Online research in philosophy

If we seek to analyse causation in terms of counterfactual conditionals then we must assume that there is a class of counterfactuals whose members (i) are all and only those we need to support our judgements of causation, (ii) have truth-conditions specifiable without any irreducible appeal to causation. I argue that (i) and (ii) are unlikely to be met by any counterfactual analysis of causation. I demonstrate this by isolating a class of counterfactuals called non-projective counterfactuals, or NP-counterfactuals, and indicate how counterfactual analyses of causation must appeal to them to account for the correct causal judgements we make. I show that the truth-conditions of NP-counterfactuals are specifiable only by irreducible appeal to causation. A dilemma then holds: if counterfactual analyses of causation eschew appeal to NP-counterfactuals they are empirically inadequate, but if they appeal to NP-counterfactuals they are circular and thus conceptually inadequate.

Growth of spring barley stands was followed in various conditions. Disposition of the seeds parameters the morphogenetic programme of each individual plant, which will afterwards form the stricture of the young plant stand. Later, individual stopping of tillering is controlled by this stricture. In return, the distribution of these events conditions the structure of the canopy during the shoot lengthening period. In sparse or patchy canopies, weak tillers in stopping of growth are able to survive temporarily.The plant is not reducible to the genotype of its variety. Individual whole plant and plant stand are true organization levels in an ecosystem. It is essential to take their relationships into account throughout the growth for understanding the behaviour of a crop.

In this paper I discuss a recent exchange of articles between Hugh McLachlan and John Coggon on the relationship between omissions, causation, and moral responsibility. My aim is to contribute to their debate by isolating a presupposition I believe they both share and by questioning that presupposition. The presupposition is that, at any given moment, there are countless things that I am omitting to do. This leads both McLachlan and Coggon to give a distorted account of the relationship between causation and moral or (as the case may be) legal responsibility and, in the case of Coggon, to claim that the law’s conception of causation is a fiction based on policy. Once it is seen that this presupposition is faulty, we can attain a more accurate view of the logical relationship between causation and moral responsibility in the case of omissions. This is important because it will enable us, in turn, to understand why the law continues to regard omissions as different, both logically and morally, from acts, and why the law seeks to track that logical and moral difference in the legal distinction it draws between withholding life-sustaining measures and euthanasia.

The starting point in the development of probabilistic analyses of token causation has usually been the naïve intuition that, in some relevant sense, a cause raises the probability of its effect. But there are well-known examples both of non-probability-raising causation and of probability-raising non-causation. Sophisticated extant probabilistic analyses treat many such cases correctly, but only at the cost of excluding the possibilities of direct non-probability-raising causation, failures of causal transitivity, action-at-a-distance, prevention, and causation by absence and omission. I show that an examination of the structure of these problem cases suggests a different treatment, one which avoids the costs of extant probabilistic analyses.

The act/omission distinction is likely to lead to biases and be used as a moral heuristic. However, it is frequently difficult to determine whether this act/omission distinction is responsible for a judgment outside the lab. Further, more encompassing theories of omission bias are needed to make progress in dealing with its harmful consequences. One such theory is briefly presented.

Previously, I have argued that moral responsibility for actions is associated with guidance control. This sort of control does not necessarily involve the freedom to do otherwise. In this paper I extend the view to apply to omissions. That is, moral responsibility for an omission is associated with guidance control of that omission. This helps to provide a systematic, unified account of moral responsibility.

In 1992, as part of a larger charitable campaign, the Prince of Wales (Prince Charles, Queen Elizabeth’s older son and heir) launched a line of organic food products called “Prince’s Duchy Originals”.1 The first product that went on sale was an oat cookie: “the oaten biscuit.” Since then the oaten biscuit has been joined by hundreds of other products and Duchy Originals has become one of the leading organic food brands in the UK. Presumably, the Prince of Wales is very proud of his Duchy Originals products, and of the oaten biscuits in particular. Let’s imagine that he is so proud of the oaten biscuits that he eats them regularly. Also, let’s imagine that one day Queen Elizabeth asks the Prince to water the plant in her room. As she explains to him, she’ll be gone for the day and the plant needs to be watered every afternoon. But the Prince decides not to water the plant. Instead of watering the plant, he spends his afternoon savoring some oaten biscuits, and the Queen’s plant dies.

In this paper, the ontological, terminological, epistemological, and ethical aspects of omission are considered in a coherent and balanced framework, based on the idea that there are omissions which are actions and omissions which are non-actions. In particular, we suggest that the approach to causation which best deals with omission is Mackie's INUS conditional proposal. We argue that omissions are determined partly by the ontological conditional structure of reality, and partly by the interests, beliefs, and values of observers. The final upshot is that moral judgments involved in cases of omissions cannot be grounded on, but are the ground for judgments about what INUS conditions count as omissions.