Causation and Responsibility [electronic resource] : An Essay in Law, Morals, and Metaphysics
Moore, Michael S.
Oxford : Oxford University Press,
c2009.
The concept of causation is fundamental to ascribing moral and legal responsibility for events. Yet the relationship between causation and responsibility remains unclear. What precisely is the connection between the concept of causation used in attributing responsibility and the accounts of causal relations offered in the philosophy of science and metaphysics? How much of what we call causal responsibility is in truth defined by non-causal factors? This book argues that muchof the legal doctrine on these questions is confused and incoherent, and offers the first comprehensive attempt since Har
Description based upon print version of record.
Cover; Title Page; Copyright Page; Dedication; Preface; Acknowledgements; Table of Contents; List of Cases; List of Statutes; I. THE ROLE OF CAUSATION IN MORAL AND LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY; 1. The Embedding of Causation in Legal Liability Doctrines; 2. Causation and Moral Blameworthiness; 3. Causation and the Permissibility of Consequentialist Justification within Agent-Relative Morality and the Law; II. PRESUPPOSITIONS ABOUT THE NATURE OF CAUSATION BY LEGAL DOCTRINES; 4. The Law's Own Characterizations of its Causal Requirements; 5. The Prima Facie Demands of the Law on the Concept of Causation
6. Pruning the Law's Demands on a Concept of CausationIII. THE FIRST BLIND ALLEY: THE ATTEMPT TO REPLACE PROXIMATE CAUSATION WITH CULPABILITY AS A PREREQUISITE FOR LEGAL LIABILITY; 7. 'Negligence in the Air Will not Do'; 8. Conceptual Problems in Applying the Harm-within-the-Risk Test to Crimes/Torts of Negligence; 9. Normative Problems in Applying the Harm-within-the-Risk Test to Crimes/Torts of Negligence; 10. The Descriptive Inaccuracy of the Harm-within-the-Risk Analysis as Measuring Proximate Causation; IV. THE LEGAL PRESUPPOSITION OF THERE BEING 'INTERVENING CAUSES'
11. The Legal Doctrines of Intervening Causation12. The Lack of any Metaphysical Basis for the Doctrines of Intervening Causation; 13. The Superfluity of Accomplice Liability; V. THE METAPHYSICS OF CAUSAL RELATA; 14. A Prolegomenon to the Issue of Causal Relata; 15. The Facts, Events, States of Affairs, and Tropes Debate; VI. THE METAPHYSICS OF THE CAUSAL RELATION; 16. Counterfactual Conditionals; 17. The Counterfactual Theory of Causation; 18. The Role of Counterfactual Dependence as an Independent, Non-causal Desert-determiner; 19. Generalist Theories of Causation
20. Singularist Theories of CausationAppendix: Contract Law and Causation: An Illustration; Bibliography; Index; Notes
The concept of causation is fundamental to ascribing moral and legal responsibility for events. Yet the relationship between causation and responsibility remains unclear. What precisely is the connection between the concept of causation used in attributing responsibility and the accounts of causal relations offered in the philosophy of science and metaphysics? How much of what we call causal responsibility is in truth defined by non-causal factors? This book argues that muchof the legal doctrine on these questions is confused and incoherent, and offers the first comprehensive attempt since Har
Description based on print version record.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Causation (Criminal law) -- Moral and ethical aspects.
Causation (Criminal law).
Proximate cause (Law).
Proximate cause (Law)
Causation (Criminal law)
Liability (Law)
Metaphysics
Law, General & Comparative
Ethics
Law, Politics & Government
Philosophy
Philosophy & Religion