Abstract
Philosophers have already recognized the importance of causal preemption involving “positive” events. First, preemption with positive events raises problems for counterfactual theories of causation. Second, theories of moral and legal responsibility rely heavily on the concept of causation, so accurately assessing responsibility in preemption cases requires correctly assessing their causal structure. However, philosophers have not discussed preemption involving “negative” events or omissions. This paper argues that cases of preemptive omissions exist and have important implications for theories of causation and for moral and legal responsibility. Of theoretical importance, the alterations made to counterfactual theories of causation to address preemption with positive events do not seem to work for accommodating preemptive omissions. Of practical importance, there have been actual legal cases involving preemptive omissions, and at least one such case was, this paper contends, decided incorrectly on erroneous causal grounds. This paper identifies what must happen for preemptive omissions to obtain. It then argues for the existence of preemptive omissions by constructing a series of cases and drawing structural parallels between preemption cases with positive events and cases with omissions. It ultimately presents a formula for generating preemptive omissions and examines both why “traditional” methods of generating preemption fail for omissions and why the proposed method avoids such concerns.
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Notes
See Nagel (1979) for further discussion of resultant luck.
See Hart and Honoré (1985) for an extensive discussion of liability and causation.
For instance, actual-sequence accounts of responsibility hold that responsibility requires that our behaviors have a certain kind of causal history (see, e.g., Frankfurt, 1969; Fischer & Ravizza, 1998; Mele, 2006; Fischer, 2012; McKenna, 2013; Pereboom, 2014; Sartorio, 2016). See also debates about whether responsibility requires that agents not have certain manipulated causal histories, such as, e.g., McKenna (2012) and Mele (2019). Alternative-possibilities accounts of responsibility, another other popular set of views, hold that responsibility requires possessing the ability to actualize one of multiple possible paths that are open to an agent (see, e.g., Lewis, 1981; van Inwagen, 1983; Ginet, 1990; Kane, 1996; Vihvelin, 2013). And, abilities are often cashed out causally (see, e.g., Vihvelin, 2013). For further recent discussions of the connection between causation and responsibility, see, e.g., Bernstein (2017), Kaiserman (2018) and Sartorio (2020).
McDermott (1995), Collins (2000) and Dowe (2000) discuss cases in which one positive event preempts another in causing (for Dowe, quasi-causing) an omission, which is different from a case in which one omission preempts another omission in causing something else. McGrath (2005) gives a case of someone failing to turn on sprinklers that would have later malfunctioned anyway, all of which kills a plant, but she notes that it is not clear that this involves preemption. In the literature on legal responsibility, cases involving multiple omissive causes have been discussed, but no one, as far as I can tell, has argued for cases of preemptive omissive causes. Fischer (1992) discusses Saunders Birmingham Co. v. Adams but does not argue it involves preemption, instead analyzing the difficulties it raises for legal responsibility. I will argue that this case is best understood as an instance of preemptive omissions. Wright (2007) argues that the Saunders case involves preemption, but that the omission to press the brakes preempts the omission to fix them. I reject Wright’s analysis because, as we will see, it gets the temporal priority backwards.
Potential complications arise with ontologically identifying omissions with events (see, e.g., Clarke, 2012; Bernstein, 2015b), but I am merely using “events” here as a placeholder for whatever fulfills the causal relata in cases of causation involving omissions, whether that is events, states of affairs, negative facts, or something else.
Appealing to causal processes to identify instances of causation does not commit one to a process-based account of causation for the same reason that using counterfactual dependence does not commit one to a counterfactual view. Instead, features like processes—or counterfactual dependence—might simply be useful guides for figuring out what causes what.
For discussion of why omissions cannot be parts of continuous causal processes, see, e.g., Hall (2002). Furthermore, even if omissions could be parts of continuous causal processes, the preempting omission would be the one that has its process run to completion, and this still accords with my analysis in the next section that the preempting omission is the one that guarantees the effect first. Thanks to an anonymous referee for this point.
The rock-throwing case and the assassination cases are instances of late preemption, in which one causal process is cut off just before it finishes. Late preemption differs from early preemption in that, in cases of early preemption, the cutting off of one causal process by the other occurs earlier in the process and not right before it finishes. For further discussion of the variants of preemption, see, e.g., Paul and Hall (2013). Some, such as Schaffer (2000b), have argued for the existence of trumping preemption: a sergeant and a major both shout “march” to a group of privates, and the major’s order trumps the sergeant’s in causing the troops to move. However, trumping has proved controversial to classify—Halpern and Pearl (2005), Hitchcock (2011) and Paul and Hall (2013) argue trumping is best understood as overdetermination, and Bernstein (2015a) argues it is best understood as overdetermination or early preemption, not as a new kind of preemption. I agree with those authors that trumping involves overdetermination.
For further discussion of this problem, see Clarke (2014). Some, like Bernstein (2014), argue that omissions are multiply realizable, meaning there would be countlessly many 30-min blocks of time when the omission occurred. Others, like Payton (2018), hold that omissions can be more easily identified in time, so the omission to run could be, say, spread out throughout that week.
No cause is sufficient for its effect without holding fixed some background conditions, and as Mackie (1965) and others have noted, it is challenging to identify metaphysical differences between some causes and background conditions. However, this is a challenge for causation in general, not for preemptive omissions in particular, so I won’t try to solve it here.
Perhaps another mechanic could have intervened and fixed the brakes later in the day (but before the crash)—might he count as the preempting cause instead? Again, as Mackie (1965) and others have noted, it might be a matter of context what distinguishes causes from background conditions we can hold fixed. If the second mechanic is contextually relevant, his omission to fix the brakes (rather than the first mechanic’s omission to do so) might count as the preempting cause of the accident, but we would still have a case of one omission preempting another—the second mechanic’s omission to fix the brakes preempts Carly’s omission to press them.
See, e.g., Dowe (1992).
Since Lewis’ (2000) account also admits of degrees of causation, he could alternatively say that Billy is more of a cause than Suzy in shattering the window because alterations to the shattering covary much more with alterations to Billy’s throw than with alterations to Suzy’s throw. I remain neutral here about whether causation admits of degrees.
It might seem unfair to use omissions to raise problems for Lewis’ (2000) account since he initially sets up his causation as influence view by defining cause C and effect E as actual events. However, he later notes (Lewis, 2000, Section 10) that absences can be causes even though absences are not events, and he elsewhere made it clear (see, e.g., Lewis, 1986b, 2004), that he wanted his account to be able to handle causation involving omissions.
In this paper, I have focused on cases where both the preempting omission and the preempted omission are contextually, morally, and/or legally relevant. Given the profligacy of omissions and omissive causation (or quasi-causation), there also will be many cases of preemptive omissions that are irrelevant or uninteresting. Note though, that there also are many cases of irrelevant or uninteresting preemptive actions (and other kinds of causation). Since there are preemptive omissions, there still are more morally, legally, and/or contextually relevant preemption cases than if there only were preemptive actions.
There are further nuances of legal responsibility in cases of overdetermination. For instance, if two agents start fires that were each independently sufficient to burn down a house and each in fact contributes to it burning down, each agent might only be legally liable for half of the damages. Nonetheless, the overdetermined agents are still legally responsible, even if there are potential complications about their respective degrees of responsibility and resulting liability. For further discussion of legal responsibility in overdetermination cases (including the twin-fire case), see, e.g., Fischer (1992).
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Carolina Sartorio, Michael McKenna, Terence Horgan, Jason Turner, Kay Chronister, and two anonymous referees for their valuable feedback on this paper.
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Metz, J. Preemptive Omissions. Erkenn 89, 1117–1138 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-022-00572-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-022-00572-4