IA/PHIL 312. Causal Analysis. Credits 3.
Examines causal analysis in national, military, counter-, and competitive intelligence. By assessing a factor’s amount and kind of efficacy, students will learn the most reliable methods for distinguishing between relevant/irrelevant events and factors, identifying and excluding “pseudo-causes”, and anticipating higher order effects of a causal process.
Course Objectives:
Students will develop knowledge and skills to
- distinguish between relevant/irrelevant information by assessing the causal impact of the involved factors on an outcome of interest
- recognize the major categories of “pseudo-causes” that can appear relevant to an outcome of interest
- employ the most relevant causal inference strategy to exclude each kind of possible “pseudo-cause”
- assess an event’s importance by ascertaining its degree and type of causal influence on an outcome of interest
- anticipate second and third order effects of a causal process
Course Outline:
- The conceptual foundations of causation and causal inference
- The types of causal influence
- The intelligence-relevant principles of causal inference by probabilistic relevance
- The intelligence-relevant principles of causal inference through counterfactual dependence
- Identifying and excluding redundant causes: symmetric and asymmetric
- Identifying and excluding correlations and related spurious causes
- Identifying and excluding interactive causal factors: disjunctive and conjunctive
- Practice in applying above to a wide range of actual cases
