Causal Relata

Causal Relata

Abstract

There are two basic issues about causation in both science and law: what sort of relationship it is, and what sort of things are related by it? This paper deals with the second question only, asking whether causation relates events, facts, states of affairs, objects, or something else. Although one must grapple with this issue in order to understand causal judgments throughout the law, the issue is most directly raised in the context of the “harm within the risk” test for proximate causation. On this view, liability depends on whether that aspect of a defendant’s action that made it negligent for him to do it, caused some legally prohibited result; it is not enough that his act caused the result. For this to be a meaningful test of proximate causation, there needs to be some sense in which aspects (or facts, properties, features) of acts, and not just acts themselves, can cause things to occur.

Causal Relata

by

Michael S. Moore[†]

I.A PROLEGOMENON TO THE ISSUE OF CAUSAL RELATA

A.Relationships and Things Related

This paper is on the nature of causal relata; when we say, “x caused y,” what are the values that the variables x and y can have? This is one of two possible metaphysical questions about causation. The other is one asking after the nature of the causal relation itself: is it counterfactual dependence, nomic sufficiency, probabilistic dependence, regular concurrence, something else, or nothing at all?[1]

These two metaphysical questions about causation form a pair of trousers, in the sense that they are so intimately related to one another that we can’t imagine answering the one without having answered the other. As I once complained about Judy Thomson’s attempt to answer the relata question while not answering the relation question,[2] this is about as promising as would be a similar strategy about sentences of the form, “x loves y.” Arguments about what can be a loving or loved thing depend a lot on what love is, and arguments about what can be a cause or an effect depend a lot on what causation is – and vice-versa.

Still – with the possible exception for those rare individuals possessed of gymnastic dressing abilities – we all have to put our trousers on one leg at a time. We thus may suspend the relationship question while we examine the things related question, even if in the course of our argument about relata we necessarily must issue many promissory notes about the relation that eventually will have to be paid. Such in any event is how I intend to proceed.

There is one clarification of the causal relationship that we do need now, and that involves the distinction between two kinds of causal relationships. It is common to distinguish singular causal statements of the form, “x caused y,” from statements of causal generalizations of the form, “x’s cause y’s.”[3] It should be intuitively obvious that, whatever are the values of x and y in the first statement, they will be different than the values of x’s and y’s in the second. More specifically, the second statement will require types of x’s and y’s as the values of its variables, whatever the instances (or “tokens”) x and y are ultimately taken to be. There is thus a seeming primacy to understanding the relata of singular causal relationships; we can derive the relata of causal generalizations simply by moving to types of singular relata. (This will be true even if the latter relata turn out to be universals themselves.) I shall therefore stipulate here an initial interest in singular causal statements only. Our question then is: what sorts of things are related by singular causal relationships?

B.The Law’s Framing of the Issue

As we shall see shortly, the candidates for the sorts of things that can be causes (and usually also effects) are numerous and diverse: we commonly say that persons cause things, as in “Jones caused Smith’s death;”[4] we also extend causal agency to other objects, as in “the bullet caused Smith’s death;”[5] we often treat events as both causes and effects, as in “the firing of the gun caused Smith’s death,”[6] we sometimes talk of aspects[7] or features[8]of events as causes, as when we say that it was the suddenness of the firing that so surprised Jones; we also commonly relate statesby causal relations, as in “the state of Jones’appearance (he was clean-shaven) caused Smith not to recognize him;”[9] we also speak of states of affairs[10] (or situations)[11] as causes, as in, “the situation Jones was in (he was subject to verbal abuse by his boss at any time) caused him many sleepless nights;” or we relate facts with causation, as in “the fact that Jones was so excited caused Smith’s death to be as brutal as it was;”[12] we even sometimes say that an abstract universal caused something to occur, as in “it was excitement that killed Smith;” more often we say that a concrete universal (aka abstract particular, or “trope”) is a cause, as in “it was the excitement of the robbery that killed Smith.”[13] Even worse, each of these candidates for causal relata has competing theories as to its nature, events being a particularly notorious example of this.[14]

In legal settings this rather heterogeneous list is boiled down to two candidates: causal requirements for legal liability are framed either in terms of events (considered as whole particulars with many properties) or in terms of facts. To capture what will turn out to be a good deal of wisdom in the law’s presupposed metaphysics, let us elaborate a bit on the legal distinction.

Consider first the cases in torts where the defendant’s act violates a criminal statute (and is thus “negligent per se”).[15] The courts are split on how to frame the causal question. Some urge that we should ask whether the fact that the act had the properties making it violative of the statute caused the harm; others urge that we should ask only whether the eventthat was the act caused the harm, recognizing that that event possessed the properties making it a criminal act.

Illustrating the first approach is Empire Jamaica,[16] a case in which a ship collision occurred while a non-licensed officer was on watch. The event that was hisdriving of the ship unquestionably caused the collision; but because he was in fact as skilled in seamanship as if he had been duly licensed, the fact that he was unlicensed equally clearly did not cause the collision. The trial court justice in Admiralty saw this distinction with admirable clarity, resolving the ambiguity in favor of fact-causation:

“this breach…had no causal connection with the collision. That it was a cause, in the sense of it being a causa sine qua non, there can be no doubt, because we know that Mr. Sinon [the uncertificated officer] was in fact the officer of the watch at the time when the collision happened…But that, to my mind, does not conclude the matter...the mere fact of the officer of the watch not possessing a certificate does not by any means necessarily involve that that was a cause of the collision…it appears to me to be quite impossible to say that there was any causal connection between the fact of his not having a certificate and the fact of his negligent navigation [leading] to this collision.”[17]

Likewise, the Court of Appeal framed the proper causal question to be the question of whether there was “any causal connection…between the fact of having no certificate and the fact of his negligent navigation.”[18] Framed as an issue of fact causation, the Court of Appeals too found the issue easy to resolve: “clearly if the plaintiff’s only fault was [the fact that their mate was uncertificated], that was not a fault which could have had any causal connection with the collision.”[19]

Illustrating the second approach are opinions like that of the dissent in Brown v. Shyne,[20] where an unlicensed medical practitioner paralyzed the plaintiff by a series of medical treatments. The treatments by the unlicensed defendant were clearly a violation of the law; equally clearly such acts of treatment caused the paralysis. Again, however, because the unlicensed practitioner did not lack the knowledge or skill of a licensed practitioner, the fact that he had no license seemed causally irrelevant to the analysis. Judge Crane in dissent took the proper causal question to be the question of whether “his act, in violation of law, is the direct and proximate cause of the injury…”[21] Because the acts of treatment were the cause of the injury, and because those acts violated the law, Crane concluded that “the violation of this statute has been the direct and proximate cause of the injury.”[22] The proper interpretation of the question of whether “the violation was the direct and proximate cause of the injury,”[23] according to Crane, was whether the act done both resulted in injury and was unlicensed.[24] The question for Crane was not whether the fact that the act was unlicensed caused the injury. The New York statute enacted after Brown appears to adopt Crane’s view in dissent, requiring acourt to ask whether the unlicensed acts were a cause of injury, not whether the fact that the acts were unlicensed was a cause of injury.[25]

This dichotomy of legal results is reproduced by the use of causation in torts generally, and not just when there is a statutory violation by a defendant. Here again the causal question asked is often whether a defendant’s acts (which were negligent) caused the harm; perhaps as often, however, the causal question asked is whether the fact that the defendant’s acts were negligent caused the harm.[26] Thus, suppose an unlabeled can of rat poison is placed next to food in the kitchen of defendant’s restaurant, and suppose further that it is only the risk of accidental poisoning that makes such act negligent.[27] Although there is phosphorus in the rat poison, and although pure phosphorus is highly flammable, the phosphorus in the rat poison is so diluted that it is very difficult to ignite; so difficult that the risk of fire did not make the placement of the rat poison next to a stove negligent. Despite the unlikelihood, the unlabelled rat poison on a shelf next to a hot stove is not ingested but does explode, as a result of which the plaintiff is injured.

Some legal theorists, such as Leon Green,[28] have urged that the correct causal question is whether the act of placing the rat poison on the shelf caused the injury. Others, such as Robert Keeton,[29] have urged that the correct causal question is whether the fact that the rat poison was unlabelled caused the injury. Since by hypothesis the negligence of the defendant consisted in placing unlabelled rat poison next to food (when it could mistakenly be ingested), Keeton phrases the latter, fact-oriented question as being the question of whether “the negligence caused the harm.” In this terminology, the event-oriented question would be whether “the act (that was negligent) caused the harm.”

It would be nice if the law crisply resolved this ambiguity, so one might use that intuitive result as the starting point for philosophical argument. However, there is no such dominant resolution of what should be causal relata in these contexts. It would, alternatively, be of some comfort if the law’s irresolution in this regard was due to a policy difference unique to this legal context: viz, that those courts favoring the fact interpretation do so because of their desire for contracted liability and that those courts favoring the event interpretation do so because of their desire for expanded liability. While there is some tendency in these directions, it is limited because anyone wishing for contracted liability can achieve that result by supplementing an event-cause view with a non-causal, “harm-within-the-risk” requirement,[30] and anyone wishing for expanded liability can achieve that result by supplanting any fact-causation view (or any causal requirement, for that matter) with a non-causal, event-oriented counterfactual requirement for liability.[31]

So the law does not present us with a resolution of the fact/event ambiguity about causal relata, nor can one explain away the law’s irresolution in ways making plausible that the law has uncovered such a resolution but simply covered it up for reasons of legal policy. Still, the law does unambiguously frame an issue that will turn out to be of philosophical significance: of all the sorts of things we say are causes or effects, there are only two real candidates for such status, events or facts. This leaves out many other candidates such as persons, properties, tropes, etc. In this, the law is roughly right, as we shall see.

C.The Cast of Characters Trying Out for the Role of Causal Relata

Like a good Nineteenth Century Russian novel – typically filled with numerous characters with unfamiliar names – we need a list of characters up front. Before arguing which of this cast we should promote as the protagonist, we should first be clear about who has even tried out for the role. A preliminary word about the list that follows. It is common in the literature to argue for the existence of certain items, such as property-instances or “tropes,” on the ground that these are causal relata and causal relata certainly must exist if causation exists. Such arguments soundly beg the ultimate question I shall wish to examine (viz, what are causal relata?). So the list that follows is limited to those entities in whose existence we have reasons to believe, reasons that are independent of any role such entities may or may not have as causal relata. I do not pretend to answer the ultimate questions on ontology raised in forming such a list. To keep the argument about causal relata addressed to as wide an audience as possible (and also to disguise my current ignorance/agnosticism on some of these issues), I only require that there be some plausible metaphysical basis for the existence of the entities in question, a basis uncontaminated by any alleged causal role for such entities.

In ordinary speech, as we have seen,[32] it is idiomatic to speak of a wide variety of things as causes and effects. I would group these possibilities into four major groupings, with various sub-groupings under each:

A.Objects as causes

B.Events (and States) as Causes, conceived as:

1.Quinean events

2.Davidsonian events

3.Thomson’s componential events

4.Kimian events

or5.Dretskean events

C.Properties as Causes, meaning either:

1.Abstract universals

or2.Concrete universals (tropes),

but not as:

3.Aspects or features of events,

because these are

redundant to:a.Tropes (see C.2 above)

b.Kimian events (see D.4 above)

orc.Facts (see D below)

D.Facts as Causes, conceived as:

1.True propositions

or2.Mellor’s “facta,” or Menzies’ “real situations,” or Armstrong’s states of

affairs that make true propositions true.

The discussion proceeds by examining each of these items seriatim.

1.Whole Objects as Causes

It is a common observation that our acquaintance with causation began with the experience of our own agency.[33] We can cause the movement of our body by willing it to move; we also discover that our body is the only Archimedean lever we have with which to move the world, so that by moving our body we also cause other states of affairs to come about in the world. We can move our arm, etc., and so we can scare, kill, humor, signal, etc. our fellows, and so we can cause avalanches, wars, train wrecks, etc. Some wish to turn this epistemic observation into a metaphysical one: we as persons can be causes. Generalizing, other objects possess such powers as well: trees can kill people (i.e., cause their deaths) just like people can kill people.

Richard Taylor is the best known expositor of such views within recent philosophy.[34] Yet Taylor’s views have seemed to most philosophers (including myself)[35] to be far too mysterious to be taken seriously. Causal laws are not framed in terms of objects like fires and bullets, except elliptically, i.e., insofar as such objects are involved in processes, events, and states. To say, “the bullet killed her,” seems transparently elliptical for, “some event involving the bullet (such as a piercing of the victim’s heart by the bullet) caused her death.” The same is true for supposed causation by persons: however much some philosophers are struck by the mystery of human agency,[36] surely to say, “Jones caused the death of Smith” is elliptical for, “Some act of Jones (such as shooting) caused the death of Smith.” Human agency is no more irreducible to event (process state, fact, etc.) causation than is the “agency” of fires and bullets. I shall accordingly put aside the objects-as-causes view.

2.Whole Events as Causes and Effects

What is perhaps still the standard view of causal relata in contemporary philosophy is the view that whole events are the only entities that can be causes or effects. I say whole events to distinguish this view from other major views later discussed, such as,that it is aspects of events, or facts about events, that are causal relata.