Abstract
In this paper, we argue that, omissions are not events or actions, but rather fact-like entities, and that, insofar as only events and actions can be causes, omissions cannot be causes. Nevertheless, since omissions can, and often do, play a role in the explanations of events, their place in such explanations must be found; and an attempt to find such a place is made.
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Notes
But, it seems that Lewis does not regard this consequence as an objection to the idea of causation by omission.
This assumes that the causal relation is an objective relation, so the fact that I promised to water my neighbor’s plant, but Vladimir Putin did not, is not relevant to whether my omission or Putin’s omission was a cause of the plant’s death. In (McGrath 2005, pp. 125–148), Sarah McGrath seems to agree that, if causation is an objective relation, then, if my not watering the plant caused the plant’s death, then so did Putin’s not watering the plant and my plumber’s not watering the plant (p. 126). But, to avoid that counterintuitive result, she insists that theat there must be some difference between my not watering the plant and other’s not watering the plant, a difference that she suggests is “normative” (I promised, but Putin did not). That that is the difference is something I reject.
Achille Varzi also analogizes events that don’t occur and physical objects that don’t exist, in (Varzi 2006, p. 132).
In (McGrath 2005, p, 146, fn 2), McGrath says that “it does not even matter whether there are any omissions – provided that this does not present sentences like ‘Barry’s not watering the plant caused it death’ from being true”. But this cannot be right. If omissions can be causes, whether they are events or states of affairs or whatever, they must occur (or exist or whatever). If there is no chair in the room, then ‘The chair in this room is brown’ is just not true; and if there are no ghosts, and hence no such entity as the ghost’s shrieking, then ‘the ghost’s shrieking was loud’ and ‘the ghost’s shrieking scared me’ are just not true. If omissions cause anything, if they have effects, then there must be omissions.
The idea here is that, for example, there could be an event which is a object’s becoming red, but no event was Xantippe’s becoming a widow. Xantippe did change relationally when she became a widow. But she did not alter, since she could not have so changed had her husband not died; and so, there was no change that she underwent when she so changed. Every event is an alteration, a non-relational change, in some object. See (Lombard 2003, pp. 97–99).
Additionally, I hold that events (and actions) are abstract particulars, abstract in that more than one event can occur simultaneously in the same location, and particular in that no event can occur wholly in more than one location at the same time.
One reason for the claim that static conditions, states, dispositions, and the like are not to be included in the same metaphysical category as the alterations is that the usual, Davidsonian reason for thinking that there are events (and actions) – that the best semantic analysis of the propositions that sentences like ‘Jack fell down’ and ‘Jill buttered the toast at midnight’ express requires that there be events and actions – just doesn’t get going in the case of sentences about states and dispositions. See (Donald Davidson 1980a, pp. 105–122), and (Lombard 1986, pp. 2–9).
Well, I will get a bit involved with the issue later.
Actually, they seem to be definite descriptions: Mary’s stealing of the bicycle just is the one and only action that is a stealing of the bicycle by Mary.
See note 11, above.
While I think that such conditions are not efficient causes, perhaps they are more like Aristotelian material causes. I owe this point to Josh Wilburn.
Thomson appears to call “background conditions” what I have called “enabling conditions”, in (Thomson 2003, p. 85).
At least not generally. An enabler can also be a cause. My drying out of the wet match, for example, might also generate enough heat to oxidize the material on the head of the match.
See (Phil Dowe 2001, p. 218) for his discussion of what he calls ‘the intuition of difference’, which is explained, on my view, as the distinction between causing and enabling.
An event that causes another event causes any event identical with the latter; and an event that does not cause an event does not cause any event identical with it.
Thomson considers a similar case in (Thomson 2003, p. 86), in which what I think of as a failure to distinguish causes from enablers results in thinking that there are failures of transitivity in the causal relation. And she considers a way out of that difficulty that consists in allowing things that are not events (or actions), namely states of affairs, to be causes and effects.
It is for this reason that I think that the counterfactual analysis of event causation is, in the end, in serious trouble. It is true that, had I not struck the match, the match would not have lit, and it is true that had the match not been dry, the match would not have lit. That is, both the absence of a cause of the lighting and the absence of an enabling condition of the lighting will make it the case that the lighting will not occur. But the counterfactual analysis cannot distinguish these two kinds of case, unless it can say what it is to be an enabling condition in a way that is independent of the notion of a cause. And that, I am inclined to think, is not possible.
Moreover, Jones’s action could not cause Smith’s not slipping, since his not slipping was not an event, and effects are events.
The cases I have so far described are cases in which some event is a pure enabler or disenabler. There can be cases in which an enabler of an event also causes that event. Suppose I cast a spell that, not only causes your tea to be poisonous, but also causes you to want to drink the tea. Then, my casting of the spell enables your death, by giving the tea the capacity to cause your death, and also causes your death by being a remote cause of your drinking of the tea. (Disenablers can also be causes of certain effects; but such cases will be very complicated, and, for that reason, rare.)
Moreover, occurrences and performances, being particulars, have times of occurrence and performance. But when shall we say that my not watering my neighbor’s plant was performed? Since, in point of fact, I never have watered, am not now watering, and never will water my neighbor’s plant, shall we say that my omission, my not watering my neighbor’s plant, was performed at all times? This seems absurd. Similarly, since the vase never fell, when did the vase’s not falling occur? Always? If one thought that an omission is identical with the event or action, if any, that occurred or was performed when the omitted event or action was to have been performed, then one could identify the time of the omission with the time of the event that actually occurred or the action that was actually performed. But, this idea for specifying the time of an omission will be ruled out, if omissions are not identical with actually occurring events or actually performed actions. See below.
Read at the Central Division meetings of the American Philosophical Association, in February, 2018.
The fact that some writers on events attempt to refer to events and actions by means imperfect nominals, e.g., ‘Jones’s killing Smith’, rather than perfect nominals, like ‘Jones’s killing of Smith’, helps to explain why those same writers will give identity conditions for events and actions that seem more appropriate to facts. See, for example, (Kim 1976, esp. p. 167), where he argues for a fine-grained approach to the identity of actions, by arguing that Brutus’s stabbing Caesar isn’t identical with Brutus’s killing Caesar. But the true claim that Brutus’s stabbing Caesar isn’t identical with Brutus’s killing Caesar is a true claim about facts – the fact that Brutus stabbed Caesar is not the same fact as the fact that Brutus killed Caesar – and not a claim about the identity or distinctness of the actions, Brutus’s stabbing of Caesar and Brutus’s killing of Caesar. In this connection, it might be pointed out that one might propose a view of omissions as “fine-grained” events (see also (Silver 2018, pp. 33–48, esp. p.39)). But, Kim’s fined-grained events are really not events at all, but facts.
Causation, I hold, is an objective relation between events (and actions). And that is why it is the case that if c causes e, c causes e regardless of how c and e are described. The result of this is that some causal truths may be unhelpful in understanding why certain events occur. It is true that Smith’s drinking of something that smelled of almonds caused his death. Now that’s true, even though its truth might not explain why Smith died. But Smith’s drinking of something that smelled of almonds was, in fact, his drinking of something containing cyanide. And that does indeed help to explain why Smith died.
Of course, if my not watering my neighbor’s plant can figure in the explanation of the plant’s death (without being a cause of it), then so can anyone else’s not watering the plant. Indeed, when the plant’s death is explained (in part) by pointing out that I did not water the plant, it is assumed that no one else watered it either; for if someone, indeed anyone, had, then the plant would not have died. So, there is no particular need to point out, in addition, that Putin did not water the plant. To point that out is to suggest, falsely, that Putin’s not watering the plant was explanatorily salient or that he was supposed to.
See Beebee (2011), p. 31, where it is pointed out that the possibility of causation by absence is much easier to make out if the causal relation relates facts.
Not all of the events that interfere are unnatural; after all, it might rain.
And (7′), together with a plausible version of the counterfactual analysis of event causation, will get us to the result that Jones’s shooting was a cause of Smith’s death.
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Acknowledgements
We wish to express our sincere thanks to the faculty and graduate students of the Philosophy Department at Wayne State for allowing the ideas expressed in this paper to be tested, and for their helpful comments and suggestions.
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