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DISCONNECTION AND RESPONSIBILITY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 August 2012

Jonathan Schaffer
Jonathan Schaffer*
Affiliation:
Australian National Universityjonathanschaffer@yahoo.com
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Abstract

In Causation and Responsibility, Michael Moore offers an integrated conception of the law, morality, and metaphysics, centered on the notion of causation. I contest Moore's claim that causation cannot relate absences and show how accepting absence causation would improve Moore's view. For denying absence causation drives Moore to a disjunctive account of legal and moral responsibility in order to handle cases such as negligence. It forces him into denying that beheading someone can cause them to die, since the route from beheading to death involves the absence of blood flow to the brain. And it leads him into allowing that responsibility can arise from mere correlation with a crime, given that counterfactual dependence can still hold between correlates.

Type
Research Article
Information
Legal Theory , Volume 18 , Special Issue 4: MICHAEL MOORE'S CAUSATION AND RESPONSIBILITY , December 2012 , pp. 399 - 435
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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