Double prevention

I find cases of multiple causation and especially cases of multiple prevention very interesting. To keep it simple, I want to present here a case of double prevention, which I read in Woodward 2021, pp. 303-305. I want to present it without much discussion. I mainly follow Woodward’s text. However, in fact the example discussed is not one by Woodward himself but it has been thought out by Ned Hall.
What are cases of double prevention? Woodward defines them as “cases in which the occurrence of some event or process, c₁, would prevent some outcome, e (which would occur in the absence of c₁), but in which some second event, c₂, prevents the occurrence of the potential preventer, c₂, thereby allowing e to occur.” Note that the type of causation used here is counterfactual causation (see my blog last week). Woodward discusses an example from Ned Hall 2004, which illustrates the basic idea, so he says: Suzy’s plane will bomb a target (e) if not prevented by doing so. An enemy pilot will shoot down Suzy’s plane (c₁) unless prevented from doing so. Billy, piloting another plane, shoots down the enemy pilot (c₂), and Suzy bombs the target. Suzy’s bombing counterfactually depends on whether Billy shoots down the enemy pilot. What makes this case interesting is that, so Woodward, some (or many) find the following claim problematic, if the case is given without additional information: Billy’s shooting down of the enemy pilot caused Suzy’s bombing. I must say that I find this claim also problematic, for isn’t it so that it is Suzy and not Billy who does the bombing? However, Billy could have refrained from shooting down the enemy pilot, so in this sense Billy has some responsibility for the performance of Suzy’s action, and in this sense he is guilty of the bombing. In the counterfactual sense Billy caused the bombing indeed, in the case as it is. Why then do we hesitate to say that Billy caused Suzy’s bombing?
Hall, so Woodward, mentions two reasons why many have their doubts about the claim:
- Locality: Billy’s shooting takes place many hours before the actual bombing and at a big distance from the bombing. There seems to be no direct spatiotemporal relationship between the firing and the bombing.
- Extrinsicness: One doesn’t feel that there is any psychological, practical or other relation between the Billy’s firing and Suzy’s bombing. For instance, – another example by Hall/Woodward – suppose that the enemy’s superiors were about to order him not to attack Suzy when Billy shot him down. Then Suzy’s bombing would no longer depend on Billy’s firing, even though the variant seems “intrinsically” just like the original case, with the exception that the intentions of the enemy’s superiors had changed. Then, so Woodward, we must admit that the connection between Bill’s action and the destruction of Suzy’s target, so between shooting and death, has become different. Suzy’s bombing would have taken place, anyway, whether Billy would or wouldn’t have shot down the enemy.
Much can be said about this case of double prevention, which I’ll not do, as said. Only this. Life situations as the one in the example are complicated and cannot be reduced to three factors, as in the original example. As the changed version illustrates, many intervening factors are possible. Here the enemy’s superiors are mentioned, but it could also be that Suzy’s (Billy’s) superiors had decided to send another plane as well to bomb Suzy’s target in case Suzy would fail, and without doubt other such intervening factors are possible. At most we can say that Suzy’s bombing is dependent on Billy’s (successful) firing but Billy’s firing does not make Suzy’s bombing and the destruction of her target happen. The latter depends on Suzy, the instructions of her superiors, a colleague who can replace her, if she fails, etc. However, in case we conclude that Billy doesn’t cause Suzy’s bombing, this doesn’t involve that we deny his responsibility for Suzy’s bombing. Responsibility is not the same as causation. It would be interesting to compare both. Because in the case presented many additional factors can intervene in Billy’s firing and in the relation between this firing and Suzy’s bombing, we can call the case open. We could compare it with a closed case, in which Billy’s and Suzy’s possibilities are limited to acting or abstaining from acting. We could call such a case also mechanistic. In his 2014 Woodward discusses also such a “mechanistic” case (pp.307ff). I’ll not treat it here, but then, maybe, we would conclude that the mechanistic actor or factor that takes the place of Billy would be “responsible” for what Suzy’s mechanistic substitute did, indeed, if not that he or it had caused it, surely and certainly.