Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2005 14:02:38 +0200

From: Allan Beever

Subject: Apportionment and causative potency

I find this discussion really interesting, but I'm not sure that I can make any sense of "causative potency" in this context. Let’s take the example:

Suppose I'm on a pedestrian crossing and two negligently driven cars hit me simultaneously, one [D1] travelling at 60 mph and one [D2] travelling at 20 mph. I am badly injured. Both drivers have caused my injuries on a but-for test. But I would still argue (from my hospital bed - I just keep on going) that the actions of D1 driving the first car were a more potent cause of my injuries than the actions of D2 driving the second car.

I don’t think that this is the best example because it is natural to assume that the car going faster would have caused more damage (and hence should be liable for more regardless of the contribution rules). Do we still have the intuition that D1 was more casually potent than D2 if we can show that P would have been injured to exactly the same extent if only D2 had been present? I don’t, at any rate. If P would have suffered the exact same injury whether D1 or D2 had been absent, how can we say that one was more causally potent than the other? Has this got something to do with overdetermination? Is it possible to provide a definition of causal potency?

(Sorry if this has already been given and I have missed the post, but I am very interested in these ideas.)

Allan

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