Judea Pearl

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Judea Pearl was the winner of the 2011 ACM Turing Award for "For fundamental contributions to artificial intelligence through the development of a calculus for probabilistic and causal reasoning ".
Judea Pearl is the father of journalist Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and murdered by terrorists in Pakistan connected with Al-Qaeda and the International Islamic Front in 2002 for his American and Jewish heritage. Wikipedia (as of 2023-03-25)

More: Converse fallacy: If A then B does not mean If B then A

Probabilistic reasoning in intelligent systems

Causality

Here are some quotes from Judea Pearl relating to causal reasoning and counterfactual logic. (references to be added).

From his writings, Judea Pearl appears to be what might be called an "agnostic Jew" which might be defined as "a Jew who knows what the God he does not believe in requires of him".

Judea Pearl relates the following about causal reasoning.
In the beginning, as far as we can tell, causality was not problematic. The urge to ask WHY and the capacity to find causal explanations came very early in human development. The bible, for example, tells us that just a few hours after tasting from the tree of knowledge, Adam is already an expert in causal arguments. When God asks: "Did you eat from that tree?" This is what Adam replies: "The woman whom you gave to be with me, She handed me the fruit from the tree; and I ate." Eve is just as skillful: "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

More: Declarative models

Judea Pearl continues about causal reasoning.
The thing to notice about this story is that God did not ask for explanation, only for the facts: It was Adam who felt the need to explain - the message is clear, causal explanation is a man-made concept. Another interesting point about the story: explanations are used exclusively for passing responsibilities. Indeed, for thousands of years explanations had no other function. Therefore, only Gods, people and animals could cause things to happen, not objects, events or physical processes.