Caroline Touborg: Causation, responsibility, and norms

The Research Seminar Series in Philosophy invites you to a seminar with Caroline Touborg, "Causation, responsibility, and norms: re-evaluating our norms in the face of climate change".

Abstract: In this paper, I combine two widely held ideas. The first concerns the relation between causation and responsibility: you are responsible for an outcome only if you have performed an action or omission that caused the outcome. The second idea concerns causation itself and may be formulated as follows: causation is relative to a possibility horizon, i.e. a class of possible worlds containing just those worlds that represent serious possibilities. Combining these two ideas raises a question: what is the relevant possibility horizon for evaluating whether the causal condition for responsibility is satisfied? I suggest that norms play a role in selecting the relevant possibility horizon. For moral responsibility, moral norms play this role; for legal responsibility, legal norms play this role, etc. This yields a picture with norms as input. These norms select the possibility horizon we should use to assess whether the causal condition for responsibility is satisfied. And together with other conditions for responsibility, this yields the output, which is attributions of responsibility. This picture of the relation between norms, causation, and responsibility suggests a way to evaluate norms: when a bad outcome (such as climate change) occurs, taking one set of norms as input may yield the output that nobody is responsible – the bad outcome 'just happened', while a different set of norms may yield the output that some people are responsible. In that case, I suggest that we have a pro tanto reason to prefer the norms that allow us to place responsibility for the outcome.

All interested are welcome to participate in this seminar.

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