Datasets:
CounterBench: Evaluating and Improving Counterfactual Reasoning in
| Large | Language | Models | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| YuefeiChen1 | VivekK.Singh1 | JingMa2 | RuixiangTang1* | |||||||
| 1RutgersUniversity | 2CaseWesternReserveUniversity | |||||||||
| Abstract | Back. | |||||||||
| 6202 rpA 11 ]LC.sc[ 2v80011.2052:viXra Counterfactualreasoningiswidelyrecognized 74.5 | ||||||||||
| Basic | 58.5 | Nested | ||||||||
| ------------------------------------------- | -------------------- | ------------- | --- | --- | ----- | ------------- | ----- | -------- | ------ | --- |
| as one of | the most challenging | and intricate | ||||||||
| 98.4 75.272.4 | 53. 0 | 76.078.4 | 94.0 | |||||||
| aspectsofcausalityinartificialintelligence. | In | |||||||||
| 54.8 5 0.8 | ||||||||||
| thispaper,weevaluatetheperformanceoflarge | ||||||||||
| 5 8 .8 | ||||||||||
| 65 . 6 50.8 | ||||||||||
| languagemodels(LLMs)incounterfactualrea- | 67.2 | |||||||||
| ---------------------------------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---- | ---- | --- | --- |
| 70.8 | 72.4 | |||||||||
| soning. Incontrasttopreviousstudiesthatpri- | ||||||||||
| 89.6 | 90.0 | |||||||||
| ------------------------------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ----- | --- | ----- | --- | --- |
| marilyfocusoncommonsensecausalreason- | Cond. | Joint | ||||||||
| ing,whereLLMsoftenrelyonpriorknowledge | ||||||||||
| Our CoIn | Standard | |||||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | -------- | --- | -------- | --- | --- |
| forinference,wespecificallyassesstheirabil- | ||||||||||
| CausalCoT | Solver | |||||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --------- | --- | ------ | --- | --- |
| itytoperformcounterfactualinferenceusinga | ||||||||||
| setofformalrules. | Tosupportthisevaluation, | |||||||||
| ----------------- | ------------------------ | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Figure1: ComparisonofaccuracyscoresontheCoun- | ||||||||||
| weintroduceanewbenchmarkdataset,Coun- terBench dataset across different strategies: our pro- | ||||||||||
| terBench,comprising1.2Kcounterfactualrea- | ||||||||||
| posedCoInparadigmversusbaselineapproaches(Stan- | ||||||||||
| soningquestions. | Thedatasetisdesignedwith | |||||||||
| ---------------- | ------------------------ | --- | --- | ----- | --------- | ---- | ------- | ------ | ---------- | ---- |
| dard, | CausalCoT | (Jin | et al., | 2023), | and Solver | (Hua | ||||
| varyinglevelsofdifficulty,diversecausalgraph et al., 2024)), evaluated using Gemini-1.5-flash. Our | ||||||||||
| structures,distincttypesofcounterfactualques- | ||||||||||
| CounterBenchdatasetincludesfivekindstypes. | Basic | |||||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | ------------------------------------------ | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ----- |
| tions,andmultiplenonsensicalnamevariants. focusesonexploringhowasinglechangeinacausal | ||||||||||
| Ourexperimentsdemonstratethatcounterfac- | ||||||||||
| variable. Jointinvolvessimultaneouschangesinmul- | ||||||||||
| tualreasoningposesasignificantchallengefor | ||||||||||
| tiplecauses,Nestedinvolvesstepwisehypotheticalas- | ||||||||||
| LLMs,withmostmodelsperformingatlevels sumptionsaboutmultiplevariables. Conditionaleval- | ||||||||||
| comparabletorandomguessing. | Toenhance | |||||||||
| --------------------------- | --- | --------- | --- | -------------------------------------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| uatescounterfactualsunderobservedconditions. | And | |||||||||
| LLM’scounterfactualreasoningability,wepro- Backdoorinvolvescounterfactualreasoninginthepres- | ||||||||||
| poseanovelreasoningparadigm,CoIn,which enceofbackdoorpathsthatcreateconfoundingbetween | ||||||||||
| guidesLLMsthroughiterativereasoningand | ||||||||||
| thetreatmentvariableandtheoutcome. | ||||||||||
| backtrackingtosystematicallyexplorecounter- | ||||||||||
| factual solutions. | Experimental | results | show | |||||||
| ------------------ | -------------------- | -------- | ---- | ------ | ------- | ----- | --- | ------- | ----- | ------- |
| that our | method significantly | improves | LLM | |||||||
| Koonce | et al., | 2011; | Gow | et al., | 2016; | Loi and | ||||
| performanceoncounterfactualreasoningtasks | ||||||||||
| Rodrigues,2012). | Forexample,aconsumerwho | |||||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | ---------------- | --- | --- | ----------------------- | --- | --- | --- |
| andconsistentlyenhancesperformanceacross | ||||||||||
| declinedanextendedwarrantymaylaterwonder, | ||||||||||
| different | LLMs. Our dataset | is available | at | |||||||
| --------- | ----------------- | ------------ | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| “WhatifIhadpurchasedit,couldIhaveavoidedthe | ||||||||||
| https://huggingface.co/datasets/CounterBench | ||||||||||
| /CounterBench. repaircosts?” Thisillustrateshowcounterfactual | ||||||||||
| reasoning | guides | decision-making | by | evaluating | ||||||
| -------------- | --- | --- | --- | --------------------------------------------- | ------ | --------------- | --- | ------ | ----- | ---------- |
| 1 Introduction | missedopportunitiesandalternativeoutcomes(Kr- | |||||||||
| ishnamurthy | and Sivaraman, | 2002). | While | tradi- | ||||||
| Counterfactualreasoning,residingatthepinnacle | ||||||||||
| tionalcausalinferencemethods(SharmaandKici- | ||||||||||
| ofPearl’sCausalHierarchy(PearlandMackenzie, | ||||||||||
| man, | 2020; | Chen et | al., 2020; | Feder | et | al., 2022) | ||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | ---- | ----- | ------- | ---------- | ----- | --- | ---------- |
| 2018),underpinsthe“whatif”inquiriesessentialto | ||||||||||
| haveenhancedthepredictiveaccuracy,robustness, | ||||||||||
| humancognitionanddecision-makingacrosscrit- | ||||||||||
| andexplainabilityofNLPmodels,recentprogress | ||||||||||
| icalfieldssuchashealthcare,business,publicad- | ||||||||||
| inLLMshasfurtherenrichedourabilitytocapture | ||||||||||
| ministration,andscience(Gvozdenovic´etal.,2021; | ||||||||||
| nuanced | causal | dependencies | (Liu | et | al., 2024a; | |||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | ------- | ------ | ------------ | --- | ---- | --- | ----------- |
| Kyrimietal.,2025;KasirzadehandSmart,2021; | ||||||||||
| Petronietal.,2019;Liangetal.,2024;Tarassow, | ||||||||||
| *CorrespondingEmail:ruixiang.tang@rutgers.edu 2023;Ma,2024;Liuetal.,2024b). Theseadvance- |
mentsnotonlydemonstratesophisticatedreasoning cess,guidingLLMsthroughabduction,action,it- intasksrangingfromwritingtoprogrammingbut erativeprediction,andbacktrackingvalidationto also pave the way toward emulating human-like systematically formalize and explore counterfac- intelligenceandachievingartificialgeneralintelli- tual paths. This structured mechanism dynami- gence(LiandLi,2024;Alwin,2023;Sahota,2023; callyassessesthepromiseofeachinferencestep, Bubecketal.,2023). enabling reversion to more promising points and Despiterecentadvancements,progressincoun- ensuringlogicalconsistency,particularlyinlong- terfactual reasoning using LLMs remains con- chain causal dependencies. This systematic pro- strained by two primary challenges. First, there cesssubstantiallyimprovestheaccuracyofcoun- is currently no dedicated benchmark dataset for terfactualanalysis. ExperimentsonCounterBench rigorouslyevaluatingLLMs’performanceoncoun- demonstrate that CoIn achieves an accuracy of terfactualtasks,makingitdifficulttomeasurethe 89.9%,deliveringanearly20%improvementover models’ capacity to capture nuanced causal rela- Gemini-1.5-flashcomparedtoalternativestrategies tionships. Second,evenwithadvancedprompting (seeFigure1). Theframeworkofthisworkisillus- techniques,CausalCoT(Jinetal.,2023)andother tratedinFigure2. Thecontributionsofthiswork iterativemethods,LLMsoftenstruggletoproduce aresummarizedasfollows: logicallyconsistent,contextuallyappropriatecoun- terfactuals (Ma, 2024; Jin et al., 2023; Kıcıman • Webuildacomprehensivedataset,Counter- etal.,2023;Zecˇevic´ etal.,2023). Inresponse,this Bench. Thedatasetcontainsover1200long- paperfocusesontwokeyquestions: chaincomplexcounterfactualreasoningques- HowwelldoLLMshandlecounterfactualrea- tions. The dataset spans multiple difficulty soning? Theabsenceofastandardizedbenchmark levels,diversecausalgraphstructures,various datasethasimpededrigorousempiricalevaluation typesofcounterfactualquestions,andawide ofLLMs’capabilitiesincapturingintricatecausal range of nonsensical variant name combina- relationships within complex counterfactual rea- tions. soningtasks. Toaddressthis,wepresentCounter- Bench,acomprehensiveevaluationframeworkde- • WebenchmarkLLMswithvariousinference signedtoassesscounterfactualreasoningthrough strategies on CounterBench, and results re- 1.2Kquestionsencompassingvariousdomainsand vealthatmostexistingmodels(e.g.,GPT-4o reasoningtypes. Bysystematicallyevaluatingfive andDeepseek-V3)exhibitlimitedcapabilities keydimensions,itdemandsgenuinereasoningbe- inperformingcounterfactualinferencetasks. yondpatternrecognitionormemorizedresponses. Ourexperimentsexposenotableperformancelim- • WeproposeanovelreasoningparadigmCoIn itations in LLMs, even those equipped with ad- guides LLMs through abduction, action, it- vanced inference techniques. Most models like erative prediction, and backtracking valida- GPT-4oandDeepseek-V3achieveaccuracyofap- tiontosystematicallyformalizeandexplore proximately50%,equivalenttorandomguessing. counterfactual reasoning paths. It achieves Furthermore,ourevaluationofstate-of-the-artin- nearly90%accuracyonseveralstate-of-the- ference strategies shows only marginal improve- artLLMsevaluatedonCounterBench,repre- mentsoverbaselineperformanceformostmodels. sentinga20%improvementovertheprevious Themodelsconsistentlystrugglewithmaintaining bestbaseline. logicalcoherenceduringmulti-stepreasoningpro- cessesandaccuratelyhandlingcausalrelationships incomplexscenarios. 2 CounterBench How to improve LLMs’ counterfactual rea- soningabilities? Toadvancelargelanguagemod- Toevaluatethecounterfactualreasoningcapabili- els’counterfactualreasoningcapabilities,thispa- tiesofLLMs,weintroduceacomprehensivebench- per presents CoIn (Counterfactual Inference), a markingdatasetspecificallydesignedtomeasure novel approach that explicitly tackles the critical their ability to handle complex causal reasoning challengesofmulti-stepinference,whichremain tasks. This section details the structure of the unresolvedbypreviousmethods. CoInembedsa dataset,themethodologyforquerygeneration,and tailored search algorithm into the reasoning pro- thebenchmarkingresultsanalysis.
CounterBench Dataset Benchmarking LLMs CoIn Reasoning Strategy
| Basic | Standard Strategy | Extraction | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| without Instruction | |||||||||
| Joint | |||||||||
| Abduction and Intervention Action | |||||||||
| Nested | Human | Error | |||||||
| --- | ------ | ------------ | --- | --------------- | -------- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Verification | Solver Strategy | Analysis | |||||||
| Forward Inference | |||||||||
| Conditonal | |||||||||
| Backdoor | CausalCoT Strategy | Back-tracking Validation | |||||||
| --- | -------- | --- | --- | ------------------ | --- | --- | ------------------------ | --- | --- |
| Figure2: Illustrationoftheframework. WecreateCounterBench,adatasetfeaturingfivetypesofcounterfactual | |||||||||
| questions(basic,joint,conditional,nested,andbackdoor). Basedonthisdataset,webenchmarkstate-of-the-art | |||||||||
| LLMsusingvariousinferencestrategies,conductcomprehensiveerroranalysis,andproposeourCoInreasoning | |||||||||
| frameworkfeaturingsystematicinferencewithvalidationmechanisms. | |||||||||
| Type | QueryTemplateExample | Causalgraph | |||||||
| ---- | -------------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ----------- | --- | --- |
| WeknowthatXcausesV1,V1causesV2,V2causesV3,andV3causesV4, | |||||||||
| Basic | |||||||||
| V4causesV5,V5causesY.WouldYoccurifnotXinsteadofX? | |||||||||
| WeknowthatXcausesV1,V1causesV2,V2andV1togethercauseV3, | |||||||||
| Joint | V3causesV4,V4andXtogethercauseV5,andV5causesY. | ||||||||
| ----- | ---------------------------------------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| WouldYoccurifnotXandnotV3? | |||||||||
| WeknowthatXcausesV1,V1causesV2,V2andV1togethercauseV3, | |||||||||
| V3causesV4,V4andV2togethercauseV5,andV5causesY. | |||||||||
| Nested | |||||||||
| AssumenotX,andbasedonthisassumption,furthersupposenotV4. | |||||||||
| WouldYoccur? | |||||||||
| WeknowthatXandV1togethercauseV2,V2causesV3,V3causesV4, | |||||||||
| Conditional | V4causesV5,V5causesY.WeobservedV1.WouldYoccurifnotX | ||||||||
| ----------- | --------------------------------------------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| insteadofX? | |||||||||
| X | |||||||||
| WeknowthatV1causesX,XandV1togethercauseV2,V2causesV3, | |||||||||
| Backdoor | V2 V3 | V4 V5 Y | |||||||
| -------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ----- | ------- |
| V3andXtogethercauseV4,V4causesV5,andV5causesY. | |||||||||
| V1 | |||||||||
| Table1: | IllustrativeCounterfactualQueryTypes | ||||||||
| --- | --- | --- | ------- | ------------------------------------ | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 2.1 DatasetStructure BasicCounterfactual. Thebasiccounterfactual | |||||||||
| typeaddressessimple“what-if”scenarios. | Inthis | ||||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | -------------------------------------- | --- | --- | ----------------- | ------ |
| scenario,itisformalizedasY | (u),whichservesas | ||||||||
| x | |||||||||
| The dataset consists of two main components: a apotentialoutcomeexpression. Incausalreason- | |||||||||
| ing, potential | outcomes | refer | to the | hypothetical | |||||
| ------ | -------------- | ------- | --- | ------------- | -------------- | -------- | ----- | ------ | ------------ |
| set of | counterfactual | queries | and | corresponding | |||||
| binary answers. Formally, the dataset is defined resultsobservedwhenavariableissettoapartic- | |||||||||
| as D := {(q ,a ) | i = 1,2,...,N}, where each ular value (Holland, 1986). In Y (u) expression, | ||||||||
| i i | x | ||||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---------- | --- | --- |
| Y | variable,x | ||||||||
| q is a counterfactual query, and a ∈ {yes,no} is the outcome is the value consid- | |||||||||
| i | i | ||||||||
| ---------- | ----------- | ------- | ---- | ------------ | ------- | ---------------- | --- | --------- | ------------- |
| ered in | the hypothetical | scenario, | and u denotes | ||||||
| represents | the correct | answer. | Each | query is de- | |||||
| rivedfromadeterministicStructuralCausalModel the context. To illustrate, consider a lawn irriga- | |||||||||
| (SCM)M = ⟨U,V,f⟩,whereU isthesetofexoge- tionsystemthatonlyactivateswhentheweatheris | |||||||||
| sunny and | the soil | is dry. | In this example, | Y (u) | |||||
| ------------------------------- | --- | --- | --- | ---------- | --------- | -------- | ------- | ---------------- | ----- |
| nousvariableswithassignmentsu,V | isthesetof | x | |||||||
| endogenousvariables,andf isthesetofstructural describesthesystem’spotentialbehaviorwhenthe | |||||||||
| equations(Pearl,2009). ForeachV ∈ V,wehave weatherconditionxisimposedwhilethesoilcondi- | |||||||||
| i | |||||||||
| tion(contextu)remainsunchanged. | Consequently, | ||||||||
| --- | ----------- | ----------- | --- | ------------- | ------------------------------- | --- | --- | --- | ------------- |
| V = | f (Pa(V ),U | ),wherePa(V | ) ⊆ V denotes | ||||||
| i | i i | i | i | ||||||
| whenaskingwhetherthesystemwouldactivateif | |||||||||
| the parents | of V i , | and U i refers | to | the subset of | |||||
| ----------- | -------- | -------------- | --- | ------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| exogenousvariablesfromU thatdirectlyinfluence theweatherchangedtocloudy,therelevantcoun- | |||||||||
| the value of V . Intervening on a set of variables terfactualoutcomeisY cloudy (u). | |||||||||
| i | |||||||||
| X ⊆ V andsettingthemtoxmodifiesthemodelto | |||||||||
| M ,whichdeterministicallydefinesthevaluesof JointCounterfactual. Thistypeinvolvesacoun- | |||||||||
| x | |||||||||
| intervenedvariablesgivenu. Thedatasetincludes terfactualscenarioinwhichmultiplevariablesare | |||||||||
| fivetypesofcounterfactualqueries: set simultaneously. Formally, it is expressed as |
| Standard | CausalCoT | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Models Basic Cond. Joint NestedBack. Avg. Basic Cond. Joint NestedBack. Avg. | |||||||||
| GPT-3(Davinci-002) 56.8 50.2 48.8 51.6 52.5 51.9 51.2 41.9 51.2 51.6 50.5 49.3 | |||||||||
| GPT-3(Babbage-002) 50.0† 50.0† 50.0† 50.0† 47.5 49.6 3.6* 7.6* 1.2* 19.6* 18.5* 9.8* | |||||||||
| GPT-3.5 49.6 51.2 50.4 50.0 52.0 50.6 43.6 50.4 53.6 50.0 47.5 49.1 | |||||||||
| GPT-4omini 50.0† 50.0† 50.0† 50.0† 52.5 50.4 57.2 66.4 60.0 63.2 50.0 59.8 | |||||||||
| GPT-4o 50.4 54.4 50.4 54.8 54.0 52.8 80.4 72.4 80.8 81.6 60.5 75.8 | |||||||||
| Claude-3(Sonnet) 50.4 48.8 50.0 50.8 59.5 51.6 59.2 52.0 64.4 60.0 65.5 59.0 | |||||||||
| Claude-3.5(Haiku) 28.4 24.0 43.6 54.0 51.0 39.8 60.4 65.6 67.2 66.0 61.0 64.2 | |||||||||
| Gemini-1.5-flash 75.2 65.6 67.2 76.0 53.0 68.0 72.4 70.8 72.4 78.4 58.5 71.0 | |||||||||
| Gemini-1.5-flash-8b 50.0† 50.0† 50.0† 50.0† 52.5 50.4 66.8 67.2 65.2 65.2 58.5 64.8 | |||||||||
| Deepseek-V3 50.4 50.4 50.0 50.0 60.5 51.9 80.8 70.4 76.4 77.6 63.5 74.2 | |||||||||
| Table2: ModelaccuracyofstandardmethodandCausalCoTacrossdifferentreasoningcategories. Note: *The | |||||||||
| averageaccuracyisonly9.8%becausemostofresponsesarenot“Yes”or“No”but“incomprehensible”,which | |||||||||
| meansLLMcannotfollowinstructionofCausalCoTinstructionwelltoinfer. Moredetailswillbeexplainedinthe | |||||||||
| AppendixH.†indicatesthattheLLMpredictsallquestionsaseither“Yes”or“No”,leadingtoa50%accuracy. | |||||||||
| Y x,z (u),representingtheoutcomeY aftersetting observedassunny,thequeryevaluateswhetherthe | |||||||||
| X = xandZ = z. Forinstance,alawnirrigation lawn irrigation system still activate or not if the | |||||||||
| systemwillactivateiftheweatherissunny,butit sensordetectsmoistsoilinsteadofdryness. Here, | |||||||||
| alsorequiresdrysoilasatrigger. SupposeZ repre- Z = z representstheweatherisobservedassunny, | |||||||||
| sentstheweatherconditionandX representsthe whichisagivenconditionforreasoning. | |||||||||
| soilmoisturecondition. | Thequeryasksiftheirriga- | ||||||||
| ---------------------- | --- | ------------------------ | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| tionsystemwillactivatewhentheweatherchanges | |||||||||
| to cloudy and | the sensor | detects | that the soil is | ||||||
| --------------- | ----------------------------- | ------- | ---------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| moistmeanwhile. | Therelevantcounterfactualout- | ||||||||
| comeisY (u). Thisscenarioexamines Backdoor Counterfactual. This type involves | |||||||||
| cloudy,moist | |||||||||
| thecombinedeffectofbothactionshappeningsi- counterfactual reasoning in the presence of back- | |||||||||
| door paths | that create | confounding | between | the | |||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | ---------- | ----------- | ----------- | --- | ------- | --- |
| multaneously. | |||||||||
| treatmentvariableandtheoutcome(Pearl,2009). | |||||||||
| NestedCounterfactual. Nestedcounterfactual Formally, it addresses queries of the form Y x (u) | |||||||||
| when there | exist | backdoor | paths | from X | to Y | ||||
| ------------------- | ------------ | --- | ------------- | ---------- | ----- | -------- | ----- | ------ | ---- |
| involves sequential | dependencies | between vari- | |||||||
| ables. This is represented as Y (u), where an throughconfounders. Insuchscenarios,thecausal | |||||||||
| Zx | |||||||||
| interventiononX affectsZ,whichinturnimpacts effect cannot be directly identified without con- | |||||||||
| trolling | for the confounding | variables | along | the | |||||
| --------------- | ------ | ------- | ---------------- | -------- | ------------------- | --- | --------- | ----- | --- |
| Y. For example, | if the | weather | had been cloudy, | ||||||
| whichisacounterfactualweatherstate,andunder backdoor paths. For example, a manager consid- | |||||||||
| thisscenario,thesensordetectedmoistsoilinstead ersevaluatingwhetheranewmarketingcampaign | |||||||||
| of dry soil, would the irrigation system activate? would increase sales if it is implemented. How- | |||||||||
| Inthisframework,Z representstheweathercondi- ever,boththedecisiontolaunchthecampaignand | |||||||||
| tion,X isthesoilmoisturereading. Z dependson thesalesoutcomemightbeinfluencedbyseasonal | |||||||||
| thecounterfactualvalueofX throughthesystem’s demand patterns. Here, the backdoor path runs | |||||||||
| from the | marketing | campaign | through | seasonal | |||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | -------- | --------- | -------- | ------- | -------- | --- |
| structuralcausalrelationships. | |||||||||
| demand | to sales, | creating | a spurious | association. | |||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | ------ | --------- | -------- | ---------- | ------------ | --- |
| Conditional Counterfactual. This type intro- The counterfactual query “Would sales increase | |||||||||
| ducesobservedconditionsintothecounterfactual if we launched the campaign?” requires account- | |||||||||
| world (Pearl, 2009). Formally, it is written as ingforthisconfoundingbyeithercontrollingfor | |||||||||
| Y (u) | Z (u) = z, askinghowY wouldchange seasonaleffectsorusingotheridentificationstrate- | ||||||||
| x x | |||||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| ifX wassettoxwhileZ = z beingobservedas gies. Inourdataset,backdoorcounterfactualstest | |||||||||
| a condition. For example, a lawn irrigation sys- whether LLMs can distinguish between genuine | |||||||||
| temwillactivateiftheweatherissunny,butitalso causaleffectsandspuriouscorrelationswhenrea- | |||||||||
| requiresdrysoilasatrigger. Nowtheweatheris soningaboutalternativescenarios. |
2.2 QueryGenerationandQuality 2022). Byintegratingasystematicderivationpro-
| Assessment | cess,includingcausalgraphextraction,querytype | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| classification, | data collection, | and | formalization, | |||||||||
| Each query | consists | of | background | information | ||||||||
| CausalCoTensuresrobustlogicalconsistencyand | ||||||||||||
| and a specific | question. | Table | 1 illustrates | how | ||||||||
| -------------- | --------- | --- | ----- | ------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| highreasoningaccuracy. | ||||||||||||
| samplesaregeneratedusingvariousdeterministic | ||||||||||||
| EvaluationSettings. | Withinourevaluationframe- | |||||||||||
| ------------------------- | ----------- | ------ | ------------------- | ---------------- | --- | ------------------- | --- | -------------- | ------------------------- | ---- | ----- | -------- |
| counterfactualquerytypes. | Thebackgroundiscon- | |||||||||||
| work, responses | are classified | into | three | distinct | ||||||||
| structed | with causal | graphs | and | story templates, | ||||||||
| categories,“Yes”,“No”,and“Incomprehensible”. | ||||||||||||
| andvariablenamesarereplacedbynonsensical,ar- | ||||||||||||
| Thelatterencompassingresponsesthatareeither | ||||||||||||
| tificiallygeneratedwords(e.g.,“Kelp,”“Ziklo”)to | ||||||||||||
| ambiguousorlackclearmeaning,typicallymani- | ||||||||||||
| preventmodelsfromrelyingonmemorizedknowl- | ||||||||||||
| festingwhennoanswerisdetected,suchasNULL | ||||||||||||
| edge. In | this way, | we | force LLMs | to engage | in | |||||||
| -------- | --------- | --- | ---------- | --------- | --- | ------- | ------- | ----- | ------- | ------ | ---------- | --- |
| returns | or mere | query | echoes. | During | inference, | |||||||
| causalreasoningratherthanusingpriorknowledge | ||||||||||||
| wesetthetemperatureat0. | Weemployinference | |||||||||||
| -------------- | ----- | --- | ------- | ------------- | ---- | ----------------------- | --- | --- | --- | ----------------- | --- | --- |
| in pretraining | data. | The | dataset | also features | bal- | |||||||
| accuracyasourprimaryperformancemetric. | ||||||||||||
| anced distributions | in multiple | dimensions, | with | |||||||||
| ------------------- | --- | ----------- | --- | ----------- | ---- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| binaryresponsesevenlysplitbetween50%“Yes” 3.1 ExperimentalResults | ||||||||||||
| and50%“No.”Thisbalanceextendsacrossdiffer- | ||||||||||||
| AsshowninTable2,theresultsindicatethatwith- | ||||||||||||
| entquestiontypesanddifficultylevels,ensuringa | ||||||||||||
| outspecificinstructions,mostLLMsstrugglewith | ||||||||||||
| uniformresponsedistributionwithineachcategory. | ||||||||||||
| counterfactualreasoning,performingnobetterthan | ||||||||||||
| Thedatasetconsistsof1,200questions,categorized | ||||||||||||
| randomguessingintermsofaccuracy. | Specifically, | |||||||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | -------------------------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ------------- | --- |
| intofivedistincttypes,witheachtypecontaining | ||||||||||||
| for model | GPT-4o | mini, | we | observed | consistent | |||||||
| ------------------ | --- | ------------------------ | --- | --- | --- | ----------- | ------ | ------ | ----- | -------- | ---------- | --- |
| 200or250questions. | Withineachtype,thereisan | |||||||||||
| predictions | of | either | “Yes” | or “No,” | resulting | in | ||||||
| equaldistributionofanswers,comprising100“Yes” | ||||||||||||
| a 50.0% | accuracy | in | the first | four | kinds | of ques- | ||||||
| --------- | ------- | ------------- | --------- | ------- | ---------- | -------------------------------------------- | -------- | --- | --------- | ---- | ----- | -------- |
| responses | and 100 | “No” | responses | or 125 | “Yes” | |||||||
| tions. Amongalltestedmodels,Gemini-1.5-flash | ||||||||||||
| and 125 | “No”. | Additionally, | the | dataset | is strati- | |||||||
| achievedthehighestbaselineperformancewithan | ||||||||||||
| fied based | on five | levels | of difficulty, | determined | ||||||||
| ---------- | ------- | ------ | -------------- | ---------- | --- | -------- | --------- | -------- | --- | --- | --------- | --- |
| accuracy | of 68.0%. | Although | the | CausalCoT | ap- | |||||||
| bythenumberofeventspresentineachquestion, | ||||||||||||
| proachisdesignedtoenhancethecausalreasoning | ||||||||||||
| rangingfrom5to9. | Eachdifficultylevelincludes | |||||||||||
| ---------------- | --- | --------------------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| capabilitiesofLLMs,ourempiricalfindingssug- | ||||||||||||
| 240questions,maintainingabalanceddistribution | ||||||||||||
| gestthatitdoesnotsignificantlyimprovetheirper- | ||||||||||||
| ofanswerswith120“Yes”and120“No”. | Wealso | |||||||||||
| -------------------------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ------ | --------------------------------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---- |
| formanceincounterfactualreasoningtasks. | Most | |||||||||||
| conductahumanevaluationonthesequeries,with | ||||||||||||
| modelsshowedminimalornoimprovement,asex- | ||||||||||||
| furtherdetailsprovidedinAppendixB. | ||||||||||||
| emplifiedbyGPT-3.5Turbo. | Thebestperformance | |||||||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ------------------------ | ------------- | --- | --- | ------------------ | -------- | --- |
| model in | the CausalCoT | is | GPT-4o, | achieved | an | |||||||
| 3 BenchmarkingLLMsonCounterBench | ||||||||||||
| accuracyofonly75.8%. | ||||||||||||
| Weconductedcomprehensiveexperimentstosys- ErrorAnalysis. Tosystematicallyanalyzethelim- | ||||||||||||
| tematically evaluate the performance of current itations of existing approaches, we conducted an | ||||||||||||
| LLMs on counterfactual reasoning tasks, demon- error analysis on responses generated by Causal- | ||||||||||||
| stratingtheircapabilitiesusingstate-of-the-artrea- CoT. Our analysis focuses on three key compo- | ||||||||||||
| soningtechniques. | ||||||||||||
| nents: causal | data collection, | inference | process, | |||||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ------------- | --- | ---------------- | --- | --------- | --- | -------- |
| Models. The tested LLM models include GPT- and conclusion derivation. Through careful ex- | ||||||||||||
| 3.5 turbo, GPT-4o, GPT-4o mini, Davinci-002, aminationofeachcomponent,weidentifiedthree | ||||||||||||
| Babbage-002(OpenAI,2024),Claude3.5Haiku, primarycategoriesoferrors: Wrongcausalrela- | ||||||||||||
| Claude 3 Sonnet (Anthropic, 2024), Deepseek- tionships: This error occurs when LLMs cannot | ||||||||||||
| V3 (DeepSeek, 2024) and Gemini-1.5-Flash and constructaccuratecausalgraphsorextractknown | ||||||||||||
| Gemini-1.5-Flash-8B(Google,2024). valuesfrombackgroundinformation. Wronginfer- | ||||||||||||
| ReasoningStrategies. Inourbaselineevaluations, enceprocess: ThishappenswhenLLMs,despite | ||||||||||||
| we employed two distinct reasoning strategies to correctlyidentifyingcausalrelationships,makein- | ||||||||||||
| assess these models. The first relied on standard correctpredictionsofthetargeteventY. Wrong | ||||||||||||
| prompting methods without specialized instruc- conclusion: ThistypeoferrorariseswhenLLMs | ||||||||||||
| tions. The second used the advanced CausalCoT reach contradictory final answers, even after cor- | ||||||||||||
| approach (Jin et al., 2023), an extension of the rectlycomputingthevalueofY. Thedistribution | ||||||||||||
| Chain-of-Thoughtpromptingparadigm(Weietal., of these error categories is illustrated in Figure |
- Notably, 86% of errors occur in the inference Each phase serves a specific purpose in ensuring
process,revealingthatevenwithwell-constructed accurate counterfactual reasoning, and they pro-
causal graphs, LLMs struggle significantly with vide a robust methodology for handling complex
derivingaccuratepredictionsthroughreasoning. causaldependenciestogether. Below,wedescribe
eachphaseindetail,explainingitsroleandhowit
contributestotheoverallprocess.
4.1 Extraction
Inthefirstphase,wefocusonsystematicallygath-
12%
2% ering all relevant information explicitly stated in the scenario. The process begins with construct- ing the causal graph by identifying relationships between events and representing them in a clear “event 1 → event 2” format, which eliminates 86% potential ambiguities. Next, we collect the given valuesforeachvariablefrombothbackgroundin- Wrong Inference Wrong Relations formationandquestions,wherethesevaluesindi- --- --------------- --- ------------------------------------------- --- --- --- --- --- Wrong Conclusion catewhetherspecificeventsoccurornot. Crucially, --- --- --- ------------------------------------ --- --- --- ---------- --- thisphasemaintainsstrictadherencetoexplicitly Figure3: ErrorAnalysisofCausalCoT. stated information, avoiding any unsupported in- ferencesorassumptionsinfavorofarigorousand unbiaseddatacollectionprocess. 4 ProposedReasoningStrategy 4.2 Abduction Asdiscussedinprevioussection,theprimarychal- lenge for large language models is to minimize Thisphasefocusesoninferringtheposteriorcon- incorrectinferences,whichareamajorsourceof straintsovertheexogenousnoisevariables,equiv- errors. Toaddressthischallenge,weproposeCoIn alently, constraints over parent assignments that (Counterfactual Inference), a systematic reason- make the observed factual world consistent with ingframeworkthatguideslargelanguagemodels thestructuralequations. Foreachobservedvariable throughstructuredproblem-solvinginsteadofre- V with value v , we invert its structural equa- obs lyingonintuitiveshortcutsormemorizedpatterns. tionV := f (Parents(V),U )toobtaineithera V V --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- Our approach transforms counterfactual queries unique solution for U V or a feasible set over U V into a five-phase algorithmic process, mirroring giventheparents. Indeterministiclogicalmodels, how humans naturally approach “what if” ques- thisisoftenconvenientlycarriedoutbydeducing tions (Sel et al., 2023): first understanding what parent assignments that must hold for v to be obs actuallyhappened,thenimaginingthealternative true. Theresultingvaluesarestoredasthefactual scenario,systematicallyworkingthroughthecon- world knowledge base and will be held fixed in sequences, andfinallydouble-checkingthelogic. subsequentInterventionActionandForwardInfer- Thisstructuredapproachsignificantlyreducesrea- ence,ensuringcounterfactualsareevaluatedinthe soningerrorsbybreakingdowncomplexproblems sameworld. ------------------------------------------ --- --- ---------- --- --- --- --- --- intomanageablestepswithbuilt-invalidation. An 4.3 InterventionAction exampleofproposedparadigmisprovidedinAp- pendixA. In this phase, the framework applies the counter- -------- --- --- -------------- ------------- --- ------- ------------ --- TheCoInframeworkconsistsoffivekeyphases: factualinterventionsdescribedinthequery. This Extraction: ExtractCounterfactualInformation involvesmodifyingtheoriginalsetofcausalrules from the given natural language facts. Abduc- byreplacingtheequationsfortheintervenedvari- tion: Infer the underlying conditions from ob- ableswithconstantvalues,resultinginanupdated servedfacts;InterventionAction: Applythehy- setofrules. Theinterventionsareincorporatedinto potheticalchangesspecifiedinthequery;Forward theknowledgebase,effectivelymakingaprecise Inference: Systematicallytracethroughthecausal alterationtothecausalgraph. Thisphasecaptures consequences;Back-trackingValidation: Verify thecore“whatif”elementofthequery,allowing thelogicalconsistencyoftheentirereasoningchain. theframeworktosimulatehypotheticalworldsin
a controlled way. It focuses on specific changes, Model Standard CausalCoTSolver Ours whichstreamlinestheexplorationbylimitingthe
| GPT-3(Davinci-002) | 51.9 | 49.3 | 50.1 | 49.6 | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| search to paths directly affected by the interven- GPT-3 (Babbage- 49.6 9.8 47.9 45.8 | |||||||||||||
| 002) | |||||||||||||
| tion, similar | to how | efficient | searches | eliminate | |||||||||
| ------------- | --- | ------ | --------- | --- | -------- | --------- | ---------- | --- | --- | ---- | ---- | ---- | ---- |
| GPT-4omini | 50.4 | 59.8 | 47.2 | 79.9 | |||||||||
| unnecessarybranches. | |||||||||||||
| GPT-4o | 52.8 | 75.8 | 51.4 | 89.4 | |||||||||
| -------------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ----------------- | --- | --- | ---- | ---- | ---- | ---- |
| GPT-3.5turbo | 50.6 | 49.1 | 49.6 | 58.9 | |||||||||
| 4.4 ForwardInference | Claude-3(Sonnet) | 51.6 | 59.0 | 51.8 | 89.8 | ||||||||
| Claude-3.5(Haiku) | 39.8 | 64.2 | 48.3 | 79.1 | |||||||||
| Duringthisiterativephase,theframeworkpredicts Gemini-1.5-flash 68.0 71.0 52.8 89.9 | |||||||||||||
| Gemini-1.5-flash-8b | 50.4 | 64.8 | 50.3 | 83.9 | |||||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ------------------- | --- | --- | ---- | ---- | ---- | ---- |
| valuesforunobservedvariablesbyselectingnodes | |||||||||||||
| Deepseek-V3 | 51.9 | 74.2 | 49.3 | 91.8 | |||||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ----------- | --- | --- | ---- | ---- | ---- | ---- |
| inthecausalgraphwhoseparentvariablesareal- | |||||||||||||
| ready known in the knowledge base and evaluat- Table3: ModelaccuracyonCounterBench. Wereport | |||||||||||||
| ing their updated equations. Beginning with the theaverageaccuracyforfourinferencestrategies: Stan- | |||||||||||||
| intervenedvariablesandtheinferrednoiseterms, dard,CausalCoT,Solver,andCoIn. | |||||||||||||
| it gradually | computes | the | effects | on | downstream | ||||||||
| ------------------------------------------ | -------- | --- | --- | ------- | --- | ---------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| variablesuntilitreachesthetargetvariableY. | Ifa | ||||||||||||
| approachcombinesLLMswithStructuralCausal | |||||||||||||
| node’svaluecannotbecalculatedduetomissingin- | |||||||||||||
| Model(SCM)tools(Pearl,2009)forcausalinfer- | |||||||||||||
| formationaboutitsparents,theframeworkchooses | |||||||||||||
| ence. ThestudyintroducesCausalTool,asuiteof | |||||||||||||
| another | suitable | node | and | continues | the process | ||||||||
| ------- | -------- | ---- | --- | --------- | --- | ----------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 10inferencetoolsdesignedforvariouscausaltasks. | |||||||||||||
| until Y | is determined. | This | forward | progression | |||||||||
| ------- | -------------- | --- | ---- | ------- | --- | ----------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| ItleveragesLLMstoclassifycausalquestions,ex- | |||||||||||||
| mimicsadepth-firstexplorationofcausalchains, | |||||||||||||
| tractcausalgraphsandformalizeddata,androute | |||||||||||||
| enablingtheframeworktodynamicallyconstruct | |||||||||||||
| them to | the appropriate | tools | for | inference, | with | ||||||||
| ---------- | --------- | ----------- | --------- | ------------ | --- | ----------- | --------------------------------- | --------------- | --- | ----- | --- | ---------- | ------ |
| and assess | potential | outcomes. | By | focusing on | |||||||||
| thefinalanswergeneratedbytheLLM.1 | During | ||||||||||||
| nodes that | can | be computed | immediately, | it nav- | |||||||||
| inference,thetemperatureissettozero. | |||||||||||||
| igates the | dependency | graph | efficiently, | steering | |||||||||
| ---------- | ------------ | --- | ----- | ------------ | --------- | -------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| clear of | unproductive | paths | and | promoting | a me- | ||||||||
| 5.2 MainResult | |||||||||||||
| thodical | advancement | toward | the solution. | The | |||||||||
| -------- | ----------- | --- | ------ | --- | ------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| detailsofthisphaseisintheAppendixG. The comprehensive performance comparison | |||||||||||||
| across all | models | is | presented | in | Table | 3. Our | |||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---------- | ------ | --- | --------- | --- | ----- | ------ |
| 4.5 Back-trackingValidation approachdemonstratesnotableimprovementsover | |||||||||||||
| existing | methods | across | the model | spectrum, | |||||||||
| ---------- | --- | -------- | --------- | --- | ------ | --------- | -------- | ------- | ------ | --- | --------- | --------- | --- |
| To confirm | that the | predicted | values | are logi- | |||||||||
| callyconsistent,thisfinalphaseretracesthesteps with particularly noteworthy performance gains | |||||||||||||
| achieved | by smaller | language | models, | including | |||||||||
| ------- | ------------- | --- | ---- | --- | ------------ | --- | -------- | ---------- | --- | -------- | ------- | --------- | --- |
| through | the knowledge | base | and | re-evaluates | the | ||||||||
| GPT-4omini,Claude-3.5Haiku,andGemini-1.5- | |||||||||||||
| equationforeachnon-noisevariableusingthepre- | |||||||||||||
| flash-8b. | Forinstance,ourmethodenablesGPT-4o | ||||||||||||
| ------------- | --- | -------------------------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --------- | ---------------------------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| dictedvalues. | ForeverysuchvariableV,itrecalcu- | ||||||||||||
| minitoachieveanaccuracyof79.9%,surpassing | |||||||||||||
| latestheexpectedvaluebasedontheupdatedequa- | |||||||||||||
| theperformanceofseverallargermodelswithout | |||||||||||||
| tionandchecksifitmatchesthepreviouslystored | |||||||||||||
| CoInenhancement. | AsdetailedinTable4,taking | ||||||||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---------------- | --- | ------------------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| value. Ifanymismatchoccurs,theframeworksig- | |||||||||||||
| nalsanerror,highlightingapotentialissueinthe GPT-4ominiasanexample,CoInachievessuperior | |||||||||||||
| performanceacrossallfivetypesofcounterfactual | |||||||||||||
| earlierreasoningthatmayneedreevaluation. | This | ||||||||||||
| ---------------------------------------- | ------ | --- | ------------ | --- | ------- | ------- | ---------- | ---- | ------------ | --- | ------ | ------- | ------ |
| questions, | with | particularly | better | results | on ba- | ||||||||
| validation | serves | as | a protective | measure | against | ||||||||
| sicquestionscomparedtomorecomplexvariants. | |||||||||||||
| errors that | could | accumulate | during | the process, | |||||||||
| ----------- | ----- | ---------- | --- | ------ | --- | ------------ | ------------- | ------------------------------ | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Additionally, | state-of-the-artLLMssuchasGPT- | ||||||||||||
| akintoretracingapathtoconfirmitsvalidity. | |||||||||||||
| 4o,Gemini-1.5-flash,andDeepseek-V3achievere- | |||||||||||||
| 5 Experiments | markableaccuracyapproachingorexceeding90% | ||||||||||||
| ------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ----------------------------------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ----------- | --- |
| whenaugmentedwithourmethod. | TakenGPT-4o | ||||||||||||
| 5.1 ExperimentSetup as example, Our strategy improves the accuracy | |||||||||||||
| WeadoptedthesameLLMsasmentionedinSec- ofthemodelfrom75.8%to89.4%,demonstrating | |||||||||||||
| tion3forourexperiments. Toestablishbaselines, CoIn’seffectivenessinguidingLLMsthroughal- | |||||||||||||
| gorithmtoexplorepathsstep-by-step. | Theresults | ||||||||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---------------------------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---------- | --- |
| weimplementedbothCausalCoT(Jinetal.,2023) | |||||||||||||
| andstandardsolverstrategies. | Thelatterintegrates | ||||||||||||
| ---------------------------- | --- | --- | --- | ------------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1SincethesourcecodeforCausalToolisnotpubliclyavail- | |||||||||||||
| externaltoolsintothechain-of-thoughtprocess,as | |||||||||||||
| able,were-implementeditscounterfactualinferenceproce- | |||||||||||||
| described in (Hua et al., 2024). Specifically, this durebasedondescriptionsintheoriginalpaper. |
Methods Basic Cond. Joint Nested Back. Avg. terfactualreasoningtasks. Standard 50.0 50.0 50.0 50.0 52.5 50.4 90 CausalCoT 57.2 66.4 60.0 63.2 50.0 59.8 Solver 35.2 54.4 50.4 50.0 45.5 47.2 80 Ours 82.8 79.2 80.0 80.4 76.5 79.9 70 60 Table 4: Accuracy of GPT-4o mini across five query 50 typesintheCounterBench. 40 30 indicatethatcontemporaryLLMs,whenequipped 20 withourstrategy,caneffectivelyresolvemostfor- 10 malcomplexcounterfactualproblems. Thedetails 0 gemini-1.5 gemini-1.5 gemini-1.5-8bgemini-1.5-8b ofallperformanceofourresultsarepresentedin anti- common- anti- common- commonsense sense commonsense sense Appendix C. Moreover, in Appendix D, we con- ductederroranalysis. Theanalysisrevealsasub- stantial reduction in errors of inference process. Moreover,wealsoexaminetheimpactofcomplex causal relationships on outcomes. We found that accuracy decreases as the number of variants in- creasesforCausalCoTandCoIn. Thedetailsare showninthenextsection. 5.3 ValidatingGeneralizationAbility Inthissection, weevaluatethegeneralizationca- pabilityofCoInusingtheCLADDERdataset(Jin etal.,2023). CLADDERisadatasetfocusonthe causalreasoningquestions. WeutilizetheCLAD- DERdatasettodetermineiftheproposedmethod canbeextendedbeyondtheCounterBenchdataset. Unlikeourdataset,whichfocusesonformalrules, CLADDER includes examples that utilize com- monsenseknowledgeratherthancausalinference abilitiestoanswerqueries. Specifically,itencom- passesbothcommonsenseandanti-commonsense scenarios, allowing us to explore whether CoIn remains effective under the influence of pretrain- ingknowledgeinLLMs. Weconductexperiments on the counterfactual subset of CLADDER. We applied the Gemini-1.5 and Gemini-1.5-8b mod- elstobothcommonsenseandanti-commonsense queries,withtheresultsdisplayedinFigure4and detailed examples in Appendix E. These results demonstratethatperformanceisconsistentlystable across different reasoning paradigms, suggesting that pretraining knowledge has a limited impact ontheCoIncounterfactualreasoningcapabilities. Furthermore,ourmethodachievesanaccuracyof 78.98%,outperformingbothCausalCoTat64.77% andtheStandardmethodat64.20%. Thisperfor- manceunderscoresCoIn’sgeneralizabilityandits potential for broader application in various coun- )%( ycaruccA Standard CausalCoT Ours Figure 4: Accuracy comparison between Standard, CoIn, and CausalCoT method in Anti-commonsense andCommonsenseDataset. 6 RelatedWork CounterfactualReasoning. Counterfactualrea- soning explores how outcomes change when cer- tainvariablesarealteredfromtheirhistoricalstates. InStructuralCausalModels(SCMs),Pearl’s(Pearl, 2009) “surgery” and do-calculus provide system- aticwaystoinferinterventionoutcomes,highlight- ing deep causal knowledge required for accurate inference. Counterfactuals can be deterministic or probabilistic: deterministic settings yield pre- dictable outcomes from given conditions, while probabilistic models incorporate inherent uncer- tainties. These methods have gained traction in domains like social sciences, where they assess alternativepolicyoutcomesandstudycausalmech- anismsinobservationaldata(Morgan,2015),and inmedicine,wheretheyenablepersonalizedtreat- mentanddecisionsupport(Johanssonetal.,2016; Shalitetal.,2017;Louizosetal.,2017;Yoonetal., 2018). Inartificialintelligence,counterfactualrea- soning is crucial for interpretability and fairness, enablingmodelstogeneratealternativescenarios andassessdecision-makingrobustness. Although recent efforts extend counterfactual reasoning to LLMs(Jinetal.,2023),significantchallengesper- sist,particularlyregardingcomplexvariablerela- tionships in high-dimensional text data. Conse- quently,bridgingthegapbetweentextualcomplex- ityandrobustcausalinferenceremainsafocalpoint forfutureresearch. LLMs in Counterfactual Learning. With the rapidevolutionofLLMs,theresearchcommunity
hasincreasinglyfocusedontheirabilitytoperform Sébastien Bubeck, Varun Chandrasekaran, Ronen El- causalinference(Zhangetal.,2023;Ashwanietal., dan, Johannes Gehrke, Eric Horvitz, Ece Kamar,
| Peter Lee, | Yin Tat | Lee, | Yuanzhi | Li, Scott | Lund- | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024). AprominentexampleisCausalAgent,an | ||||||||||||
| berg,etal.2023. | Sparksofartificialgeneralintelli- | |||||||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --------------- | --- | --------------------------------- | --- | --- | --- |
| agent-basedLLMframeworkthatmergesanLLM | ||||||||||||
| gence: Earlyexperimentswithgpt-4. | arXivpreprint | |||||||||||
| ----------- | ----- | --- | ------- | ----- | ---- | ------- | --------------------------------- | --- | --- | --- | ------------- | --- |
| with causal | tools | for | complex | tasks | (Han | et al., | ||||||
| arXiv:2303.12712. | ||||||||||||
| 2024). | While it | excels | at identifying | causal | asso- | |||||||
| ------ | -------- | ------ | -------------- | --- | ------ | ----- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| IviChatzi,NinaCorveloBenz,EleniStraitouri,Stratis | ||||||||||||
| ciations | and conducting | interventions, | it largely | |||||||||
| -------- | -------------- | --- | -------------- | --- | --- | ---------- | --------------------------------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ----- |
| Tsirtsis,andManuelGomez-Rodriguez.2024. | Coun- | |||||||||||
| omitscounterfactualreasoning,limitingitsapplica- terfactualtokengenerationinlargelanguagemodels. | ||||||||||||
| bilitytomoreadvancedscenarios. Currentefforts arXivpreprintarXiv:2409.17027. | ||||||||||||
| to integrate | counterfactual | reasoning | into | LLMs | ||||||||
| ------------ | -------------- | --- | --- | --------- | ---- | ---- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| HuigangChen,TotteHarinen,Jeong-YoonLee,Mike | ||||||||||||
| typically | follow | two | paths. | First, | commonsense- | |||||||
| --------- | ------ | --- | ------ | ------ | ------------ | --- | --------- | ------ | ----- | --------------- | --- | ------ |
| Yung, and | Zhenyu | Zhao. | 2020. Causalml: | Python | ||||||||
| basedapproachesleveragebackgroundknowledge | ||||||||||||
| packageforcausalmachinelearning. | arXivpreprint | |||||||||||
| ----------- | ---------- | ------- | --------- | ----------- | ------- | -------- | -------------------------------- | ----------- | --- | ------------------- | ------------- | --- |
| to imagine | scenarios | that defy | established | facts | arXiv:2002.11631. | |||||||
| (Ning et | al., 2024; | Chatzi | et | al., | 2024; | Musi and | ||||||
| DeepSeek.2024. | DeepSeek: | AI-PoweredSearchEn- | ||||||||||
| Palmieri, | 2024; | Vicuna, | 2023), | such | as | positing | ||||||
| gine. Accessed: | 2025-02-15. | |||||||||||
| alternative | historical | outcomes. | Second, | graph- | ||||||||
| based methods employ formal causal graphs and AmirFeder,KatherineAKeith,EmaadManzoor,Reid | ||||||||||||
| Pryzant,DhanyaSridhar,ZachWood-Doughty,Jacob | ||||||||||||
| externalPythonpackagesforcomputations,asseen | ||||||||||||
| Eisenstein,JustinGrimmer,RoiReichart,MargaretE | ||||||||||||
| inCausalTool(Huaetal.,2024). | Althoughthese | |||||||||||
| ---------------------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ------------- | --- | ------------------ | --- | ---------------------------- | --- | --- | --- |
| Roberts,etal.2022. | Causalinferenceinnaturallan- | |||||||||||
| methodseffectivelyincorporatestructuredcausal | ||||||||||||
| guageprocessing: | Estimation,prediction,interpreta- | |||||||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---------------- | --- | --------------------------------- | --- | --- | --- |
| information, they often offload key calculations tionandbeyond. TransactionsoftheAssociationfor | ||||||||||||
| ComputationalLinguistics,10:1138–1158. | ||||||||||||
| outsidetheLLM. | ||||||||||||
| Google. 2024. | Gemini. | https://gemini.google. | ||||||||||
| ------------ | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --------------- | ----------- | --- | ---------------------- | --- | --- |
| 7 Conclusion | com/. Accessed: | 2025-01-06. | ||||||||||
| Inthiswork,wedevelopandextendCounterBench, IanDGow,DavidFLarcker,andPeterCReiss.2016. | ||||||||||||
| acounterfactualreasoningdatasetwithfiveprob- Causalinferenceinaccountingresearch. Journalof | ||||||||||||
| AccountingResearch,54(2):477–523. | ||||||||||||
| lem types | for LLM | evaluation. | Our findings | re- | ||||||||
| --------- | ------- | ----------- | --- | --- | ------------ | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| vealthatmostLLMsperformnear-randomly,with Emilia Gvozdenovic´, Lucio Malvisi, Elisa Cinconze, | ||||||||||||
| StijnVansteelandt,PhoebeNakanwagi,Emmanuel | ||||||||||||
| state-of-the-artmethodsshowingminimalimprove- | ||||||||||||
| ment. To address these challenges, we propose Aris,andDominiqueRosillon.2021. Causalinfer- | ||||||||||||
| enceconceptsappliedtothreeobservationalstudies | ||||||||||||
| CoIn, a | reasoning | paradigm | inspired | by | formal | |||||||
| ------- | --------- | -------- | --- | -------- | --- | ------ | --------------------------------- | --- | --- | --- | ---------- | --- |
| inthecontextofvaccinedevelopment: | fromtheory | |||||||||||
| causalinferenceprinciplesandplanningstrategies. to practice. BMC Medical Research Methodology, | ||||||||||||
| CoInguidesLLMsthroughiterativethinkingand | 21:1–10. | |||||||||||
| ----------------------------------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | -------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| backtrackingtoexplorereasoningpathsmoreeffec- | ||||||||||||
| KairongHan,KunKuang,ZiyuZhao,JunjianYe,and | ||||||||||||
| tively. Ourapproachsignificantlyenhancescoun- | ||||||||||||
| FeiWu.2024. | Causalagentbasedonlargelanguage | |||||||||||
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| inter-annotator | agreement | between | the | two PhD | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| nets. InInternationalconferenceonlearningrepre- | |||||||||||
| annotatorswasapproximately95%,demonstrating | |||||||||||
| sentations. | |||||||||||
| strongconsistencyintheirjudgments. | Beforethe | ||||||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---------------------------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --------- |
| MatejZecˇevic´,MoritzWillig,DevendraSinghDhami, | |||||||||||
| full annotation | began, | both | annotators | were pro- | |||||||
| ------------------------- | --- | -------------- | --- | ----- | --------------- | --- | ------ | ---- | ---------- | --- | --------- |
| andKristianKersting.2023. | Causalparrots: | Large | |||||||||
| videdwithasetofpracticeexamplesanddetailed | |||||||||||
| languagemodelsmaytalkcausalitybutarenotcausal. | |||||||||||
| arXivpreprintarXiv:2308.13067. reasoning guidelines. They participated in a cali- | |||||||||||
| brationphaseinvolvingdiscussionandalignment | |||||||||||
| Cheng Zhang, | Stefan Bauer, | Paul | Bennett, | Jiangfeng | |||||||
| ------------ | ------------- | ---- | -------- | --------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| onannotationstandards,ensuringasharedunder- | |||||||||||
| Gao, Wenbo | Gong, Agrin | Hilmkil, | Joel | Jennings, | |||||||
| ---------- | ----------- | -------- | ---- | --------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| ChaoMa,TomMinka,NickPawlowski,etal.2023. standingofthetask. Thispreparatorystephelped | |||||||||||
| establishconsistencyandreliabilityacrossthefull | |||||||||||
| Understanding | causality | with large | language | mod- | |||||||
| ---------------- | ------------------ | ---------- | -------- | -------- | -------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| els: Feasibility | and opportunities. | arXiv | preprint | dataset. | |||||||
| arXiv:2304.05524. | |||||||||||
| C.MoreExperimentDetails | |||||||||||
| Appendix | |||||||||||
| Table 5 | presents | a | comprehensive | performance | |||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ------- | -------- | --- | ------------- | --- | ----------- | --- |
| A.MethodPromptDesign | |||||||||||
| comparison | between | the Solver | method | and our | |||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---------- | ------- | --- | ---------- | --- | ------ | ------- |
| Ourpromptdesign,asillustratedinFigure5,has CoInapproachacrossvariousmodelsontheCoun- | |||||||||||
| terBenchdataset. | Ouranalysisrevealsseveralsig- | ||||||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---------------- | --- | ----------------------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| beencarefullystructuredtooptimizetheinteraction | |||||||||||
| betweenouralgorithmandLargeLanguageMod- nificantpatternsinmodelperformanceacrossdif- | |||||||||||
| els (LLMs). At its core, the design incorporates ferent counterfactual reasoning tasks. First and | |||||||||||
| multiplefew-shotexamplesthatserveascompre- foremost,CoIndemonstratesconsistentsuperiority | |||||||||||
| hensive demonstrations of our algorithm’s opera- over the Solver method across all task categories | |||||||||||
| tionalframework. Theseexamplesarestrategically andmodelarchitectures. Thisimprovementispar- | |||||||||||
| selected to showcase various reasoning patterns ticularlypronouncedinnewermodelarchitectures, | |||||||||||
| withstate-of-the-artmodelslikeGPT-4o,Claude-3 | |||||||||||
| andproblem-solvingapproaches,providingLLMs | |||||||||||
| witharobustfoundationforunderstandingthealgo- (Sonnet), and Gemini-1.5-flash showing remark- | |||||||||||
| rithm’smethodology. Withintheprompt,wehave ableperformancegains. Notably,GPT-4oachieves | |||||||||||
| perfectaccuracy(100.0%)onbasicreasoningtasks | |||||||||||
| meticulouslydetailedstep-by-stepinstructions,cre- | |||||||||||
| atingaclearandstructuredinformationflowthat underourmethod. Deepseek-V3demonstratesex- | |||||||||||
| guides the model through the reasoning process. ceptionalconsistencywithhighperformanceacross | |||||||||||
| ThisstructuredapproachleveragesLLMs’inherent all task types. Its accuracy comes to 99.6% for | |||||||||||
| basic tasks | and | maintaining | above | 90% | average | ||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ----------- | --- | ----------- | --- | ----- | --- | ------- |
| in-contextlearningcapabilities,enablingthemto | |||||||||||
| systematically explore solution paths rather than accuracy. Theperformancedistributionacrossdif- | |||||||||||
| relyingonintuitiveresponses. Thisapproachnot ferenttasktypesrevealsinterestingpatterns. Basic | |||||||||||
| reasoning | tasks | consistently | yield | the | highest ac- | ||||||
| ------------- | ----------- | ------- | -------- | ---- | --------- | ----- | ------------ | --- | ----- | --- | ----------- |
| only enhances | the model’s | ability | to break | down | |||||||
| problems and evaluate paths efficiently but also curacy under our method, particularly evident in | |||||||||||
| reducingthelikelihoodofgeneratingerroneousin- largermodels. However,thiscategoryalsoexhibits | |||||||||||
| termediatestepsandimprovingreasoningstability. themostsignificantperformancevariationacross | |||||||||||
| different | model | architectures, | suggesting | that ba- | |||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --------- | ----- | -------------- | --- | ---------- | --- | -------- |
| siccounterfactualreasoningcapabilitiesarehighly | |||||||||||
| B.HumanEvaluation | |||||||||||
| sensitive | to model | scale | and | architecture. | In con- | ||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --------- | -------- | ----- | --- | ------------- | --- | ------- |
| Toassessthequalityofourdataset,weaskedtwo trast, joint reasoning tasks show relatively stable | |||||||||||
| Ph.D. students with expertise in causal inference performance across different models, indicating | |||||||||||
| toanswer200randomlyselectedquestions. They thatthesecapabilitiesmaybemorefundamentally | |||||||||||
| achieved an average accuracy of 97.75% and re- tiedtothereasoningframeworkratherthanmodel | |||||||||||
| quiredfourhourstocompletethem,reflectingthe size. Moreover,weobserveaclearcorrelationbe- | |||||||||||
| substantial cognitive effort involved. According tweenmodelrecencyandperformance,withnewer | |||||||||||
| toparticipantfeedback,thesequestionsdemanded modelslikeGPT-4oandClaude-3(Sonnet)achiev- | |||||||||||
| carefulconsiderationofmultiplecausalfactorsand ingsignificantlyhigheraverageaccuracies(89.8%, | |||||||||||
| explicitcounterfactualreasoningsteps. Thesefind- 89.4%)comparedtotheirpredecessors. Thistrend | |||||||||||
| ings demonstrate that our dataset presents prob- holdstrueacrossalltasktypes,thoughthemagni- |
tudeofimprovementvariesbycategory. Thecon- in Figure 12, the approach breaks down the rea- sistent performance improvements across newer soningprocessintodistinctphases: counterfactual modelarchitecturessuggestthatrecentadvancesin informationcollection,andsystematicexploration languagemodeldevelopmenthaveenhancedtheir ofinferencepaths. Thisstructureddecomposition capacity for structured counterfactual reasoning contrastssharplywiththestandardapproachshown whencombinedwithourmethodology. inFigure9,whichprovidesminimalguidancefor
| navigatingthereasoningprocess. | Throughexplicit | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| D.ErrorAnalysiscomparisonbetweenOur | ||||||||
| variablemappingandsystematicpathexploration, | ||||||||
| MethodandCausalCoT | ||||||||
| CoIn enables | models to systematically | evaluate | ||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ------------ | ------------------------ | -------- |
| By randomly sampling 50 instances and catego- possible causal chains, leading to more reliable | ||||||||
| rizingerrorsintothreedistincttypes, wrongrela- andtraceableinferenceoutcomes. Thekeyreason | ||||||||
| tions, wrong inferences, and wrong conclusions, why only CoIn arrived at the correct answer lies | ||||||||
| we systematically evaluated the model’s perfor- initsexplicitstructuredreasoningprocess,which | ||||||||
| mance. Theanalysisdemonstratednotablediffer- ensuresasystematicandrobustapproachtocoun- | ||||||||
| ences in the relative distribution of errors, with terfactual inference. Unlike CausalCoT and the | ||||||||
| inference-related errors decreasing from 86% to standardmethod,CoInemploysastep-by-stepal- | ||||||||
| 46%. This significant reduction combining with gorithmicframeworkthatsystematicallyprocesses | ||||||||
| thediminishederrorquantitysubstantiatesanen- causaldependencies,preventingshortcutreasoning | ||||||||
| hanced | counterfactual | inference | capability. | Con- | andheuristicerrors. | |||
| -------------------- | -------------- | --------- | ----------- | -------- | ------ | ------------------- | --- | --- |
| currently, | we also | observed | a relative | increase | in | |||
| relationship-related | errors, | 12% to | 50%. | Conse- | ||||
| quently,theoveralleffectofourstrategyispositive | ||||||||
| asthenumberoferrorscomedownnotably. | ||||||||
| E.CLADDERDatasetExample | ||||||||
| TwoexamplesaregeneratedfromtheCLADDER | ||||||||
| dataset. | ItisshowninFigure | 7andFigure8,are | ||||||
| -------- | ----------------- | --- | --------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| designedtoevaluateamodel’sabilitytodistinguish | ||||||||
| betweencommonsenseandanti-commonsenserea- | ||||||||
| soningincounterfactualscenarios. | Commonsense | |||||||
| -------------------------------- | ------- | ------ | ------------- | ----------- | ----- | --- | --- | --- |
| reasoning | follows | causal | relationships | that | align | |||
| G.ForwardInferenceAlgorithm | ||||||||
| with human | intuition | and | everyday | knowledge, | ||||
| ---------- | --------- | --- | -------- | ---------- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| makingiteasierformodelstoinferoutcomesbased | ||||||||
| onfamiliarpatterns. | Incontrast,anti-commonsense | |||||||
| ------------------- | -------- | --------------------------- | ---------- | ---- | ------- | --- | --- | --- |
| reasoning | presents | causal | structures | that | contra- | |||
| dictintuitiveexpectations,requiringmodelstorely | ||||||||
| solelyonexplicitlyprovidedcausalrelationships | ||||||||
| rather than | prior | knowledge. | By testing | both rea- | ||||
| ----------- | ----- | ---------- | ---------- | --- | --------- | --- | --- | --- |
| soningparadigms,theseexamplesassesswhether ThepartisforwardinferenceAlgorithm,thecore | ||||||||
| amodelcanaccuratelydifferentiatebetweenintu- methodologicalcomponentthatsystematicallyap- | ||||||||
| itiveandcounterintuitivecausalstructures,ensur- plies gathered information from previous Extrac- | ||||||||
| ingthatreal-worldbiasesdonotinterferewithits tion, Abduction, andActionstepstoevaluatethe | ||||||||
| counterfactualreasoningabilities. target event. The framework employs iterative | ||||||||
| counterfactualreasoningtoprogressivelyexplore | ||||||||
| F.Answerofourmethods | ||||||||
| andinfereventvalues,ultimatelydeterminingthe | ||||||||
| Here,weprovideacomparativeanalysisbetween targetoutcome. Moreover,throughintegratedeval- | ||||||||
| our CoIn method, CausalCoT and the standard uation and backtracking mechanisms, the frame- | ||||||||
| approach. The results are shown in Figure 9, work enables models to systematically optimize | ||||||||
| Figure 11 and Figure 12. In results, our CoIn theirreasoningpathsandimprovereasoningaccu- | ||||||||
| method introduces a structured, step-by-step rea- racy. Thisprocessfollowsanalgorithmicstrategy | ||||||||
| soning framework that systematically addresses designedtosystematicallydeterminethecounter- | ||||||||
| complex | counterfactual | scenarios. | As illustrated | factualoutcome. | ||||
| ------- | -------------- | --- | ---------- | -------------- | --- | --------------- | --- | --- |
| Solver | Ours | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Models Basic Cond. Joint Nested Back. Avg. Basic Cond. Joint Nested Back. Avg. | ||||||||||||
| GPT-3(Davinci-002) 50.4 50.0 50.4 50.0 49.5 50.1 51.2 48.4 48 51.6 48.5 49.6 | ||||||||||||
| GPT-3 (Babbage- 44.8 48.8 48.4 48.0 50.0 47.9 45.2 46.4 46 45.6 46.0 45.8 | ||||||||||||
| 002) | ||||||||||||
| GPT-3.5turbo 50.0 50.0 50.0 50.0 47.5 49.6 65.2 54.0 61.2 63.2 49.0 58.9 | ||||||||||||
| GPT-4omini 35.2 54.4 50.4 50.0 45.5 47.2 82.8 79.2 80.0 80.4 76.5 79.9 | ||||||||||||
| GPT-4o 45.6 60.8 51.6 50.4 48.0 51.4 100.0 89.6 90.0 88.4 76.5 89.4 | ||||||||||||
| Claude-3(Sonnet) 55.6 58.0 43.6 50.4 51.5 51.8 97.6 84.8 90.0 94.0 80.5 89.8 | ||||||||||||
| Claude-3.5(Haiku) 49.2 49.2 48.8 49.6 43.5 48.3 88.0 76.8 81.2 83.2 63.0 79.1 | ||||||||||||
| Gemini-1.5-flash 54.8 58.8 50.8 50.8 48.0 52.8 98.4 89.6 90.0 94.0 74.5 89.9 | ||||||||||||
| Gemini-1.5-flash-8b 52.4 50.8 49.2 51.2 47.0 50.3 94.8 80.0 88.0 88.4 64.5 83.9 | ||||||||||||
| Deepseek-V3 51.2 48.0 48.4 50.4 48.0 49.3 99.6 90.0 90.4 94.0 83.0 91.8 | ||||||||||||
| Table5: PerformanceofSolversandOurCoInAcrossDifferentReasoningCategories | ||||||||||||
| Algorithm1ForwardInferenceAlgorithm anerroranalysis,categorizingtheerrorsintothree | ||||||||||||
| distincttypes: | BlankResponse: | Thisoccurswhen | ||||||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | -------------- | -------------- | --- | --- | -------------- | --- |
| Input: | ||||||||||||
| R: | the model | produces | an | empty | response. | Repeat- | ||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --------- | -------- | --- | ----- | --------- | ------- |
| 1: Asetofcausalgraphrelations | ||||||||||||
| E: Asetofevents ing Error: This occurs when the model’s infer- | ||||||||||||
| 2: | ||||||||||||
| N: | enceisonlyrepeatingthequestionsandgivenin- | |||||||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ------------------------------------------ | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 3: Asetof{event,value}pairs | ||||||||||||
| formations. | The | example | is | shown | in Figure 13. | |||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ----------- | --- | ------- | --- | ----- | ------------- |
| Output: | ||||||||||||
| Y: targeteventY Type Mismatch: It represents that the answer is | ||||||||||||
| 4: | ||||||||||||
| 5: procedure REASONING(R,E,N) expectedtobeabinaryvalue“yes”or“no”. The | ||||||||||||
| E\N.events | responsereturnsalistwithmultiple“yes”or“no”. | |||||||||||
| --- | ------ | ------------- | ---------- | ---------- | --- | --- | -------------------------------------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 6: | K | ← RANDOM(E),E | ∈ | |||||||||
| whileK | ∈/ | N.eventsdo | TheexampleisshowninFigure14. | |||||||||
| 7: | ||||||||||||
| forallrelationr | ∈ Rdo | |||||||||||
| --- | --- | --------------- | --- | ----- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 8: | ||||||||||||
| INFER(r,N) | ||||||||||||
| 9: | if | ∃ | → value(K) | |||||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1.20 | ||||||||||||
| then | ||||||||||||
| N ← N | ∪{K,value(K)} | |||||||||||
| --- | --- | --- | ----- | ------------- | --- | --- | ---- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 10: | 1.00 | |||||||||||
| 0.18 | ||||||||||||
| 11: | ifK = Y | then | 0.19 | |||||||||
| --- | ---------- | --- | -------------- | ----------- | --- | --- | ---- | ---- | ---- | ---- | ---- | ---- |
| 0.80 | 0.32 | |||||||||||
| 0.10 | 0.46 | 0.12 | 0.43 | |||||||||
| 12: | returnvalue(K) | |||||||||||
| else | 0.60 | |||||||||||
| 13: | 0.24 | |||||||||||
| 14: | K ← | RANDOM(E),E | ∈ | |||||||||
| 0.40 | 0.30 | |||||||||||
| E\N.events | 0.72 | 0.69 | 0.42 | |||||||||
| 0.20 | 0.45 | |||||||||||
| 15: | endif | 0.24 | ||||||||||
| 0.14 | ||||||||||||
| endif | 0.00 | |||||||||||
| --- | --- | ------ | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---- | -------------- | ----- | --------------- | ------------- | ---- |
| 16: | Basic | Cond. | Joint | Nested | Avg. | |||||||
| 17: | endfor | Blank Response | Repeating Error | Type Mismatch | ||||||||
| 18: endwhile | ||||||||||||
| endprocedure | ||||||||||||
| 19: | Figure10: | ErrorAnalysisforBabbage-002inCausal- | ||||||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --------- | ------------------------------------ | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| CoT | ||||||||||||
| H.BenchmarkResultAnalysis: | CausalCoT | |||||||||||
| -------------------------- | --- | --- | --- | --------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| WecomparedtheresponsesgeneratedbyBabbage- | ||||||||||||
| 002 | under | the CausalCoT | framework | with | those | |||||||
| -------------- | ----- | ------------- | ----------------------------- | --------- | ---- | ----- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| fromotherLLMs. | Theresultsrevealthatthemajor- | |||||||||||
| ityofBabbage-002’sresponseswerenonsensical | ||||||||||||
| whenfollowingtheCausalCoTinstructions,result- | ||||||||||||
| ing | in a remarkably | low accuracy | of just | 8.0%. | ||||||||
| -------- | --------------- | -------- | ------------ | ---------- | ------- | ------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| A deeper | analysis | showed | that 82.4% | of | the re- | |||||||
| sponseswereclassifiedasincomprehensible,which | ||||||||||||
| explainswhytheaccuracywasnotablylowerthan | ||||||||||||
| random | guessing. | The following | chart provides | |||||||||
| ------ | --------- | --- | ------------- | --- | -------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
Question: —————- User: Imagineaself-contained,hypotheticalworldwithonlythefollowingconditions,andwithout any unmentioned factors or causal relationships: Pexu has a direct effect on Kraz. Not Kraz and Pexuhasadirecteffectonhwax. Hwaxhasadirecteffectonrukz. Krazisunobserved. Weknow thatpexuandnotkrazcauseshwax. pexucauseskraz. hwaxcausesrukz. Weobservedanindividual ishwax. Wouldanindividualisrukzifnotkrazinsteadofkraz? Pleasefollowtheinstructionsstep bystep. Step1. Extractthecausalgraph: Identifythecausalgraphthatdepictstherelationshipsin thescenario. LetX=kraz;V2=pexu;V3=hwax;Y=rukz. Thediagramshouldsimplyconsistof edgesdenotedin"var1→var2"format,separatedbycommas. IfyougetV1→NotV2forexample, youneedtoreplaceintoV1→V2. Step2. AbductionandActionforinformationcollection: Collect all the directly given information into given values set. 1 means given observed in question or observed. 0meansgivennotinquestion. Donotassumeorinferothervariablesvaluesbyrelations. Then, describe relations about how multiple variables influence another variable; it can result in AND,OR,orNOT.Step3. InferandPredicttheYbyinformationstepbystep. Step4. Basedonthe resultfromtheStep3,derivethefinalanswer. Thereisanidentifiableanswer. Assistant: Step 1) Extract the causal graph: Identify the causal graph that depicts the relationships in the scenario. LetV2=kraz; X=pexu; V3=hwax; Y=rukz. ThecausalgraphisV2→V3, V2→X, X→V3,V3→Y. Step2)AbductionandActionforinformationcollection: Allgivenvalues: V2=1,andX=0(by abduction,V2occurs),X=0(byaction,Xnotoccur);Relations: Y:(NOTV2)ANDV3,V3: X ANDNOTV2. Step3)Tryingapromisingfirstoperation:
- V3=notXandV2=1 -Y=V3=1→foundit! Backtrackingthesolution: Step3a: V3=notXandV2=1 Step3b: Y=V3=1 Step4)SincetheresultfortheYis1,theoverallanswertothequestionisyes. —————- User: Imagineaself-contained,hypotheticalworldwithonlythefollowingconditions,andwithout anyunmentionedfactorsorcausalrelationships: VankhasadirecteffectonPraf,Prafhasadirect effect on Scud, Scud has a direct effect on Wrenk, Wrenk and Scud have direct effects on Yobb, YobbhasadirecteffectonGlim,GlimandScudhavedirecteffectsonSpog,andSpoghasadirect effectonKlep. VankBern(0.6). WeobservedWrenk. WeknowthatVankcausesPraf,Prafcauses Scud,ScudcausesWrenk,WrenkandScudtogethercauseYobb,YobbcausesGlim,GlimandScud together cause Spog, and Spog causes Klep. Vank Bern(0.6). We observed Wrenk. Would Klep occur ifnot Prafinstead of Praf? Step 1. Extract thecausal graph: Identifythe causalgraph that depictstherelationshipsinthescenario. LetX=Ziklo;V1=Blaf;V2=Trune;V3=Vork;V4= Sline;V5=Frim;V6=Qado;Y=Lumbo. Thediagramshouldsimplyconsistofedgesdenoted in"var1→var2"format, separatedbycommas. IfyougetV1→NotV2forexample, youneed toreplaceintoV1→V2. Step2. AbductionandActionforinformationcollection: Collectallthe directlygiveninformationintogivenvaluesset. 1meansgivenobservedinquestionorobserved. 0 means given not in question. Do not assume or infer other variables values by relations. Then, describerelationsabouthowmultiplevariablesinfluenceanothervariable;itcanresultinAND,OR, orNOT.Step3. InferandPredicttheYbyinformationstepbystep. Step4. Basedontheresultfrom theStep3,derivethefinalanswer. Thereisanidentifiableanswer. Assistant: Figure5: ThepromptdesignexampleofCoIn
100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%
| Wrong Relations | Wrong Inference | Wrong Conclusion | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CausalCoT | Ours | |||||||||
| Figure 6: | Error Analysis | comparison | between Our | |||||||
| MethodandCausalCoT. | ||||||||||
| Question: | Imagine | a self-contained, | hy- | |||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --------- | ------- | --- | ----------------- | --- | --- |
| Question: Imagineaself-contained,hypothet- pothetical world with only the following | ||||||||||
| icalworldwithonlythefollowingconditions, | ||||||||||
| conditions, | and | without | any | unmentioned | ||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ----------- | --- | ------- | --- | ----------- | --- |
| andwithoutanyunmentionedfactorsorcausal | ||||||||||
| factors | or causal | relationships: | Nuv | has a | ||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ------- | --------- | -------------- | --- | --- | ----- |
| relationships: Having a brother has a direct direct effect on Splee, Blen and Druk, not | ||||||||||
| effectonroom. | Thecandlehasadirecteffect | |||||||||
| ------------- | --------------------------- | ------------------------- | --- | --- | ------------- | -------- | ------ | -------- | ------- | ----- |
| Druk has | a direct | effect | on Plog, | Plog | has a | |||||
| onroom. | Weknowthathavingabrotherand | |||||||||
| direct effect | on | Skrim, | Skrim | or Druk | has | |||||
| candle with wax causes dark room. We ob- a direct effect on Zimb, Zimb has a direct | ||||||||||
| servedthecandlehaswax. Wouldtheroomis effectonYurd,andYurdhasadirecteffecton | ||||||||||
| darkifnothavingabrotherinsteadofhaving | ||||||||||
| Wrox. WeknowthatNuvcausesSplee,Blen | ||||||||||
| abrother? | ||||||||||
| andDruk,notDrukcausesPlog,Plogcauses | ||||||||||
| Start your answer with “Yes” or “No”, fol- Skrim, Skrim or Druk causes Zimb, Zimb | ||||||||||
| lowedbyadditionalreasoningorevidenceto | ||||||||||
| causesYurd,andYurdcausesWrox. | Would | |||||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ----------------------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ----- |
| supportyourexplanation. | ||||||||||
| WroxoccurifnotNuvandnotSplee? | ||||||||||
| Answer: | No. | |||||||||
| --------- | ----------------------- | --- | --------------- | ----- | -------- | -------------------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Figure7: | Anti-commonsenseExample | |||||||||
| Figure9: | StandardInstructionExample | |||||||||
| Question: | Imagine | a | self-contained, | hypo- | ||||||
| theticalworldwithonlythefollowingcondi- | ||||||||||
| tions, and | without | any | unmentioned | factors | ||||||
| ----------------------- | -------------------------- | ----------------- | --------------- | ---------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| orcausalrelationships: | Themanintheroom | |||||||||
| hasadirecteffectonroom. | Thecandlehasa | |||||||||
| directeffectonroom. | Weknowthatblowing | |||||||||
| out the | candle | and candle | with | wax causes | ||||||
| darkroom. | Weobservedthecandlehaswax. | |||||||||
| Wouldtheroomisdarkifnotblowingoutthe | ||||||||||
| candleinsteadofblowingoutthecandle? | ||||||||||
| Start your | answer | with | “Yes” | or “No”, fol- | ||||||
| ---------- | ------ | ---- | ----- | ------------- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| lowedbyadditionalreasoningorevidenceto | ||||||||||
| supportyourexplanation. | ||||||||||
| Figure8: CommonsenseExample |
Question: Imagine a self-contained, hypothetical world with only the following conditions, and withoutanyunmentionedfactorsorcausalrelationships: NuvhasadirecteffectonSplee,Blenand Druk,notDrukhasadirecteffectonPlog,PloghasadirecteffectonSkrim,SkrimorDrukhasa directeffectonZimb,ZimbhasadirecteffectonYurd,andYurdhasadirecteffectonWrox. We knowthatNuvcausesSplee,BlenandDruk,notDrukcausesPlog,PlogcausesSkrim,SkrimorDruk causesZimb,ZimbcausesYurd,andYurdcausesWrox. WouldWroxoccurifnotNuvandnotSplee? Answer: Toaddresstheproblem,wewillfollowthestepsoutlined: Step1: Extractthecausalgraph Basedonthegivenconditions,thecausalgraphcanberepresentedasfollows: -Nuv→Splee-Nuv→Blen-Nuv→Druk-Druk→Plog-Plog→Skrim-Skrim→Zimb-Druk →Zimb-Zimb→Yurd-Yurd→Wrox Step2: Determinethequerytype The question asks whether Wrox would occur if not Nuv and not Splee. This is a counterfactual query because it involves reasoning about what would happen under a hypothetical scenario that differsfromtheobservedworld. Thequerytypeis: “counterfactual” Step3: Formalizethequery Theformalexpressionforthecounterfactualqueryis: Wrox Nuv=0,Splee=0 ThisnotationrepresentsthevalueofWroxinthecounterfactualworldwhereNuvandSpleedonot occur. Step4: Gatherallrelevantdata Fromtheproblemstatement,wehavethefollowingdata: -Nuv=0(notNuv)-Splee=0(notSplee) Step5: Deducetheestimandusingcausalinference Todeducetheestimand,weneedtoconsiderthecausalpathwaysfromNuvandSpleetoWrox:
- Nuv directly affects Splee, Blen, and Druk. 2. Druk affects Plog, which affects Skrim, which affectsZimb,whichaffectsYurd,whichaffectsWrox. 3. DrukalsodirectlyaffectsZimb. 4. Zimb affectsYurd,whichaffectsWrox. GiventhatNuv=0,Splee=0,weneedtodetermineifWroxcanstilloccur: -SinceNuv=0,Splee=0,Blen=0,andDruk=0. -Druk=0impliesPlog=0andZimb=0(since DrukaffectsbothPlogandZimb). -Plog=0impliesSkrim=0. -Skrim=0andDruk=0imply Zimb=0. -Zimb=0impliesYurd=0. -Yurd=0impliesWrox=0. Thus,thecounterfactualscenarioresultsinWrox=0. Step6: Calculatetheestimand Giventhedeductionsabove,thecounterfactualvalueofWroxwhenNuv=0andSplee=0is: Wrox = 0 Nuv=0,Splee=0 Therefore,WroxwouldnotoccurifnotNuvandnotSplee. Figure11: CausalCoTInstructionExample
Question: Imagine a self-contained, hypothetical world with only the following conditions, and withoutanyunmentionedfactorsorcausalrelationships: NuvhasadirecteffectonSplee,Blenand Druk,notDrukhasadirecteffectonPlog,PloghasadirecteffectonSkrim,SkrimorDrukhasa directeffectonZimb,ZimbhasadirecteffectonYurd,andYurdhasadirecteffectonWrox. We knowthatNuvcausesSplee,BlenandDruk,notDrukcausesPlog,PlogcausesSkrim,SkrimorDruk causesZimb,ZimbcausesYurd,andYurdcausesWrox. WouldWroxoccurifnotNuvandnotSplee? Answer: Step1)Extractthecausalgraph: Identifythecausalgraphthatdepictstherelationshipsin thescenario. LetX=Nuv;V1=Splee;V2=Blen;V3=Druk;V4=Plog;V5=Skrim;V6=Zimb; V7=Yurd;Y=Wrox. Thecausalgraphis: X→V1,X→V2,X→V3,V3→V4,V4→V5,V5→V6,V3→V6,V6→V7,V7→Y. Step2)AbductionandActionforinformationcollection: Allgivenvalues: X=0(notNuv),V1=0 (notSplee). Relations: -V1: X -V2: X -V3: X -V4: NOTV3 -V5: V4 -V6: V5ORV3 -V7: V6 -Y:V7 Step3)Adoptthefollowingalgorithmtogettheresult: InfertheYbyinformationstepbystep.
- V1=X=0
- V2=X=0
- V3=X=0
- V4=NOTV3=1
- V5=V4=1
- V6=V5ORV3=1OR0=1
- V7=V6=1
- Y=V7=1 Step 4) Conclude the final answer: Since the result for Y (Wrox) is 1, the overall answer to the questionisyes. WroxwouldoccurifnotNuvandnotSplee. Figure12: CoInInstructionExample
Response GlentcausesRazz,RazzandGlenttogethercausePex,PexcausesZurn,ZurncausesMelf,andMelf andRazztogethercauseZlim. WouldZlimoccurifnotGlentinsteadofGlent? B:GlentcausesRazz,RazzandGlenttogethercausePex,PexcausesZurn,ZurncausesMelf,and MelfandRazztogethercauseZlim. WouldZlimoccurifnotGlentinsteadofGlent? C:GlentcausesRazz,RazzandGlenttogethercausePex,PexcausesZurn,ZurncausesMelf,and MelfandRazztogethercauseZlim. WouldZlimoccurifnotGlentinsteadofGlent? D:GlentcausesRazz,RazzandGlenttogethercausePex,PexcausesZurn,ZurncausesMelf,and MelfandRazztogethercauseZlim. WouldZlimoccurifnotGlentinsteadofGlent? E:GlentcausesRazz,RazzandGlenttogethercausePex,PexcausesZurn,ZurncausesMelf,and MelfandRazztogethercauseZlim. WouldZlimoccurifnotGlentinsteadofGlent? F:GlentcausesRazz,RazzandGlenttogethercausePex,PexcausesZurn,ZurncausesMelf,and MelfandRazztogethercauseZlim. WouldZlimoccurifnotGlentinsteadofGlent? G:GlentcausesRazz,RazzandGlenttogethercausePex,PexcausesZurn,ZurncausesMelf,and MelfandRazztogethercauseZlim. WouldZlimoccurifnotGlentinsteadofGlent? H:GlentcausesRazz,RazzandGlenttogethercausePex,PexcausesZurn,ZurncausesMelf,and MelfandRazztogethercauseZlim. WouldZlimoccurifnotGlentinsteadofGlent? I:GlentcausesRazz,RazzandGlenttogethercausePex,PexcausesZurn,ZurncausesMelf,and MelfandRazztogethercauseZlim. WouldZlimoccurifnotGlentinsteadofGlent? Figure13: ConclusionErrorExample Response Thecorrectansweris(0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, Figure14: TypeMismatch