Speaker

Dr. Lily Hu
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Yale University

Dr. Lily Hu is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. She received two doctorates from Harvard in 2022 – one from the department of philosophy for a dissertation entitled “Causation in the Social World” and another one from the department of applied math for a dissertation entitled “Dynamics of Algorithmic Fairness.” She has published quite widely on both of these topics and especially her earlier work on algorithmic fairness has been well cited. Her more recent work addresses causal theorizing about the social world, with a particular focus on causal inference methodologies in the social sciences, how these various statistical frameworks treat and measure the “causal effect” of social categories such as race, and ultimately, how such methods are used support normative claims about racial discrimination and inequalities broadly.

Title

Equality, Identity, and Causality

Abstract

In this talk, I argue that whether something constitutes disparate treatment on the basis of race or sex (or other socially salient group classifications) cannot be spelled out purely causally. This is because whether something constitutes similar treatment or different treatment on the basis of race (or sex, etc.) is a non-trivial normative matter that is not made easier by our causal scalpels. It depends, rather, on how one characterizes the treatment or the principle that some treatment embodies. One must, first, characterize what the relevant kinds of similarity and difference are in order to determine whether two individuals who are differently racialized (or differently sexed, etc.) are indeed treated similarly or differently. That this step of defining the relevant notions of similarity and difference is an irreducibly normative one is a truism, but its implications have not been fully appreciated by contributors to causal inference work on fairness and discrimination.