Full metadata
Title
Cause by omission and norms
Description
Saying, "if Mary had watered Sam's plant, it wouldn't have died," is an ordinary way to identify Mary not watering Sam's plant as the cause of its death. But there are problems with this statement. If we identify Mary's omitted action as the cause, we seemingly admit an inordinate number of omissions as causes. For any counterfactual statement containing the omitted action is true (e.g. if Hillary Clinton had watered Sam's plant, it wouldn't have died). The statement, moreover, is mysterious because it is not clear why one protasis is more salient than any alternatives such as "if Sam hadn't gone to Bismarck." In the burgeoning field of experimental metaphysics, some theorists have tried to account for these intuitions about omissive causes. By synthesizing this data and providing a few experiments, I will suggest that judgments - and maybe metaphysics - about omissive causes necessarily have a normative feature. This understanding of omissive causes may be able to adequately resolve the problems above.
Date Created
2013
Contributors
- Henne, Paul (Author)
- Kobes, Bernard W (Thesis advisor)
- Pinillos, Nestor A (Thesis advisor)
- Reynolds, Steven (Committee member)
- Arizona State University (Publisher)
Topical Subject
Resource Type
Extent
iv, 64 p
Language
Copyright Statement
In Copyright
Primary Member of
Peer-reviewed
No
Open Access
No
Handle
https://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.I.17926
Statement of Responsibility
by Paul Henne
Description Source
Viewed on July 22, 2014
Level of coding
full
Note
Partial requirement for: M.A., Arizona State University, 2013
Note type
thesis
Includes bibliographical references (p. 61-64)
Note type
bibliography
Field of study: Philosophy
System Created
- 2013-07-12 06:24:27
System Modified
- 2021-08-30 01:41:34
- 3 years ago
Additional Formats