Cause by Omission and Norm: Not Watering Plants

Henne, Paul; Pinillos, Ángel; Brigard, Felipe De

doi:10.1080/00048402.2016.1182567

Cited by 104 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…While the Pen Case and the Computer Case are probably two of the most prominent examples in the literature, similar effects have repeatedly been found in subsequent research, and they seem to be robust for different causal structures (Kominsky et al 2015, Sytsma et al ms, Livengood and Sytsma under review), for both actions and omissions (Henne et al 2015, Willemsen & Reuter 2016, Willemsen 2016, and across multiple test queries (Livengood et al 2017a, Livengood and Sytsma under review).…”

Section: Ordinary Causal Attributions and Injunctive Normssupporting

confidence: 54%

Causal Attributions and Corpus Analysis

Sytsma¹,

Bluhm²,

Willemsen³

et al. 2019

Methodological Advances in Experimental Philosophy

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Although philosophers have often held that causation is a purely descriptive notion, a growing body of experimental work on ordinary causal attributions using questionnaire methods indicates that it is heavily influenced by normative information. These results have been the subject of sceptical challenges. Additionally, those who find the results compelling have disagreed about how best to explain them. In this chapter, we help resolve these debates by using a new set of tools to investigate ordinary causal attributions-the methods of corpus linguistics. We apply both more qualitative corpus analysis techniques and the more purely quantitative methods of distributional semantics to four target questions: (a) Can corpus analysis provide independent support for the thesis that ordinary causal attributions are sensitive to normative information? (b) Does the evidence coming from corpus analysis support the contention that outcome valence matters for ordinary causal attributions? (c) Are ordinary causal attributions similar to responsibility attributions? (d) Are causal attributions of philosophers different from causal attributions we find in corpora of more ordinary language? We argue that the results of our analyses support a positive answer to each of these questions. causal statement, in contrast, describes the relation between two event tokens, such as 'Peter's smoking caused his lung cancer' or 'Jenny's throwing the rock caused the window to break'. For both general and actual causation, most philosophers assume that the concept of causation is a purely descriptive notion, refering to a relation in the world. As a consequence, a causal attribution such as 'A caused B' is true if and only if the relation of causation holds between A and B. Such an understanding of causation, however, means that normative considerations are irrelevant to causal attributions. The basic idea here is that whether or not an action is permitted by morality or convention simply does not matter for purposes of assessing whether that action, or the entity carrying it out, caused the outcome. Similarly, whether an action causes a morally good or bad outcome is irrelevant for causal considerations. Call this the standard view on causation. Against the standard view, a growing body of empirical findings indicates that ordinary causal attributions are sensitive to normative information, prominently including injunctive norms

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Section: Ordinary Causal Attributions and Injunctive Normssupporting

confidence: 54%

Causal Attributions and Corpus Analysis

Sytsma¹,

Bluhm²,

Willemsen³

et al. 2019

Methodological Advances in Experimental Philosophy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The norm-based account provides an explanation for why people focus their attention on potential causes. Consistent with this view, recent studies show that reasoners view norm-violating omissions as causes but normpreserving events as non-causes or as enablers (Henne et al, 2017; see also Clarke et al, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 77%

“…In contrast, reasoners are often susceptible to norm violations that affect their causal judgments (Henne et al, 2017). Hence, norm-based accounts posit the following hypothesis:…”

Section: ¬ Insecticide Thrivementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Omissive causation is a controversial topic amongst philosophers, psychologists, and legal scholars (Moore, 2009;Bernstein, 2015;Henne, Pinillos, & De Brigard, 2017). People have little difficulty in distinguishing which event was causal from alternative events that are non-causal.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On tasks that require reasoners to distinguish between the different relations, they should base their judgments on the semantics stipulated by the model theory (Khemlani et al, 2018). In contrast, if norms are central to the meaning of omissive relations, reasoners should base their decisions on normviolations (Henne et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Norms and the meaning of omissive enabling conditions

Henne

Bello

Khemlani

et al. 2019

Preprint

Self Cite

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People often reason about omissions. One line of research shows that people can distinguish between the semantics of omissive causes and omissive enabling conditions: for instance, not flunking out of college enabled you (but didn’t cause you) to graduate. Another line of work shows that people rely on the normative status of omissive events in inferring their causal role: if the outcome came about because the omission violated some norm, reasoners are more likely to select that omission as a cause. We designed a novel paradigm that tests how norms interact with the semantics of omissive enabling conditions. The paradigm concerns the circuitry of a mechanical device that plays music. Two experiments used the paradigm to stipulate norms and present a distinct set of possibilities to participants. Participants chose which causal verb best described the operations of the machine. The studies revealed that participants’ responses are best predicted by their tendency to consider the semantics of omissive relations. In contrast, norms had little to no effect in participants’ responses. We conclude by marshaling the evidence and considering what role norms may play in people’s understanding of omissions.

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What Killed Your Plant? Profligate Omissions and Weak Centering

Himmelreich

2021

Erkenn

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Cause by Omission and Norm: Not Watering Plants

Cited by 104 publications

References 37 publications

Causal Attributions and Corpus Analysis

Causal Attributions and Corpus Analysis

Norms and the meaning of omissive enabling conditions

What Killed Your Plant? Profligate Omissions and Weak Centering

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