Omissions, Causation, and Responsibility

In this paper I discuss a recent exchange of articles between Hugh McLachlan and John Coggon on the relationship between omissions, causation, and moral responsibility. My aim is to contribute to their debate by isolating a presupposition I believe they both share and by questioning that presupposition. The presupposition is that, at any given moment, there are countless things that I am omitting to do. This leads both McLachlan and Coggon to give a distorted account of the relationship between causation and moral or (as the case may be) legal responsibility and, in the case of Coggon, to claim that the law??s conception of causation is a fiction based on policy. Once it is seen that this presupposition is faulty, we can attain a more accurate view of the logical relationship between causation and moral responsibility in the case of omissions. This is important because it will enable us, in turn, to understand why the law continues to regard omissions as different, both logically and morally, from acts, and why the law seeks to track that logical and moral difference in the legal distinction it draws between withholding life-sustaining measures and euthanasia.     

Getting rid of interventions

According to James Woodward’s influential interventionist account of causation, X is a cause of Y iff, roughly, there is a possible intervention on X that changes Y. Woodward requires that interventions be merely logically possible. I will argue for two claims against this modal character of interventions: First, merely logically possible interventions are dispensable for the semantic project of providing an account of the meaning of causal statements. If interventions are indeed dispensable, the interventionist theory collapses into (some sort of) a counterfactual theory of causation. Thus, the interventionist theory is not tenable as a theory of causation in its own right. Second, if one maintains that merely logically possible interventions are indispensable, then interventions with this modal character lead to the fatal result that interventionist counterfactuals are evaluated inadequately. Consequently, interventionists offer an inadequate theory of causation. I suggest that if we are concerned with explicating causal concepts and stating the truth-conditions of causal claims we best get rid of Woodwardian interventions.     

Father's Water equals Mother's Milk: The Conception of Parentage in Kaliai,West New Britain

This paper describes the traditional and modern ideology of conception and parenting among the Kaliai of West New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea. A pervasive set of beliefs hinges on male primacy and includes the assignment of the principal role in conception to the male. Females become kin to the children they bear only secondarily, through nurturance of their infants. Mother's milk and semen, then, are equivalent in their capacity to establish links of kinship. Despite the ideology of male dominance, food given is so loaded with significance for the establishment of kin ties that adoptive parents, male and female, must feed a nursing mother or risk the lapse of their claim on her infant. A mother's milk is therefore truly equal to a father's semen — his ‘water’ — and different aspects of Kaliai ideology are used more to justify past behaviour rather than to constrain it in the present.     

Charles Darwin,embryology, evolution and skeletal plasticity

Darwin provided us with the theory of evolutionary change through natural selection. Just as important to the science of biology was Darwin’s recognition that all organisms could be classified and were related to one another because they arose from a single common universal ancestor – what we know as the universal tree of life (UtoL). All the features of the skeletal biology of fish therefore can be explained, both in an evolutionary framework (ultimate causation) and in the framework of development, growth and physiology (proximate causation). Neither approach is complete without the other. I will outline the elements of Darwin’s theories on evolution and classification and, as importantly, discuss what was missing from Darwin’s theories. An important class of evidence for evolution used by Darwin came from embryology, both comparative embryology and the existence of vestiges and atavisms. After discussing this evidence I examine some fundamental features of skeletal development and evolution These include: the presence of four skeletal systems in all vertebrates; the existence of two skeletons, one based on cartilage, the other on bone and dentine; the modular nature of skeletal development and evolution; and the plasticity of the skeleton in response to either genetic or environmental changes.     

Parasites, democratization, and the liberalization of values across contemporary countries

The countries of the world vary in their position along the autocracy–democracy continuum of values. Traditionally, scholars explain this variation as based on resource distribution and disparity among nations. We provide a different framework for understanding the autocracy–democracy dimension and related value dimensions, one that is complementary (not alternative) to the research tradition, but more encompassing, involving both evolutionary (ultimate) and proximate causation of the values. We hypothesize that the variation in values pertaining to autocracy–democracy arises fundamentally out of human (Homo sapiens) species‐typical psychological adaptation that manifests contingently, producing values and associated behaviours that functioned adaptively in human evolutionary history to cope with local levels of infectious diseases. We test this parasite hypothesis of democratization using publicly available data measuring democratization, collectivism–individualism, gender egalitarianism, property rights, sexual restrictiveness, and parasite prevalence across many countries of the world. Parasite prevalence across countries is based on a validated index of the severity of 22 important human diseases. We show that, as the hypothesis predicts, collectivism (hence, conservatism), autocracy, women’s subordination relative to men’s status, and women’s sexual restrictiveness are values that positively covary, and that correspond with high prevalence of infectious disease. Apparently, the psychology of xenophobia and ethnocentrism links these values to avoidance and management of parasites. Also as predicted, we show that the antipoles of each of the above values—individualism (hence, liberalism), democracy, and women’s rights, freedom and increased participation in casual sex—are a positively covarying set of values in countries with relatively low parasite stress. Beyond the cross‐national support for the parasite hypothesis of democratization, it is consistent with the geographic location at high latitudes (and hence reduced parasite stress) of the early democratic transitions in Britain, France and the U.S.A. It, too, is consistent with the marked increase in the liberalization of social values in the West in the 1950s and 1960s (in part, the sexual revolution), regions that, a generation or two earlier, experienced dramatically reduced infectious diseases as a result of antibiotics, vaccinations, food‐ and water‐safety practices, and increased sanitation. Moreover, we hypothesize that the generation and diffusion of innovations (in thought, action and technology) within and among regions, which is associated positively with democratization, is causally related to parasite stress. Finally, we hypothesize that past selection in the context of morbidity and mortality resulting from parasitic disease crafted many of the aspects of social psychology unique to humans.     

Population Level Causation and a Unified Theory of Natural Selection

Sober (1984) presents an account of selection motivated by the view that one property can causally explain the occurrence of another only if the first plays a unique role in the causal production of the second. Sober holds that a causal property will play such a unique role if it is a population level cause of its effect, and on this basis argues that there is selection for a trait T only if T is a population level cause of survival and reproductive success. Sterelny and Kitcher (1988) claim against Sober that some traits directly subject to selection will not satisfy the probabilistic condition on population level causation. In this paper I show that Sober has the resources to resist the Sterelny-Kitcher complaint, but I argue that not all traits that satisfy the probabilistic condition play the required unique role in the production of their effects.     

Causation in the sciences: An inferentialist account

I present an alternative account of causation in the biomedical and social sciences according to which the meaning of causal claims is given by their inferential relations to other claims. Specifically, I will argue that causal claims are (typically) inferentially related to certain evidential claims as well as claims about explanation, prediction, intervention and responsibility. I explain in some detail what it means for a claim to be inferentially related to another and finally derive some implication of the proposed account for the epistemology, semantics and metaphysics of causation.     

Diet, embodiment, and virtue in the mechanical philosophy

This paper considers the relationship between diet, embodiment, nature and virtue in several seventeenth-century natural philosophers, all of whom sought to overcome or to radically reform inherited ideas about the self as a hylomorphic compound of form and matter, but who nonetheless were not entirely ready to discard the notion that the self is intimately united with the body. One implication of this intimate union, for them, is that what one does with the body, including what one puts into it, is directly relevant to the supreme end of achieving a virtuous life. I thus consider food—its preparation and its consumption—as a link between natural and moral philosophy in the early modern period, showing in particular the parallels between the search for the diet that is ‘natural to man’, on the one hand, and the project of establishing rules of virtue on the other. Key to discerning these parallels, I argue, is an understanding of early modern ideas about diet and eating as rooted in the Stoic notion of oikeiôsis, which may be translated as ‘assimilation’ or ‘appropriation’, and which, as recent work by Lisa Shapiro has shown, played an important role in early modern ideas about a bodily contribution to the human good. The most general thesis is that dietary questions were far more important in early modern philosophy than has yet been recognized: nearly every prominent natural philosopher was preoccupied with them. A narrower thesis is that this parallelism between natural philosophy and moral philosophy is reflected in the conception of cooking as both a fundamental physiological process (‘coction’) as well as the most basic form of social existence.     

The Comparative Method in Cross-Cultural and Cross-Species Research

Comparative methodology is controversial in biology and the related field of research on behavioral and psychological traits across human cultures. We critically examine this controversy. We argue that the widely held opinion of non-independence among historically-related cultures and species errs by not recognizing and incorporating into research the two distinct and complementary categories of causation that account for an extant trait—the phylogenetic origin of the trait (cultural or otherwise) and the maintenance of the trait after its phylogenetic origin. Phylogenetic correction for non-independence is required in the comparative study of a trait’s phylogenetic origin, but is irrelevant for the comparative study of the causation of a trait’s maintenance after its phylogenetic origin. Across cultures, even closely related cultures, causes that are specific to each culture act to maintain cultural similarities, which makes such similarities independent. Among species, even closely related species, similarities are maintained by lineage-specific, and hence independent, evolutionary causal processes. Comparative methodology has been criticized as being inferior to other types of scientific methodology (e.g., experimentation), because it is based on correlational data. This criticism is erroneous because, all scientific findings are correlational, and in hypothesis testing, the ability of an empirical finding to address causation depends solely upon the control of confounding variables, not the type of scientific method itself.     

Oppositions in panbiogeography: Can the conflicts between selection,constraint, ecology,and history be resolved?

Abstract

Croizat’s radical attack on traditional modes of biological inquiry has produced strongly polarised responses. Instead of arguing for or against the panbiogeographic approach I attempt to analyse some basic assumptions shared by both its defenders and critics. Although their emphasis is quite different both sides rely on two central oppositions. In evolutionary arguments selective explanations are opposed to those emphasising phylogenetic constraint (orthogenesis). In biogeographic arguments ecological explanations are opposed to historical explanations. I discuss how the legendary opposition between nature and nurture was resolved by reformulating the way in which causation was viewed. I suggest that the selection/constraint opposition shares many features in common with the nature/nurture opposition and argue that it can be resolved in a similar manner. Conflicts between ecological and historical explanations in biogeography are explored by contrasting Diamond’s analysis of New Guinea bird distributions with that of Croizat’s. By again drawing on the resolution of the nature/nurture dispute a way of synthesising ecological and historical explanations is outlined.     

A realist approach to biological events

In this paper, I aim to show that the multiple realisability and the causal efficacy of biological events can best be explained by construing biological events as determinables of more determinate physical events. The determination relation itself is spelled out in terms of inclusive essence. In order to secure actual causation for biological events (in contrast to causal influence), two conditions are introduced such that for some events, biological events qualify as their cause. Finally, certain consequences of the presented theory are discussed, such as the question of how the biological token event can retain its identity across modal modifications of its realiser, and such as how the presented solution bears on the classical problem of biological causation.     

Bioethics and culture: an African perspective

The project of Bioethics seems to me to require paying attention to the cultural realities and assumptive frame of reference of different peoples. I assume that this must be one of the views of the organizers of this conference too and that this is why the idea of country reports is taken seriously. If I am right about this, then it makes sense for me to start my discussion with a very brief discussion of some aspects of the cultural realities of Africa with particular reference to the Yoruba of Nigeria. Then I will discuss how this world view raises issues for bioethics. Two aspects of people's worldview relevant to bioethical issues are their conception of the human person and their conception of cause. What they consider themselves to be, and what they consider to be the principles of causation will normally influence their attitudes to health and illness and their choices regarding health care. I will briefly discuss these issues with regard to the Yoruba worldview.     

Making sense of downward causation in manipulationism: illustrations from cancer research

Many researchers consider cancer to have molecular causes, namely mutated genes that result in abnormal cell proliferation (e.g. Weinberg 1998). For others, the causes of cancer are to be found not at the molecular level but at the tissue level where carcinogenesis consists of disrupted tissue organization with downward causation effects on cells and cellular components (e.g. Sonnenschein and Soto 2008). In this contribution, I ponder how to make sense of such downward causation claims. Adopting a manipulationist account of causation (Woodward 2003), I propose a formal definition of downward causation and discuss further requirements (in light of Baumgartner 2009). I then show that such an account cannot be mobilized in support of non-reductive physicalism (contrary to Raatikainen 2010). However, I also argue that such downward causation claims might point at particularly interesting dynamic properties of causal relationships that might prove salient in characterizing causal relationships (following Woodward 2010).     

Niche construction,adaptive preferences,and the differences between fitness and utility

A number of scholars have recently defended the claim that there is a close connection between the evolutionary biological notion of fitness and the economic notion of utility: both are said to refer to an organism’s success in dealing with its environment, and both are said to play the same theoretical roles in their respective sciences. However, an analysis of two seemingly disparate but in fact structurally related phenomena—‘niche construction’ (the case where organisms change their environment to make it fit to their needs) and ‘adaptive preferences’ (the case where agents change their wants to make them fit to what the world has given them)—shows that one needs to be very careful about the postulation of this sort of fitness–utility connection. Specifically, I here use the analysis of these two phenomena to establish when connecting fitness and utility is and is not possible.     

The causal structure of mechanisms

Recently, a number of philosophers of science have claimed that much explanation in the sciences, especially in the biomedical and social sciences, is mechanistic explanation. I argue the account of mechanistic explanation provided in this tradition has not been entirely satisfactory, as it has neglected to describe in complete detail the crucial causal structure of mechanistic explanation. I show how the interventionist approach to causation, especially within a structural equations framework, provides a simple and elegant account of the causal structure of mechanisms. This account explains the many useful insights of traditional accounts of mechanism, such as Carl Craver’s account in his book Explaining the Brain (2007), but also helps to correct the omissions of such accounts. One of these omissions is the failure to provide an explicit formulation of a modularity constraint that plays a significant role in mechanistic explanation. One virtue of the interventionist/structural equations framework is that it allows for a simple formulation of a modularity constraint on mechanistic explanation. I illustrate the role of this constraint in the last section of the paper, which describes the form that mechanistic explanation takes in the computational, information-processing paradigm of cognitive psychology.     

A harmony of illusions: clinical and experimental testing of Robert Koch’s tuberculin 1890–1900

One of Ludwik Fleck’s ideas about the development of scientific knowledge is that—once a system of interpretation is in place—the process that follows can be characterised as one of inertia: any new evidence comes under a strong pressure to be incorporated into the established frame. This can result in what Fleck called a harmony of illusions (Harmonie der Täuschungen) when contradictory evidence becomes almost invisible or is incorporated into the established frame only by huge efforts.The paper analyses early explanations of the tuberculin reaction as a case study of Fleck’s argument. For Robert Koch, who had presented tuberculin in 1890, the compound was supposed to be a diagnostic tool and a cure for tuberculosis. His conception of its effect was rather peculiar, but strictly in line with ideas on the pathogenesis of infectious diseases he had developed much earlier. After tuberculin was released in late 1890, whether Koch’s conception was convincing depended on the place that a given observer had in the medical world in late-nineteenth-century Germany. Inside Koch’s group, the status of the tuberculin reaction remained stable and tuberculin retained its value as a diagnostic and curative tool. On the other hand, observers from outside that thought collective, and in particular from clinical medicine, soon pointed to flaws in its conception. These critics developed a rather different picture of tuberculin as a mysterious and dangerous drug. No reconciliation followed and what we find instead in German medicine around the year 1900 is the presence of rather contradictory concepts and practices surrounding Koch’s wonder cure.     

HEALTH,VITAL GOALS,AND CENTRAL HUMAN CAPABILITIES

I argue for a conception of health as a person's ability to achieve or exercise a cluster of basic human activities. These basic activities are in turn specified through free‐standing ethical reasoning about what constitutes a minimal conception of a human life with equal human dignity in the modern world. I arrive at this conception of health by closely following and modifying Lennart Nordenfelt's theory of health which presents health as the ability to achieve vital goals. Despite its strengths I transform Nordenfelt's argument in order to overcome three significant drawbacks. Nordenfelt makes vital goals relative to each community or context and significantly reflective of personal preferences. By doing so, Nordenfelt's conception of health faces problems with both socially relative concepts of health and subjectively defined wellbeing. Moreover, Nordenfelt does not ever explicitly specify a set of vital goals. The theory of health advanced here replaces Nordenfelt's (seemingly) empty set of preferences and society‐relative vital goals with a human species‐wide conception of basic vital goals, or ‘central human capabilities and functionings’. These central human capabilities come out of the capabilities approach (CA) now familiar in political philosophy and economics, and particularly reflect the work of Martha Nussbaum. As a result, the health of an individual should be understood as the ability to achieve a basic cluster of beings and doings—or having the overarching capability, a meta‐capability, to achieve a set of central or vital inter‐related capabilities and functionings.