Simultaneous progress on the linguistic and metaphysical fronts is to be expected if our concept of causality is structurally linked to selection markers. Just as the understanding of an object or relationship would be limited if it were limited to its broad definition but isolated from its nuanced contextual instances, our understanding of causality would be incomplete without an analysis of its contextual sensitivities. But while a broader explanatory framework might allow for more nuanced judgments of responsibility, vagueness in extended causal architectures could also obscure the source of results or allow for the insertion of misleading rationalizations. Footnote 16 Hilton, D. J., McClure, J., and Sutton, R. M. (2010). Selecting explanations from causal chains: Do statistical principles explain preferences for voluntary causes? Euro. J. Soc. Psychol.
40, 383–400. Analyses of responsibility for results usually revolve around causal considerations. As Hart and Honoré (1985:66) noted, “in law and morality, the various forms of causal link between action or omission and harm are the most obvious and least controversial reasons for holding someone accountable.” But the assumption that a limited structure of causal facts provides some answers to what causes what is unjustified. Ditto for the hypothesis that points of view that weave contextual or pragmatic elements in causal relationships manage to remain purely elastic. In the moral evaluation of outcomes, the fundamental principles of causal stability cannot be ignored, circumvented, or inferred by quantifying causal quantities or importing context-fixing strategies. In complex moral cases, no clear and predictable restriction on precise causality can be established or implemented without risk. I have argued that such a situation fosters a new type of skepticism about naturalistic reasons and the justified nature of judgments about responsibility for results. At the same time, it encourages us to perform a thorough analysis of the causal fields and to think with an open mind when it comes to countering objections to indeterminacy. However, it doesn`t take long for the traditional account to encounter problems that it doesn`t seem to solve. Especially in cases of overdetermination and preemption, aimless design denies actions that are intuitively causal.22×22.
See Moore, note 4 above, at 410 (“For example, if each of the two fires is sufficient for the destruction of a house, it follows that no fire is independently necessary for the destruction of the house. Zur üblichen kontrafaktischen Kausalitätstheorie. This means that neither of the two fires caused the destruction of the house! »). Starting with cases of overdetermination – in which the actions of several aggrieved persons independently of each other are enough to injure a victim 23×23. See Hart & Honoré, note 4 above, p. 123. We could imagine Jay driving negligently in Myrtle just as he is driving negligently to Myrtle, another driver, Daisy, is also negligent in Myrtle. If Myrtle`s injury (e.g., a broken leg) is one that one of the drivers alone would have caused without the other, then after the goal-for-test, it appears that none of the drivers actually caused Myrtle`s injury (since Daisy Myrtle`s leg would still have broken without Jay`s driving and vice versa). Even more annoying are pre-emptive cases in which the infliction of an injury by one perpetrator by an author prevents another actor from inflicting the same injury.24×24. See Moore, loc.
cit., note 4, 412; Ned Hall & L.A. Paul, Causation and Pre-emption, in Philosophy of Science Today 100, 107–14 (Peter Clark & Katherine Hawley eds., 2003). For example, we could imagine Daisy slowing down after seeing Jay enter the intersection where Jay hurts Myrtle. If Daisy had entered the intersection in Jay`s absence and instead inflicted the same injury, then Jay`s negligence is not a reason for Myrtle`s injury (again, because Daisy would still have hurt Myrtle without Jay`s negligence).25×25. See Moore, loc. cit., note 4, 412. In addition to these three factors (and in memory of the caveat, the third point raised earlier to distinguish legal statements from statements about the law), there are theories about what causality means or should mean in the law. Such theories were proposed by legal theorists when they made proposals on the law. Such theories, despite their inconclusive source, have played an important role in the history of reflection on the nature of causality in law. Some of these theories, to the extent that their content accurately reflects the statements of the law, have even become part of the law of which they are theories (Raz 2012).
It is believed that the causal responsibility of an agent for the effects of his or her actions plays an important role in attributing the officer`s legal, moral, and even criminal responsibility (Hart and Honoré, 1959; Tadros, 2005; Moore, 2009; Lagnado and Gerstenberg, 2017; Usher, 2018). In fact, causal liability is a necessary condition for the attribution of legal liability (Hart and Honoré, 1959; Tadros, 2005). Research in moral psychology has identified general cognitive processes such as causal and intentional attributions to explain patterns of responsibility judgments in the moral and non-moral domains (Cushman and Young, 2011; see also Spranca et al., 1991; Royzman and Baron, 2002; Mikahil, 2007; Waldmann and Dieterich, 2007; Lagnado and Channon, 2008; Baron and Ritow, 2009; Greene et al., 2009). For example, Cushman and Young (2011) show that differences between action and omission and means and side effects in moral judgments are mediated by their effects on non-moral representations of causal and deliberate attributions.1 Similarly, Mikahil (2007) takes into account the distinction between means and side effects versus action plans that specify generic rather than morally specific reasoning (see also Kleiman-Weiner). et al., 2015). In addition, reduced judgments about the liability that people usually make for officers who have been forced to act or manipulated by others (Sripada, 2012; Phillips and Shaw, 2015) are best explained by manipulation that “bypasses” the agent`s mental states (Murray and Lombrozo, 2017). To explain these findings, Murray and Lombrozo (2017) relied on the notion of counterfactual robustness, which is at the heart of our investigation and which we will discuss below. Samland, J., and Waldmann, M. R. (2016).
How prescriptive norms influence causal conclusions. Cognition 156, 164–176. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2016.07.007 Cheng, P. W. (1997). From covariation to causality: a causal theory of power. Psychol. Rev 104:367 doi: 10.1037/0033-295x.104.2.367 More importantly, we find that even in a state where causal contingency favors non-robust action, causal liability judgments show a robustness effect: higher scores for robust stocks. This is strong evidence that robust actions give an agent more responsibility, even if the actual state of the environment is such that the actual probability of success is lower. We argued that the difference between the opposite effects of robustness on causal responsibility and causal force (Figure 6) is due to the fact that participants consider the agent`s epistemic state when assigning responsibility. We believe that, taken together, our studies and those of Vasilyeva et al.
(2018) convincing and complementary evidence of the importance of robustness in confirming causal responsibilities between events and causal explanation, as well as in assessing the causal responsibility of an agent for the outcome of its action. The application of the intrinsicity thesis becomes a little trickier when we move on to preemption, as we have already seen that stories of sufficiency like Wright`s NESS test seem correct to count Jay as the actual cause of Myrtle`s injury, while Daisy is also wrongly counted as such.68×68. See the text attached to footnotes 53 to 58 above. Therefore, if we build an S structure where E is Myrtle`s injury and t is the time before Daisy slows down, it seems that we need to add both Jay`s driving and Daisy`s driving to S (because, as discussed above, each is needed for a number of sufficient conditions for Myrtle`s injury). Hall proposes a new strategy here: instead of defining causes as necessary members of a sufficient whole, the sufficiency theorist can define causes as necessary members of a clearly sufficient whole.69×69. Hall, loc. cit. 18, p.
276; see also Paul & Hall, loc. cit. 43, pp. 129-30. Moreover, the sufficiency theorist may clarify that this definition gives only one sufficient condition for causality, and not a necessary condition, so that it correctly identifies the causes in cases of garden varieties while “remaining silent”70×70. Hall, loc. cit. 18, p. 277. in cases of pre-emption and overdetermination (since these cases contain several penalties sufficient for a given result).71×71. Paul & Hall, note 43 above, at 129-30.
“Silence” here simply means that the sufficient conditions of the revised definition are not met (because these conditions include the necessary membership of a clearly sufficient quantity and cases of overdetermination and pre-emption involve several sufficient quantities). Once causal structures are correctly identified in garden variety cases, the sufficiency theorist can invoke intrinsicity to give causal status to relationships within more complex causal structures, provided that these relationships correspond to the intrinsic structure of the garden variety cases above.72×72.