Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-kw2vx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-26T22:02:40.986Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

DISCONNECTION AND RESPONSIBILITY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 August 2012

Jonathan Schaffer
Jonathan Schaffer*
Affiliation:
Australian National [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In Causation and Responsibility, Michael Moore offers an integrated conception of the law, morality, and metaphysics, centered on the notion of causation. I contest Moore's claim that causation cannot relate absences and show how accepting absence causation would improve Moore's view. For denying absence causation drives Moore to a disjunctive account of legal and moral responsibility in order to handle cases such as negligence. It forces him into denying that beheading someone can cause them to die, since the route from beheading to death involves the absence of blood flow to the brain. And it leads him into allowing that responsibility can arise from mere correlation with a crime, given that counterfactual dependence can still hold between correlates.

Type
Research Article
Information
Legal Theory , Volume 18 , Special Issue 4: MICHAEL MOORE'S CAUSATION AND RESPONSIBILITY , December 2012 , pp. 399 - 435
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Beebee, Helen. (2004) “Causing and Nothingness.” In Collins, J., Hall, N., and Paul, L.A., eds., Causation and Counterfactuals, 291–308 (MIT Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bennett, Jonathan. (1988) Events and Their Names (Hackett).Google Scholar
Cáceres, Soledad, Cuellar, Claudia, Carlos Casar, Juan, et al. (2000) “Synthesis of Proteoglycans Is Augmented in Dystrophic Mdx Mouse Skeletal Muscle.” European Journal of Cell Biology 79: 173–181.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2010) Be One in a Million This American Heart Month. Available at http://www.cdc.gov/features/heartmonth/.Google Scholar
Collingwood, R.G. (1940) An Essay in Metaphysics (Clarendon Press).Google Scholar
Dowe, Phil. (2000)Physical Causation (Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dowe, Phil. (2001) “A Counterfactual Theory of Prevention and ‘Causation’ by Omission.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 79: 216–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fair, David. (1979) “Causation and the Flow of Energy.” Erkenntnis 14: 219–250.Google Scholar
Hall, Ned. (2004) “Two Concepts of Causation.” In Collins, J., Hall, N., and Paul, L.A., eds.,Causation and Counterfactuals, 225–276 (MIT Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hart, H.L.A., and Tony, Honoré. (1985) Causation in the Law, 2d ed. (Clarendon Press).Google Scholar
Lewis, David. (1973) “Causation.” Journal of Philosophy 70: 556–567.Google Scholar
Lewis, David. (2004) “Void and Object.” In Collins, J., Hall, N., and Paul, L.A., eds.,Causation and Counterfactuals, 277–290 (MIT Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mason, Andrew. (2000) Introduction to Solid State Physics. Available at http://www.engr.uky.edu/~ee562/562HO1-physics.pdf.Google Scholar
Mellor, D.H. (1995) The Facts of Causation (Routledge).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Menzies, Peter, and Price, Huw. (1993) “Causation as a Secondary Quality.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44: 187–203.Google Scholar
Moore, Michael. (1997) Placing Blame: A General Theory of the Criminal Law (Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Moore, Michael. (2004) Objectivity in Ethics and Law (Ashgate).Google Scholar
Moore, Michael. (2009) Causation and Responsibility (Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, Michael. (2010) “Renewed Questions about the Causal Theory of Action.” In Agular, J.H. and Buckareff, A.A., eds. Causing Human Action: New Perspectives on the Causal Theory of Action (MIT Press).Google Scholar
Pundik, Amit. (2007) “Can One Deny both Causation by Omission and Causal Pluralism? The Case of Legal Causation.” In Russo, Federica and Williamson, Jon, eds. Causality and Probability in the Sciences (College Publications).Google Scholar
Russell, Bertrand. (1992) “On the Notion of Cause.” In Slater, J., ed., The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell vol. 6: Logical and Philosophical Papers 1909–1913, 193–210 (Routledge).Google Scholar
Schaffer, Jonathan. (2000) “Causation by Disconnection.” Philosophy of Science 67: 285–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schaffer, Jonathan. (2004) “Causes Need Not Be Physically Connected to Their Effects: The Case for Negative Causation.” In Hitchcock, C., ed., Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Science, 197–216 (Basil Blackwell).Google Scholar
Schaffer, Jonathan. (2005) “Contrastive Causation.” Philosophical Review 114: 327–358.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schaffer, Jonathan. (2007) “The Metaphysics of Causation.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available at plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-metaphysics.Google Scholar
Stapleton, Jane. (2008) “Choosing What We Mean by ‘Causation’ in the Law.” Missouri Law Review 73: 433–480.Google Scholar
Suppes, Patrick. (1970) A Probabilistic Theory of Causality (North-Holland).Google Scholar
Thomson, Judith Jarvis. (2003) “Causation: Omissions.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 66: 81–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wall, James, and Macdonald, Anne. (1993) The NASA ASIC Guide: Assuring ASICs for Space (California Institute of Technology Jet Propulsion Laboratory).Google Scholar