Joshua Goh

Consider the following four claims. (1) Compared to her drinking the shandy, Suzy’s drinking the moonshine was more a cause of her becoming drunk. (2) “[T]he driver’s drunkenness [w]as more of a cause of [the] car crash than the poor weather conditions” (Kaiserman 2018: 1). (3) “The popular disillusionment with the shuttle [Discovery], Mr. Liss said, is due more to a public relations failure on NASA’s part than to any engineering problems” (Harmon 2015). (4) “[T]he corruption […] of the [Western Roman] administration […] undoubtedly contributed to its final collapse in the fifth century. But the major cause of its fall was that it was […] exposed to [increasingly severe] barbarian onslaughts” (Jones 1964: 1067-1068). Drawn from different fields (including philosophy ((2)), science journalism ((3)), and historical studies ((4))), such claims seem to concern: the varying extents to which certain events (e.g., Suzy’s drinking the shandy, and Suzy’s drinking the moonshine) contributed to the causing of certain outcomes (e.g., Suzy’s becoming drunk). That is, such claims seemingly concern degrees of causal contribution. Concerning this concept of “degrees of causal contribution,” philosophical questions abound. This thesis will address such questions, some of which include the following. (a) In the first instance, can we make sense of claims like (1)–(4)? (Carolina Sartorio (2020: 347), for example, is sceptical that “we can make sense of degrees of causal contribution.”) (b) If we answer (a) with “yes”: are there various (and distinct) senses in which (1)–(4) may be true? (c) If we answer (a) and (b) with “yes”: how might this bear on some other philosophical issues (e.g., (degrees of) moral responsibility (for outcomes), and the MAKING relation (see Byrne 2021))?

Sungho Choi has criticised Michael Strevens's counterexample to DavidLewis's final theory of "token" causation, causation as "influence." Iargue that, even if Choi's points are correct, Strevens's counterexampleremains useful in revealing a shortcoming of Lewis's theory. Thisshortcoming is that Lewis's theory does not properly account for*degrees* of causation. That is, even if Choi's points are correct,Lewis's theory does not capture an intuition we have about the*comparative* causal statuses of those events involved in Strevens'scounterexample (we might, for example, intuit that Sylvie's ball-firingis *as much*/*more*/*less* a cause of the jar's shattering as/than isBruno's ball-firing).

Much has been suggested to depend on causal contribution. Most prominently, it’s been suggested that, for some outcome, how morally responsible you are depends (inter alia) on how causally involved you were. The suggestion will be that for, say, the rising of Earth’s seas, you are less responsible than Chevron’s CEO, partly because you’ve contributed less to its causing. Other phenomena purported to be causally dependent in this way include certain types of liability and explanation. That said, the literature on the relation between causation and moral responsibility has unearthed the following issue: seemingly, there are multiple notions of causal contribution, and we must (occasionally) decide if one such notion is most relevant for attributions of moral responsibility. In response, some have recently argued that the most morally relevant notion of causal contribution concerns how close causes came to being individually sufficient for their outcomes. After adding a consideration of my own in favor of that view, I’ll argue that we’re nonetheless far from a full account of how moral responsibility and causal contribution relate, since there are multiple conceptions of “closeness to individual sufficiency,” and we must (occasionally) decide if one such conception is most morally relevant.

Does the relation of (actual) causation admit of degrees? Is it sensible to say, for example, that ‘as compared to his consuming the light beer, Clement’s consuming the moonshine was more a cause of his becoming drunk’? Suppose the answer is ‘yes’. Suppose also that country A unjustifiably ignites a lethal war with country B, and you intuit that, while most combatants of A are liable to lethal counterattack, most non-combatants of A aren’t similarly liable. Then, you might support your intuition by reasoning as follows. ‘Perhaps most non-combatants of A causally contribute to A’s unjust, lethal war effort. However, unlike most combatants of A, their causal contributions are not of such a degree that makes them liable to lethal counterattack’. Such reasoning is rejected by Carolina Sartorio. This is due to the recent revealing of a certain puzzle, one which suggests to Sartorio that causation doesn’t come in degrees. Now, one motivation for Sartorio’s reaction to the aforementioned puzzle is her thought that we can, for the most part, ‘explain away’ the ‘illusion’ that causation comes in degrees. I’ll argue that Sartorio insufficiently supports her foregoing thought. Using Sartorio’s resources, we cannot (largely) ‘explain away’ the widespread appearance that causation comes in degrees.