An investigation of the consequences of causal selection to moral responsibility

• Grant number: 24/15984-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: April 01, 2025
• End date: February 28, 2029
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - Metaphysics
• Principal Investigator: Marco Antonio Caron Ruffino
• Grantee: Gabriel de Andrade Pagnozzi Maruchi
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The main objective of this project is to investigate how the phenomenon of causal selection may influence (i) our philosophical theories about moral responsibility and (ii) our view of the relation between causation and responsibility. Causal selection is a phenomenon found in our ordinary attributions of causation. When we search for the cause of an event, we do not limit ourselves to the metaphysical conditions that philosophers traditionally associated with causation, like counterfactual dependence and physical processes. Statistical normality and moral norms also affect our causal judgments. In daily life, people do not call ''cause'' many events that philosophers have traditionally considered causes. Causal selection is this practice of not electing as causes all the events that satisfy metaphysical conditions for causation. It is experimentally well-established that our ordinary attributions of causation are subjected to causal selection. Nevertheless, there is no consensual explanation for why causal selection occurs. The different empirical hypotheses about the functioning of causal selection are of philosophical interest. The plausibility of certain metaphysical theories about causation is directly related to the plausibility of these hypotheses. And the metaphysics of causation influences our theories about moral responsibility. Many contemporary works use theories of causation to better understand moral responsibility. Nevertheless, this methodology has not been applied to causal selection. What we will do in our research is to understand the consequences of the different empirical hypotheses about causal selection for our theories of causation. And, after that, we will develop the consequences of these theories for our understanding of moral responsibility. Our research will have, then, three parts. First, we will review the empirical literature about causal selection. Then, we will examine the attempts of accommodating causal selection in metaphysical theories of causation. Last, we will develop the consequences of these theories of causation for moral responsibility and the connection between both.