Causal Evidence for Moral Assessment

1. Causal Evidence for Moral Assessment Horia Tarnovanu (University of St. Andrews) Paper prepared for the Evidence and Causality in the Sciences conference, University of Kent, 5-7 September 2012

2. Argument P1. Moral responsibility attributions rest on causal claims. P2. Causal claims are context sensitive. C. Moral responsibility ascriptions inherit the context sensitivity of causal discourse.

3. Premise 1: Responsibility claims rest on causal claims SV If an agent A is morally responsible for an outcome O, A must have performed an action that caused/was the cause/causally explains O. Objection 1: Responsibility ascriptions depend on agency-related conditions. Objection 2: Responsibility for omissions is not based on causation. Objection 3: There are cases in which agents can be responsible without (directly) causing an outcome. Objection 4: Sometimes moral responsibility explains causal responsibility according to the principle ‘If x is at fault for y, the x caused y’ (Thompson 2003).

4. Premise 2: Causal claims are context sensitive Sensitivity to the context of occurrence Context sensitivity associated with the selection of causes from background conditions. Sensitivity to the context of inquiry Context sensitivity associated with who asks the question and why (sensitivity to the interests governing causal inquiry). Other instances of context sensitivity Cases involving deviant causal chains, preemptive preventions, cases displaying alternatives and contrasts, description shifts and focus shifts, or other circumstances (Menzies 2007, Schaffer forthcoming). Sourcesof context sensitivity, semantics vs pragmatics Mixed view: context sensitivity of causal claims is partly semantic, partly pragmatic: • context dependence is both related to the meaning of causal claims and reflects the interests and expectations specific to the conversational point. • context dependence is sometimes semantic, sometimes pragmatic, depending on what instance of context dependence one is focused upon

5. Example In Sydney some time ago a motor cyclist was exceeding the speed limit; a traffic policeman, also on a motor cycle, chased him, and soon they were both traveling, according to the reports, at 70 m.p.h. Then an unobservant citizen stepped off a bus into the policeman's path; in the crash that resulted the other man was killed at once; the policeman died next day. There was some disagreement as to who was responsible for this accident. The police announced that when they caught the original speedster they would charge him with causing the two deaths. The general public was inclined at first to hold the policeman responsible for the other man's death, but tended to change its mind a little when he died himself. So far as I know, no one said that the man who stepped off the bus was to blame for his own death and the policeman's, but this is a view that could conceivably be held. In addition to these three simple answers to the question "Who was responsible ?" there are several less obvious or more complex ones--for example, that no one was responsible, that some unmentioned person or persons were responsible, that the responsibility was shared, or that perhaps even apart from such sharing someone was not fully but only partly responsible, and so on. (Mackie 1955, p 143).

6. OPTIONS: (1) Treat responsibility as not inheriting context sensitivity from causation because claims of responsibility are evaluated by quantifying over contexts. (2) Treat responsibility as not inheriting context sensitivity from causation by treating attributions of responsibility as fixing a certain type of context. (3) Treat responsibility as inheriting context sensitivity from causation. These views might work as follows: (i) “Agent A is responsible for outcome O” iff “An action of A's caused O” is true in some/a few/most/all contexts. (ii) “Agent A is responsible for outcome O” iff “An action of A's caused O” is true in the specified context C* (iii) “Agent A is responsible for outcome O” is true in context C iff “An action of A's caused O” is true in context C.

7. Evaluating the options Option 3: MR claims vary. Moral theory lacks context-fixing resources. It is then plausible to hold that moral responsibility claims inherit the context sensitivity of causal claims -- which in turn motivates a version of moral contextualism. Stabilizing causal thinking in the moral domain 1) Use legal devices? This works if law is ‘just as likely to influence causal thinking in the moral domain as to be influenced by it’ (Cane 2002, p. 141), i.e. if law and morality are symbiotic normative systems (Raz 1982, Hart 1961, Robinson and Darley 1997, Cane 2002). But not always. 2) Move to obvious relevant contexts? Avoids radical skepticism – but not all indecision.

8. Conclusions • 1. SV If an agent A is morally responsible for an outcome O, A must have performed an act (action, omission) that caused/was the cause/causally explained O. • 2. It is plausible to claim that the acceptability of moral responsibility claims inherits the context sensitivity of causal claims – a version of moral contextualism regarding responsibility ascriptions. • 3. Legal principles defining causation in tort or criminal law could be used to stabilize causal thinking in moral contexts and help moral theory to elaborate a robust analysis of moral responsibility; however, this solution has limitations (and other solutions work only in certain cases). • 4. Corollary: in a rather peculiar way, the notable naturalist virtue of the standard view – that moral responsibility is tied to a natural relation between events in the world – proves to be one of its important drawbacks. As long as responsibility ascriptions are based on the assessment of causal sequences relating agents, actions and consequences, the context sensitivity of causal claims will bear on moral evaluation.

9. Thank you.

10. EXAMPLE: [S]uppose that a teen-age boy, after enduring years of various hardships and horrors, kills one of his two abusive parents. Let’s say it is the father. Is the boy morally responsible for the father’s death? Typically, the events leading up to this sort of thing will be varied and complex. They will include, among many other things, abuse by the parents, willful ignorance by family and friends, failures by the school and social service systems, some more immediate precipitating event, and finally decisions and actions by the boy within this broader context. Now consider: according to a plausible account of moral responsibility, the boy is morally responsible for his father’s death only if he is causally responsible for his father’s death. (…) [T]he explanatory salience that a causal contributor has depends (in part) on the interests and purposes operative in the context of explanation. Citing only a few (…): those operative for the police at the scene of the crime; those operative for the judge during the trial; those operative for the judge during sentencing; those operative in the evaluation of the social service agencies involved; those operative for the social workers and psychologists charged with devising a treatment plan for the boy; those operative for the boy’s priest during the boy’s confession; etc. (Greco 2008, pp. 435-36).