{"id":8,"date":"2000-04-24T00:00:23","date_gmt":"2000-04-24T07:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mii.ucla.edu\/causality\/?p=18"},"modified":"2000-04-24T00:00:23","modified_gmt":"2000-04-24T07:00:23","slug":"causality-and-the-mystical-error-terms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/causality.cs.ucla.edu\/blog\/index.php\/2000\/04\/24\/causality-and-the-mystical-error-terms\/","title":{"rendered":"Causality and the mystical error terms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From <font><strong>David Kenny (University of Connecticut)&nbsp; <\/strong><\/font> <\/p>\n<p><font>Let me just say that it is very gratifying to see a philosopher give the problem of causality some serious attention.  Moreover, you discuss the concept as it used in contemporary social sciences.  I have bothered by the fact that all too many social scientist try to avoid saying &quot;cause&quot; when that is clearly what they mean to say.  Thank you! <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font>I have not finished your book, but I cannot resist making one point  to you.  In 5.4, you discuss the meaning of structural coefficients,  but you spend a good deal of time discussing the meaning of epsilon  or <em>e.<\/em>  It seems to me that <em>e<\/em> has a very straight-forward  meaning in SEM.  If the true equation for <em>y<\/em> is <\/font><\/p>\n<p> <font>     <em>y = Bx + Cz + Dq + etc + r<\/em> <\/font> <font>where is <em>r<\/em> is meant to allow for some truly random component, then  <\/font> <font>    <em>e = Cz + Dq + etc + r<\/em> <\/font> <font>or the sum of the omitted variables.  The difficulty in SEM is that usually, though not always, for identification purposes it must be  assumed that <em>e<\/em> and <em>x<\/em> have a zero correlation.  Perhaps this is the  standard &quot;omitted variables&quot; explanation of e that you allude to,  but it does not seem at all mysterious, at least to me.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From David Kenny (University of Connecticut)&nbsp; Let me just say that it is very gratifying to see a philosopher give the problem of causality some serious attention. Moreover, you discuss the concept as it used in contemporary social sciences. I have bothered by the fact that all too many social scientist try to avoid saying [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-structural-equations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/causality.cs.ucla.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/causality.cs.ucla.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/causality.cs.ucla.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/causality.cs.ucla.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/causality.cs.ucla.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/causality.cs.ucla.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/causality.cs.ucla.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/causality.cs.ucla.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/causality.cs.ucla.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}