; Williamson in Can J Philos 46:453–492, 2016). Kripke calls metaphysical necessity "necessity in the highest degree" (1980, p. 99). Van Inwagen claims that if P is metaphysically possible, then it is possible "tout court. Possible simpliciter. Possible period.... possib(le) without qualification (1997, p. 72)." And Stalnaker writes, "we can agree with Frank Jackson, David Chalmers, Saul Kripke, David Lewis, and most others who allow themselves to talk about possible worlds at all, that metaphysical necessity is necessity in the widest sense (2003, p. 203)." What exactly does the thesis that metaphysical possibility is absolute amount to? Is it true? In this article, I argue that, assuming that the thesis is not merely terminological, and lacking in any metaphysical interest, it is an article of faith. I conclude with the suggestion that metaphysical possibility may lack the metaphysical significance that is widely attributed to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I compare two prominent approaches to knowledge of metaphysical modality, the more traditional approach via conceiving viz. imagining a scenario and a more recent approach via counterfactual reasoning. In particular, Timothy Williamson has claimed that the proper context for a modal exercise of imagination is a counterfactual supposition. I critically assess this claim, arguing that a purely conceivability/imaginability-based approach has a key advantage compared to a counterfactual-based one. It can take on board Williamson's insights about the structure of modal imagination while avoiding aspects of counterfactual reasoning which are orthogonal to figuring out metaphysical modality. In assessing whether A is possible, we creatively devise test scenarios, psychologically and metaphysically apt A-scenarios, which manifest the relevant metaphysical requirements and test them for their compatibility with A. In this exercise, imagination is subject to implicit constraints as Williamson has it, but it is not bound to drawing consequences from minimally altering actuality such as to make room for A. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: We aimed to understand how much of the gender difference in mental health service use could be due to the joint mediation of employment, behavioural and material factors, social support and mental health need.Methods: We used data from employed individuals aged 18-65 years who participated in the 2015-2017 waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey. The exposure (male, female) and confounders were measured in 2015, mediators in 2016 and the outcome-whether a person had seen a mental health professional in the previous year-was measured in 2017. We estimated natural mediation effects using weighted counterfactual predictions from a logistic regression model.Results: Men were less likely to see a mental health care provider than women. The total causal effect on the risk difference scale was  - 0.045 (95% CI  - 0.056,  - 0,034). The counterfactual of men taking the mediator values of women explained 28% (95% CI 1.7%, 54%) of the total effect, with the natural direct effect estimated to represent an absolute risk difference of  - 0.033 (95% CI  - 0.048,  - 0.018) and the natural indirect effect  - 0.012 (95% CI  - 0.022,  - 0.0027).Conclusion: Gendered differences in the use of mental health services could be reduced by addressing inequalities in health, employment, material and behavioural factors, and social support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neural attention mechanism has been used as a form of explanation for model behavior. Users can either passively consume explanation or actively disagree with explanation and then supervise attention into more proper values (attention supervision). Though attention supervision was shown to be effective in some tasks, we find the existing attention supervision is biased, for which we propose to augment counterfactual observations to debias and contribute to accuracy gains. To this end, we propose a counterfactual method to estimate such missing observations and debias the existing supervisions. We validate the effectiveness of our counterfactual supervision on widely adopted image benchmark datasets: CUFED and PEC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Estimate the relationship between race and arrest within co-offending partnerships using a quasi-experimental framework. More specifically, this study argues that when two offenders commit an offense together (i.e., co-offend), the characteristics of the offense and victim are the same and can be removed as possible confounding variables. In this way, co-offenders can serve as counterfactual observations to one another, allowing for quasi-experimental analysis of the effects of race on arrest likelihood. Methods: The current study restructures data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) into a multi-level format wherein level-1 information on offender demographics and arrest are nested within a level-2 file containing information on co-offending partnerships, offense characteristics, and victim characteristics. By restricting the data to co-offending partnerships and examining within-partnership differences in arrest, the analysis examines racial differences in arrest given that two offenders commit the same offense together against the exact same victim. Results: While a traditional logistic regression approach suggests that black offenders are less likely than white offenders to be arrested (OR = 0.749), the quasi-experimental analysis examining within-partnership differences suggests the opposite: black offenders are more likely than their white co-offending partners to be arrested for an offense (OR = 1.031). Conclusions: These results have two implications. First, traditional regression analyses of the relationship between race and arrest may be subject to significant selection and omitted variable bias. Second, there is potential racial disparity in co-offender arrest: black co-offenders are more likely than their white partners to be arrested for the same violent offense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mediation analysis is a methodology used to understand how and why behavioral phenomena occur. New mediation methods based on the potential outcomes framework are a seminal advancement for mediation analysis because they focus on the causal basis of mediation. Despite the importance of the potential outcomes framework in other fields, the methods are not well known in prevention and other disciplines. The interaction of a treatment (X) and a mediator (M) on an outcome variable (Y) is central to the potential outcomes framework for causal mediation analysis and provides a way to link traditional and modern causal mediation methods. As described in the paper, for a continuous mediator and outcome, if the XM interaction is zero, then potential outcomes estimators of the mediated effect are equal to the traditional model estimators. If the XM interaction is nonzero, the potential outcomes estimators correspond to simple direct and simple mediated contrasts for the treatment and the control groups in traditional mediation analysis. Links between traditional and causal mediation estimators clarify the meaning of potential outcomes framework mediation quantities. A simulation study demonstrates that testing for a XM interaction that is zero in the population can reduce power to detect mediated effects, and ignoring a nonzero XM interaction in the population can also reduce power to detect mediated effects in some situations. We recommend that prevention scientists incorporate evaluation of the XM interaction in their research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many legal, social, and medical theorists and practitioners, as well as lay people, seem to be concerned with the harmfulness of discriminative practices. However, the philosophical literature on the moral wrongness of discrimination, with a few exceptions, does not focus on harm. In this paper, I examine, and improve, a recent account of wrongful discrimination, which divides into (1) a definition of group discrimination, and (2) a characterisation of its moral wrong-making feature in terms of harm. The resulting account analyses the wrongness of discrimination in terms of intrapersonal comparisons of the discriminatee's actual, and relevantly counterfactual, well-being levels. I show that the account faces problems from counterfactuals, which can be traced back specifically to the orthodox - comparative, counterfactual, welfarist - concept of harm. I argue that non-counterfactual and non-comparative harm concepts face problems of their own, and don't fit easily with our best understanding of discrimination; hence they are unsuitable to replace the orthodox concept here. I then propose a non-orthodox - comparative, counterfactual, hybrid (partly welfarist, partly non-welfarist) - concept of harm, which relies on counterfactual comparisons of ways of being treated (rather than well-being levels). I suggest how such a concept can help us handle the problems from counterfactuals, at least for my account of discrimination. I also show that there are similar proposals in other harm-related debates. An upshot of the paper is thus to corroborate the case for a non-orthodox, hybrid concept of harm, which seems better able to fulfil its functional roles in a variety of contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay develops an inferential account of model explanation, based on Mauricio Suárez's inferential conception of scientific representation and Alisa Bokulich's counterfactual account of model explanation. It is suggested that the fact that a scientific model can explain is essentially linked to how a modeler uses an established model to make various inferences about the target system on the basis of results derived from the model. The inference practice is understood as a two-step activity, with the first step involving making counterfactual statements about the model itself and the second step involving making hypothetical statements transferring over claims derived from the model onto the target. To illustrate how this two-step activity proceeds, an agent-based simulation model is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Directorate General for Competition at the European Commission enforces competition law in the areas of antitrust, merger control, and state aids. This year’s article provides first a general presentation of the role of the Chief Competition Economist’s team and surveys some of the main achievements of the Directorate General for Competition over 2017/2018. The article then reviews: the Google Search (Shopping) case, the role of price discrimination in state aid cases; and the use of counterfactuals in merger cases where alternative transactions might have occurred absent the merger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: We highlight the importance of documenting the step-by-step processes used for the selection of comparison areas when evaluating a community-level intervention that targets a large-scale community.Methods: We demonstrate the proposed method using a propensity score matching framework for an impact analysis of the Cure Violence Public Health Model in Philadelphia. To select comparison communities, propensity score models are run using different levels of aggregation to define the intervention site. We discuss the trade-offs made.Results: We find wide variation in documentation and explanation in the extant literature of the methods used to select comparison communities. The size of the unit of analysis at which a community is measured complicates the decision processes, and in turn, can affect the validity of the counterfactual.Conclusions: It is important to carefully consider the unit of analysis for measurement of comparison communities. Assessing the geographic clustering of matched communities to mirror that of the treated community holds conceptual appeal and represents a strategy to consider when evaluating community-level interventions taking place at a large scale. Regardless of the final decisions made in the selection of the counterfactual, the field could benefit from more systematic diagnostic tools that document and guide the steps and decisions along the way, and ask: “could there have been another way of doing each step, and what difference would this have made?” Overall, across community-level evaluations that utilize quasi-experimental designs, documentation of the counterfactual selection process will provide a more fine-grained understanding of causal inference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Imagine you and your friend Pierre agreed on meeting each other at a café, but he does not show up. What is the difference between a friend’s not showing up meeting? and any other person not coming? In some sense, all people who did not come show the same kind of behaviour, but most people would be willing to say that the absence of a friend who you expected to see is different in kind. In this paper, I will spell out this difference by investigating laypeople’s conceptualisation of absences of actions in four experiments. In languages such as German, French, Italian, or Polish, people consider a friend’s not coming an omission. Any other person’s not coming, in contrast, is not considered an omission at all, but just a mere nothing. This use of the term omission differs from the usage in English, where ‘omission’ refers to all kinds of absences. In addition, ‘omission’ is not even an everyday term, but invented by philosophers for the sake of philosophical investigation. In other languages, ‘omission’ (and its synonyms) is part of an everyday vocabulary. Finally, I will discuss how this folk concept of omission could be made fruitful for philosophical questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely assumed that causation is transitive, but putative counterexamples abound. These examples come in three varieties: switching cases, short circuit cases, and what I will call mismatch cases. In this paper I focus on the mismatch variety, which is widely taken to be the easiest to resolve. I will first introduce the cases and the existing strategy for dealing with them, then present a new counterexample which is immune to that strategy. In response to this new counterexample I will introduce a novel solution, one drawing on Yablo’s proportionality principle for causation. There is a catch, however. Either proportionality is a strong constraint—it constrains which causal claims are true—and the solution works, or it is not and causation is not transitive after all. I will argue that the first horn has unacceptable consequences and should be rejected, but that the second horn may be less costly than it initially appears. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to moral sentimentalism, there are close connections between moral truths and moral emotions. Emotions largely form our moral attitudes. They contribute to our answerability to moral obligations. We take them as authoritative in guiding moral judgement. This role is difficult to understand if one accepts a full-blown moral realism, according to which moral truths are completely independent of our emotional response to them. Hence it is tempting to claim that moral truths depend on our emotional responses. I outline a problem for this view: we are adamant that, if our moral sentiments were different, things would be the same, morally speaking. Moral truth does not seem to counterfactually depend on moral sentiments. I show how this independence can be reconciled with the role of moral sentiments in guiding our moral outlook. I draw on Yablo’s distinction between response-dependent and response-enabled properties. I propose that moral truths are response-enabled: their supervenience base does not include anything about our emotions. Hence they do not counterfactually depend on changes in our emotional response. However, their factual supervenience base being naturally ineligible, it is ultimately our response that enables them to play their role as an independent moral compass. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The method of thought experiments or possible cases is widespread in philosophy and elsewhere. Thought experiments come with variegated theoretical commitments. These commitments are risky. They may turn out to be false or at least controversial. Other things being equal, it seems preferable to do with minimal commitments. I explore exemplary ways of minimising commitments, focusing on modal ones. There is a near-consensus to treat the scenarios considered in thought experiments as metaphysical possibilities (most aptly treated as possible worlds). I challenge this consensus. Paradigmatic thought experiments do not have to come with a commitment to metaphysical possibilities. In the first section, I point out difficulties with the prevailing focus on metaphysical possibilities. In the second section, I present alternative formalisations of a paradigmatic thought experiment, the Gettier experiment. Gettier's words leave open the kind of possibilities under consideration. The standard way of spelling out Gettier's argument uses metaphysical possibilities. One alternative proposal uses nomological possibilities. A second one uses epistemic possibilities. My modest conclusion: as long as it is not established that a thought experiment requires a commitment to metaphysical modality, one should avoid such a commitment. My preferred way of doing so is to replace the commitment to one particular formalisation by a commitment to a disjunction of alternative formalisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of NERICA rice adoption on household food security and human health, using country-wide cross-sectional data of 502 rice farming households in The Gambia. We used food consumption scores and the number of household sick days per capita as outcome indicators of food security and health, respectively. The instrumental variable approach was used to identify causal effects of NERICA adoption on food security and health. We found significant differences in some key socio-economic and demographic characteristics between adopters and non-adopters of NERICA. To control for such differences and allow a causal interpretation of the impact of NERICA adoption, we estimated the Local Average Treatment Effect (LATE). Our analyses indicated that adoption of NERICA significantly increased household food security by 14 percentage points. This helps severely food insecure households to achieve acceptable food security status by enabling them to acquire cereals and tubers, pulses, vegetables and fruits on a daily basis. However, there was no significant impact of NERICA adoption on human health. Our findings indicate that NERICA can play an important role in fighting against food insecurity in The Gambia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the dual-process theory of moral judgment, it has been suggested that in Footbridge-type dilemmas the anticipation of the emotional consequences of causing intentional harm might contribute to the decision of rejecting utilitarian resolutions. However, no empirical data have been reported on the emotions felt by participants after their decisions, and the role played by emotions in Trolley-type dilemmas remains to be determined. The present study investigated the specific emotions engaged both after decision choices and after the generation of the counterfactual scenario in Trolley- and Footbridge-type dilemmas. The results support the idea that in Footbridge-type dilemmas decision-making is driven by the attempt to minimize the aversive emotional state evoked by the decision outcome. A greater increase in emotional intensity was found overall for Footbridge-type than Trolley-type dilemmas after the counterfactual generation following typical (non-utilitarian) choices, with guilt, regret, and shame being the emotions that increased most. Critically, in Footbridge-type dilemmas only, typical choices were predicted by the increase in regret intensity experienced after counterfactual generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with modus vivendi, toleration and power. On the face of it toleration and modus vivendi are in tension with each other, because of the power condition on toleration: that an agent is tolerant only if they have the power to engage in an alternative, non- or intolerant form of behaviour, and this seems to be absent in modus vivendi. The article argues that the scope of the power condition is unclear, but might be thought much more extensive than usually supposed. This becomes clear when the agent's thoughts are subjected to a counterfactual test, concerning what would occur in their ideal world. However it is in the nature of ideals that they cannot usually be subject to a counterfactual variation here, since they determine the ideal world's content. The article concludes that only a commitment to the other party's freedom for its own sake proves robust in the face of counterfactual idealisation, but that it is questionable whether the dispositions that characterise toleration should be subject to so demanding a test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While protected areas are a key component of the global conservation strategy, quantitative demonstrations of their positive ecological performance, meaning the extent to which they conserve the biodiversity features they were designated for, is broadly lacking. This commentary presents the emerging field of impact of evaluation of protected areas, with a focus on establishing their ecological performance. It highlights recent advances in protected area evaluations and explores the challenges remaining in developing a more credible evidence base to demonstrate the biodiversity conservation benefits of protected areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A counterfactual quantum certificate authorization protocol was proposed recently (Shenoy et al., Phys. Rev. A 89, 052307 (20)), in which a trusted third party, Alice, authenticates an entity Bob (e.g., a bank) that a client Charlie wishes to securely transact with. However, this protocol requires a classical authenticated channel between Bob and Charlie to prevent possible attacks from the third party Alice, which is in conflict with the task of certificate authorization in the sense that Bob and Charlie can establish an unconditionally-secure key by a quantum key distribution protocol if there is a classical authenticated channel between them and hence securely transact with each other even without the assistance of the third party Alice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bayesian statistics represents a paradigm shift in statistical reasoning and an approach to analysis that is applicable to prevention trials with small samples. This paper introduces the reader to the philosophy behind Bayesian statistics. This introduction is followed by a review of some issues that arise in sampling statistics and how Bayesian methods address them. Finally, the article provides an extended illustration of the application of Bayesian statistics to data from a prevention trial that tested a family-focused intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Counterfactual quantum key distribution is an interesting direction in quantum cryptography and has been realized by some researchers. However, it has been pointed that its insecure in information theory when it is used over a high lossy channel. In this paper, we retry its security from a error-correcting theory point of view. The analysis indicates that the security flaw comes from the reason that the error rate in the users' raw key pair is as high as that under the Eve's attack when the loss rate exceeds 50 %. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two experiments explored how counterfactual mind-sets interact with implementation intentions and affect their flexibility. Participants engaged in a subtractive mind-set, an additive mind-set, or a control condition and were subsequently given either goal intentions or implementation intentions that facilitated cue detection (Experiment 1) or the goal-directed response (Experiment 2). Dependent variables were the number of targets specified in the intentions and the legitimate alternatives to the targets (flexibility measure). In Experiment 1, the implementation intention (versus goal intention) group were better at detecting specified cues, but worse on alternatives, regardless of mind-set. In Experiment 2, an interaction emerged. For both specified and alternative responses, the subtractive mind-set paired with an implementation intention versus goal intention performed better. This pattern was reversed for additive mind-set conditions. Hence, how counterfactual mind-sets affect the flexibility of planning is dependent on the particular mind-set used and the specific operations of plan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expression conditional fallacy identifies a family of arguments deemed to entail odd and false consequences for notions defined in terms of counterfactuals. The antirealist notion of truth is typically defined in terms of what a rational enquirer or a community of rational enquirers would believe if they were suitably informed. This notion is deemed to entail, via the conditional fallacy, odd and false propositions, for example that there necessarily exists a rational enquirer. If these consequences do indeed follow from the antirealist notion of truth, alethic antirealism should probably be rejected. In this paper we analyse the conditional fallacy from a semantic (i.e. model-theoretic) point of view. This allows us to identify with precision the philosophical commitments that ground the validity of this type of argument. We show that the conditional fallacy arguments against alethic antirealism are valid only if controversial metaphysical assumptions are accepted. We suggest that the antirealist is not committed to the conditional fallacy because she is not committed to some of these assumptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I propose a counterfactual theory of infinite regress arguments. Most theories of infinite regress arguments present infinite regresses in terms of indicative conditionals. These theories direct us to seek conditions under which an infinite regress generates an infinite inadmissible set. Since in ordinary language infinite regresses are usually expressed by means of infinite sequences of counterfactuals, it is natural to expect that an analysis of infinite regress arguments should be based on a theory of counterfactuals. The Stalnaker-Lewis theory of counterfactuals, augmented with some fundamental notions from metric-spaces, provides a basis for such an analysis of infinite regress arguments. Since the technique involved in the analysis is easily adaptable to various analyses, it facilitates a rigorous comparison among conflicting philosophical analyses of any given infinite regress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I assess Alisa Bokulich's idea that explanatory model fictions can be genuinely explanatory. I draw attention to a tension in her account between the claim that model fictions are explanatorily autonomous, and the demand that model fictions be justified in order for them to be genuinely explanatory. I also explore the consequences that arise from Bokulich's use of Woodward's account of counterfactual explanation and her abandonment of Woodward's notion of an intervention. As it stands, Bokulich's account must be deemed unworkable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the author's response to dispositions and counterfactuals of philosophy professor Kadri Vihvelin. She mentions philosopher David Lewis' conditional analysis (LCA) and suitable proportion of test-cases for handling problematic masking cases. An overview of extrinsic disposition is also presented.

We introduce a counterfactual analysis of banks mergers, combining the pre-merger equilibrium setting with post-merger environmental characteristics, while accounting for endogenously propagated changes in market structure. Using this procedure we are able to estimate the effects on loan flows and interest rates that would have been observed if the pre-merger equilibrium was not altered. Results are obtained for firms, households, and banks inside and outside the merging circles separately. We find that mergers increased firms' access to credit, but had an opposite effect on households and led to a widespread decrease in interest rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We often explain by citing an absence or an omission. Apart from the problem of assigning a causal role to such apparently negative factors as absences and omissions, there is a puzzle as to why only some absences and omissions, out of indefinitely many, should figure in explanations. In this paper we solve this ’many absences problem’ by using the contrastive model of explanation. The contrastive model of explanation is developed by adapting Peter Lipton’s account. What initially appears to be only a trivial amendment to Lipton’s Difference Condition enables us both to offer a much more satisfactory solution to the ’many absences problem’ than David Lewis did, and also to explain why explanation in terms of absences and omissions should be so common. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: This study investigated the extent to which immigrant concentration is associated with reductions in neighborhood crime rates in the City of Los Angeles. Methods: A potential outcomes model using two-stage least squares regression was estimated, where immigrant concentration levels in 1990 were used as an instrumental variable to predict immigrant concentration levels in 2000. The instrumental variables design was used to reduce selection bias in estimating the effect of immigrant concentration on changes in official crime rates between 2000 and 2005 for census tracts in the City of Los Angeles, holding constant other demographic variables and area-level fixed effects. Non-parametric smoothers were also employed in a two-stage least squares regression model to control for the potential influence of heterogeneity in immigrant concentration on changes in crime rates. Results: The results indicate that greater predicted concentrations of immigrants in neighborhoods are linked to significant reductions in crime. The results are robust to a number of different model specifications. Conclusions: The findings challenge traditional ecological perspectives that link immigrant settlement to higher rates of crime. Immigration settlement patterns appear to be associated with reducing the social burden of crime. Study conclusions are limited by the potential for omitted variables that may bias the observed relationship between immigrant concentration and neighborhood crime rates, and the use of only official crime data which may under report crimes committed against immigrants. Understanding whether immigrant concentration is an important dynamic of changing neighborhood patterns of crime outside Los Angeles will require replication with data from other U.S. cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]