12th Yakamawa Kenjiro Lecture Series
Causality and Data

Speaker：Fredrik Savje (Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Yale University)
Date：17:00-18:30, Tuesday, May 22, 2018
Venue：Seminar Room, 2nd Floor, Building 101, Komaba Campus, University of Tokyo
Language: English

Abstract:
One of the core enterprises of the social sciences is causality. Scholars ask not only how things are, but also why they are that way. Researchers and policymakers ask how one can intervene in the world to change it; thus, they inquire about the effects of their actions.

This talk will focus on how quantitative information (“data”) can help us answer these questions. We will start with some ontological aspects of causality. The discussion will focus on a minimal definition of causality that encapsulates some core ideas from several perspectives of causality.

The definition is not rich enough to resolve important philosophical disagreements about the nature of causality, but it may be sufficiently precise to allow us to investigate some causal questions empirically. The second part discusses the epistemological consequences of the definition and how may be able to overcome them.

Supported by: FUTI (Friends of UTokyo Inc.) and MacMillan Center, Yale University, HMC (The University of Tokyo, Humanities Center)
Organised by: UTCP

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