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Moore’s Truths About Causation and Responsibility: A Reply to Alexander and Ferzan

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Abstract

In this response to the review of Moore, Causation and Responsibility, by Larry Alexander and Kimberly Ferzan, previously published in this journal, two issues are discussed. The first is whether causation, counterfactual dependence, moral blame, and culpability, are all scalar properties or relations, that is, matters of more-or-less rather than either-or. The second issue discussed is whether deontological moral obligation is best described as a prohibition against using another as a means, or rather, as a prohibition on an agent strongly causing a prohibited result that was not about to happen anyway while intending to do so.

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Notes

  1. Ferzander glancingly mentions a fourth scalarity that I endorse, that between close and non-close double preventions, the latter making for only a counterfactual but not a cause-based responsibility (Alexander and Ferzan 2012, 83 n. 5). This is a quite extensive topic. On it, compare Schaffer (2012), with Moore (2012b).

  2. I examine and reject this kind of scalarity of causation in Moore (1985, 1114–1118), reprinted in Moore (1997, 506–511).

  3. A long-noticed feature of “reasons for action” is the ambiguity of the idea, between objective (or justifying) reasons, on the one hand, and subjective (or explanatory) reasons, on the other (Moore 2000, 138–142). The idea of comparative causal strengths of normative reasons will make little sense to many, depending on their meta-ethical views, although naturalist-realists like myself can even make sense of this (Moore 1992, 2004). Yet this is not the controversy to engage us here, because Ferzander takes issue with there being differential causal strengths to explanatory reasons.

  4. In Alexander et al. (2009), ch. 2, Alexander and Ferzan do describe their own, non-standard culpability measure, one which does not respect the gradients described in the text.

  5. Notice that my proximate causation (not culpability) analysis—in terms of substantiality of causation by defendant’s action in comparison to the degree of causation by other factors—duplicates current intervening causation doctrine by having a causal independence requirement built into it. For other factors can compete with defendant’s act (in the degree of causal contribution) only if they are not themselves effects of the defendant’s act.

  6. Assuming that the intervening abnormal event is not so substantial in the degree of its causal contribution that it reduces defendant’s action to a mere de minimus cause.

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  1. University of Illinois, Champaign, IL, USA

    Michael S. Moore

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  1. Michael S. Moore
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Moore, M.S. Moore’s Truths About Causation and Responsibility: A Reply to Alexander and Ferzan. Criminal Law, Philosophy 6, 445–462 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-012-9153-1

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