Omission Causation does Not Exist
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Transcript of Omission Causation does Not Exist
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Udoka Omenukor
25308365
April 29th, 2010
Philosophy of Causation
Non-existent Events cannot be Causes
As a child, I was blamed for a persistent ant problem in our
house. It was my job to wash the dishes every night, and sometimes I
didnt want to do them. Predictably, the ants would arrive and my
mother would blame me. It is your fault we have this ant problem!
But why? Id ask and shed reply Because you failed to do the
dishes.
This scenario is referred to as omission causation. Omission
causation states that the failure of event C happening counts as a
cause for an event E happening. The case of causation is very tricky
because it makes sense some times but other times, it doesnt make
sense. For example, my failure to do the dishes causing an ant
problem makes sense. However, a random stranger in Austrias failure
to do my dishes causing an ant problem does not make sense. When it
comes to omission causation, one must either agree with it completely
or reject it completely. Either way, one will resign to a theory of
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causation that doesnt make complete sense at first glance.
INTRODUCTION
I propose that omission causation actually doesnt make sense at
all. One can be blamed for something happening due to their failure to
act, however, it doesnt make sense to say they are the cause. For
example, it makes sense to blame me for the ant problem in my house
because I did not wash the dishes. However, I am not the cause of the
ant problem. The cause of the ant problem is the smell of food residue
on the dirty dishes. I am no more the cause of the ant problem than
my next-door neighbor. The true causation for the ant problem was an
event that actually occurred. Causation can only involve positive
events.
Furthermore, negative events cannot be involved in causation
because negative events cannot produce anything. For example, my
lack of washing dishes doesnt produce the ants. Negative events can
only lead to other negative events. For example, a popular scenario is
the gardener scenario. The gardener fails to water the plants and the
plants die. Some people would say the gardener caused the plants to
die. However, when I analyze what it means for the plants to die, I
come to the conclusion that death is an absence of cell activity. This
means that the gardeners failure to act lead to another negative event
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(the act of dying). The event of not watering the plants is not
causation. Instead, it is just a chain of non-events. The plants dont get
water, so the plants dont get nutrients, so the cells dont move. It is
only a matter of language that we say the plant is dead. Dead is the
term we use for the negative event of non-moving cells. It is the same
thing as any other non-occurring scenario. For example, if I dont knock
down my cup, the cup does not break, there is no glass on the ground,
and no one cuts their toe. There is no causation involved, just a series
of non-events.
SCHAFFER Vs. DOWE
One of the first philosophers who bring up omission causation is
Schaffer who describes it using the terms negative causation. He
uses negative causation to support his theory that there does not need
to be physical connections between two things for one to be the cause
of the other. He gives good examples of situations that involve
negative causation. For example, the cause of someone getting scurvy
would be a lack of vitamin C. The cause of drowning would be a lack of
oxygen, which starves your cells. Schaffer says refuting this theory
would go against biological realities (like sicknesses), legal systems
and common sense. Dowe, who believes in physical connection and
processes in causation, refutes Schaffers theory. He claims that
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negative causation is just quasi-causation. A quasi-causation is like a
fake causation. The negative event (the thing that didnt happen) is
just a part of a causal process, according to Dowe. According to my
theory, this quasi-causation is also just a part of a process. The process
is not causal. It is just a chain of non-events (or negative events).
Schaffer says that denying his theory means one goes against other
ideas we use in our lives. However, legal processes dont have much to
do with defining causation. They deal with obligations and moral
responsibility, which is different than causation. I also think common
sense will not have trouble viewing negative events as a series of
things that simply did not happen.
BEEBEE
Beebee also denies omission causation. Causation via an
absence does not exist. She wants to stay true to the idea that
causation is a relation between positive events just as I want to show
that causation is only involves positive events. She explains why
common sense thinks omission causation is true. First, she says the
following definition is used for omission causation:
The non-occurrence of an event of type A caused event b if and only
if, had an A-type event occurred, b would not have occurred.
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However, this definition assumes that the non-event cause is a
necessary event for event b. She also claims that it does not work for
the gardener case. The gardener case is the case mentioned earlier
where the gardener fails to water the flowers and the flower die. This
definition works for the case if it is a local gardener, but the gardener
case in which we say Francisco in Germany fails to water the plants
causes them to die does not work under this definition.
The reason common sense doesnt think Francisco is a cause is
because there is an abnormality factor that comes to mind. Since
Francisco never waters the plants, it would be abnormal for him to
water the plants. Because the action of him watering the plants would
be abnormal, it makes common sense that his failure to water the
flowers is not a cause of death. Also, the gardener has a legal duty to
fulfill. So, on the first day of his job, it would be abnormal for him to
water the plants, but since it is his duty, he is expected to. She
concludes that common sense only associates causation with a
negative event when something about it sticks out. For example, if a
drug company did not know about harsh side-effects from their drug
and the side-effects were unforeseeable, no one would say they
caused people injury. However, if the drug company knew about the
side-effects, then people might say they are the cause for peoples
injuries. The fact that the drug company may or may not know about
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the side-effects is what sticks out and causes common sense to
associate causation with the negative event of the drug company not
putting warnings on the drug. The following is the logic common sense
uses:
(II) The absence of an A-type event caused b if and only if
(i) b counterfactually depends on the absence: had an A-type event
occurred, b would not have occurred; and
(ii) the absence of an A-type event is either abnormal or violates some
moral, legal, epistemic or other norm. (BeeBee, pg. 296)
This shows that common sense is not reliable because the
second condition is very subjective. What may be abnormal to one
person is not abnormal to another. Everyone has different views on
morality, legality, etc. One cannot rely on common sense to give a
truth statement about causation. In this case, she offers another
alternate definition of causation for common sense:
(III) The absence of an A-type event caused b if and only if:
(i) if an A-type event had occurred, b would not have occurred; and
(ii) an A-type event occurs at a world that is reasonably close to the
actual world. (BeeBee, pg. 298)
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This means that since the world where Francisco is watering the
flowers is so distant it does not count as a cause. However, Beebee
explains this wouldnt work for common sense, either. Firstly, deciding
how close one world is to another is another subjective task. Theres no
objective way to decide which worlds are close enough and which
worlds are too far away. On top of that, what is too distant of a world
for one scenario may be close enough for another scenario. This is too
inconsistent and arbitrary. Secondly, if the world were to be one in
which the gardener is consistently late and irresponsible, common
sense would still blame him for the plants deaths. No matter how
frequently someone is negligent, their negligence would still be seen
as a cause. Beebee concludes that there is no objective way to
differentiate between negative events that are causes and negative
events that are not causes, even though common sense thinks there
is.
Common sense factors in things such as morality when it decides
what is a cause and what is not a cause. Sometimes, something that
common sense thinks is a cause is actually an explanation of the
cause. It fails to differentiate between causation and causal
explanation. Saying that the plants died because the gardener forgot
to water them explains the plants causal history. Because is a term
used to help describe causal history. This means you could also say
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The plants died because Francisco did not water them since we are
not claiming causation, but describing what happened.
Beebees explanation for why omission causation may be
thought of as a real type of causation is because of common sense.
Shown above to be a faulty guide for assigning causation, there is no
reason to view omission causation as valid. For Beebee, common sense
seems to be the day to day thoughts and language people use in their
lives. Common sense is good for describing a causal process, but not
necessarily for deciding what the true cause is.
SARAH MCGRATH
McGrath is a proponent of omission causation. She believes that
common sense is right and disagrees with the idea that affirming to
omission causation means that you accept every negative event to be
a cause. She thinks she helps solve this dilemma with the idea of
normality.
o causes e iff o occurs, e occurs, and either Co is a normal would-be
pre-
venter of e, or there is some event e* such that e* causes e, and Co is
a
normal would-be preventer of e*. (McGrath, p. 142)
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This means an omission, o, causes an event e if and only if the
non-omission (the actual action) normally prevents es occurrence. Or
if there is another event that causes e and the non-omission normally
prevents that other event. For example, if Francisco, who normally
waters the plant, doesnt water the plants and the plants die, a bug
that eats the plant will also die. McGrath would say Francisco caused
the bug to die, even though Francisco does not normally do anything
for the bug, particularly. In this case, the dead plant would be event e*
that causes event e, the bug dying. Watering the plant would be Co
and not watering the plant would be o.
McGrath states that a normality must be established before we
decide if an omission is a cause or not. This is very arbitrary a
problem that Beebee has spoken out against. Deciding when
something is normal or how to determine when something is normal is
too arbitrary to consider it for causation.
CONCLUSION
Omission causation does not actually agree with common sense.
Bee bees analysis shows that common sense is mistaken and I believe
that when one looks at causation objectively, without bias of morality,
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normality and other obligations, ones common sense will no longer
agree with omission causation.
Only positive events can cause an event. When an omission
occurs (a negative event), it cannot produce a positive event. Since the
negative event is an action that is not occurring in the world, it cannot
create or cause anything to happen. When McGrath says that
Franciscos failure to water the plant causes the plant to die, she is not
actually making a statement of causation. She is talking about one
negative event that leads to another negative event that we
linguistically refer to as death. When Schaffer says scurvy is caused by
a lack of vitamin C, he means that the negative event of a lack of
vitamin c leads to the negative event of cells not producing collagen. In
all examples of omission causation, the omission brings about only
another negative event. Beebee and Dowe would say that Schaffer
and McGrath are just describing a process. I propose, also, that the
process is not necessarily causal, but in the very least a sequence of
non-events.