Philosophical theories of agency have focused primarily on actions and activities. But, besides acting, we often omit to do or refrain from doing certain things. How is this aspect of our agency to be conceived? This book offers a comprehensive account of omitting and refraining, addressing issues ranging from the nature of agency and moral responsibility to the metaphysics of absences and causation. Topics addressed include the role of intention in intentional omission, the connection between negligence and omission, (...) the distinction between doing and allowing, and the distinction in law between act and omission. (shrink)

Imagine you and your friend Pierre agreed on meeting each other at a café, but he does not show up. What is the difference between a friend’s not showing up meeting? and any other person not coming? In some sense, all people who did not come show the same kind of behaviour, but most people would be willing to say that the absence of a friend who you expected to see is different in kind. In this paper, I will spell (...) out this difference by investigating laypeople’s conceptualisation of absences of actions in four experiments. In languages such as German, French, Italian, or Polish, people consider a friend’s not coming an omission. Any other person’s not coming, in contrast, is not considered an omission at all, but just a mere nothing. This use of the term omission differs from the usage in English, where ‘omission’ refers to all kinds of absences. In addition, ‘omission’ is not even an everyday term, but invented by philosophers for the sake of philosophical investigation. In other languages, ‘omission’ is part of an everyday vocabulary. Finally, I will discuss how this folk concept of omission could be made fruitful for philosophical questions. (shrink)

This paper gives a framework for understanding causal counterpossibles, counterfactuals imbued with causal content whose antecedents appeal to metaphysically impossible worlds. Such statements are generated by omissive causal claims that appeal to metaphysically impossible events, such as “If the mathematician had not failed to prove that 2+2=5, the math textbooks would not have remained intact.” After providing an account of impossible omissions, the paper argues for three claims: (i) impossible omissions play a causal role in the actual world, (ii) causal (...) counterpossibles have broad applications in philosophy, and (iii) the truth of causal counterpossibles provides evidence for the nonvacuity of counterpossibles more generally. (shrink)

Philosophers have already recognized the importance of causal preemption involving “positive” events. First, preemption with positive events raises problems for counterfactual theories of causation. Second, theories of moral and legal responsibility rely heavily on the concept of causation, so accurately assessing responsibility in preemption cases requires correctly assessing their causal structure. However, philosophers have not discussed preemption involving “negative” events or omissions. This paper argues that cases of preemptive omissions exist and have important implications for theories of causation and for (...) moral and legal responsibility. Of theoretical importance, the alterations made to counterfactual theories of causation to address preemption with positive events do not seem to work for accommodating preemptive omissions. Of practical importance, there have been actual legal cases involving preemptive omissions, and at least one such case was, this paper contends, decided incorrectly on erroneous causal grounds. This paper identifies what must happen for preemptive omissions to obtain. It then argues for the existence of preemptive omissions by constructing a series of cases and drawing structural parallels between preemption cases with positive events and cases with omissions. It ultimately presents a formula for generating preemptive omissions and examines both why “traditional” methods of generating preemption fail for omissions and why the proposed method avoids such concerns. (shrink)

We take ourselves to be able to omit to perform certain actions and to be at times responsible for these omissions. Moreover, omissions seem to have effects and to be manifestations of our agency. So, it is natural to think that omissions must be events. However, very few people writing on this topic have been willing to argue that omissions are events. Such a view is taken to face three significant challenges: (i) omissions are thought to be somehow problematically negative, (...) (ii) it is unclear where the event of an omission would be located, and (iii) if we accept any omissions as events, it seems like there would be far too much causation involving them. In this paper, I develop a novel view of omissions as events and as actions that provides answers to these challenges. (shrink)

This book empirically investigates the social practice of ascribing moral responsibility to others for the things they failed to do, and it discusses the philosophical relevance of this practice.0In our everyday life, we often blame others for things they failed to do. For instance, we might blame our neighbour for not watering our plants during our vacation. Interestingly, the attribution of blame is typically accompanied by the attribution of causal responsibility. We do not only blame our neighbour for not watering (...) our plants, but we do so because we believe that not watering the plants caused them to dry up and die. In this book, I investigate how we make moral and causal judgments about omissions. I discuss different philosophical perspectives on this matter, and I outline to what extent the actual social practice is in line with philosophical theories. (shrink)

The omission effect, first described by Spranca and colleagues, has since been extensively studied and repeatedly confirmed. All else being equal, most people judge it to be morally worse to actively bring about a negative event than to passively allow that event to happen. In this paper, we provide new experimental data that challenges previous studies of the omission effect both methodologically and philosophically. We argue that previous studies have failed to control for the equivalence of rules that (...) are violated by actions and omissions. Once equivalent norms are introduced, our results show that the omission effect is eliminated, even if the negative outcome of the behavior is foreseen and intended by the agent. We show that the omission effect does not constitute a basic, moral disposition but occurs exclusively in complex moral situations. Building on these empirical results, we cast doubt onto two influential explanations of the omission effect, the Causal Relevance Hypothesis and the Overgeneralization Hypothesis, and provide a novel explanation of the phenomenon. Furthermore, we discuss various ramifications of the interplay between our understanding of omissions and legal systems. (shrink)

This paper argues that agents can be directly blameworthy for unwitting omissions. The view developed focuses on the capacities and abilities of agents.

I present and develop the view that omissions are de re possibilities of actual events. Omissions do not literally fail to occur; rather, they possibly occur. An omission is a tripartite metaphysical entity composed of an actual event, a possible event, and a contextually specified counterpart relation between them. This view resolves ontological, causal, and semantic puzzles about omissions, and also accounts for important data about moral responsibility for outcomes resulting from omissions.

Unwitting omissions pose a challenge for theories of moral responsibility. For commonsense morality holds many unwitting omitters morally responsible for their omissions (and for the consequences thereof), even though they appear to lack both awareness and control. For example, some people who leave dogs trapped in their cars outside on a hot day (see Sher 2009), or who forget to pick something up from the store as they promised (see Clarke 2014) seem to be blameworthy for their omissions. And yet, (...) if moral responsibility requires awareness of one’s omission and of its moral significance, as well as control, then it would appear that the unwitting protagonists of these cases are not, in fact, morally responsible for their omissions. In this paper, we consider, and ultimately reject, a number of influential views that try to solve this problem, including skepticism about responsibility for such omissions, a view we call the “decision tracing” view that grounds responsibility for such omissions in previous exercises of conscious agency, and “attributionist” views that ground responsibility for such omissions in the value judgments or other aspects of the agents’ selves. We propose instead a new tracing view that grounds responsibility for unwitting omissions in past opportunities to avoid them, where having such opportunities requires general awareness of the risk of such an omission, but not an exercise of agency, in contrast to the decision tracing view. We argue that the view can better accommodate cases, and fits well with the most plausible conception of the kind of control required for responsibility. (shrink)

In previous work I have argued that talk about negative events should not be taken at face value: typically, what we are inclined to think of as a negative event (John’s failure to go jogging) is just an ordinary, positive event (his going to the movie instead); it is a positive event under a negative description. Here I consider more closely the difficulties that arise in those cases where no positive event seems available to do the job, as with putative (...) cases of causation by omission. In particular, I elaborate on Helen Beebee’s idea that not all causal explanations are reports of causation. When we mention John’s failure to turn off the gas as an explanans of why there was an explosion, we do not say what caused the explosion. We do not mention any of the relevant causes. We just remark that one sort of event that was supposed to occur, and whose occurrence would have prevented the explosion, did not in fact occur. (shrink)

Analyses of factual causation face perennial problems, including preemption, overdetermination, and omissions. Arguably, the thorniest, are cases of omissive overdetermination, involving two independent omissions, each sufficient for the harm, and neither, independently, making a difference. A famous example is Saunders, where pedestrian was hit by a driver of a rental car who never pressed on the (unbeknownst to the driver) defective (and, negligently, never inspected) brakes. Causal intuitions in such cases are messy, reflected in disagreement about which omission mattered. (...) What these analyses mistakenly take for granted, is that at issue is the 'efficacy' of each omission. I argue, on the contrary, the puzzle of omissive overdetermination favors taking the act/omission distinction seriously. Factual causation, properly understood precludes omissions (i.e. omissions are not causal). Of course, the law also attaches liability to omissions, but this works differently from liability for real causes (e.g. omissions have a duty requirement, they also respond differentially to difference-making considerations). The manner in which liability attaches for omissions differs from that of straightforward causal liability, and is entirely dependent on the underlying causal structure. Attention to that structure (e.g. that the driver's hitting the pedestrian with his car is what actually caused the injury) sheds light on which omissions matter (e.g. driver's failure to press on the brakes) and why (because that failure removes a defense the driver would have to liability for the accident he caused). Other cases, where the parties' connection is entirely omissive (e.g. two physicians fail to detect independently lethal conditions), come out differently (tracking moralized elements). The analysis offered makes better sense of both why omissive determination cases are puzzling and how to resolve them. (shrink)

Moore is one of the many law theorists who doubt that omissions can operate as factors in the causation of events and that in cases in which potential agents remain passive in spite of an obligation to intervene ascriptions of responsibility are justified exclusively by non-causal factors. The paper argues that this is an uneasy and essentially unstable position. It also shows that Moore himself, in Causation and Responsibility, does not consistently follow his exclusion of a causal role of (...) class='Hi'>omission in the context of casuistic analysis. Though Moore is to be praised for the clear stance he takes on the issue of negative causality, an analysis of the reasons given for the negation of causality by omission shows that these do not carry enough weight to compensate the sacrifice in theoretical coherence made by the special treatment of negative responsibility in cases in special obligations. It is proposed, instead, that the fact that responsibility for omissions is, as a rule, weaker than that for positive acts is better explained by non-causal factors such as the significant, though incomplete, correlation of the active-passive distinction with a number of normatively relevant factors and the greater social significance of moral and legal rules against active over against passive forms of wrongdoing. (shrink)

It is argued that intentionally omitting requires having an intention with relevant content. And the intention must play a causal role with respect to one’s subsequent thought and conduct. Even if omissions cannot be caused, an account of intentional omission must be causal. There is a causal role for one’s reasons as well when one intentionally omits to do something.

Philosophical discussion of the topic of intentional agency has often focused on questions about the nature of the events which are intentional actions. This event-oriented approach cannot yield an adequate account of human agency because it cannot accommodate negative acts, or acts of omission. Agents may act intentionally by omitting to act, but many such acts of omission cannot be identified with any event consisting of a bodily movement. This dissertation is an attempt to develop an account of (...) agency which can accommodate acts of omission. In the course of this, generally accepted views about the causal powers of agents, the ontology of action, the relation between an intention and the act which realizes it and the abilities exercised in acting are challenged. In Chapter One it is argued that causation by acts of omission cannot be explicated in terms of event causation and that the abilities which an agent exercises in intentionally omitting must be analyzed as second order abilities. Views according to which acts of omission are in some way constituted by positive actions are surveyed and criticized in Chapter Two. It is claimed that an agent omits to act by forming a negative intention, but this mental act is not identical to the act of omission. Acts of omission are states of affairs which obtain or facts and are not events. In Chapter Three it is shown that certain positive non-basic acts like killings also cannot be identified with any event because no event could have the requisite temporal and causal properties. Two important differences between positive and negative acts are identified in Chapter Four. The relation between a positive intention and behavior which realizes it is a causal one, but negative intentions do not cause the behavior which realizes them. A person may perform a positive action and may be responsible for this even though he lacks the ability to refrain from doing so, but to omit to perform some action and to be responsible for this, a person must have the ability to perform it. (shrink)

Given the pervasiveness of habit in human life, the distinctive problems posed by habitual acts for accounts of moral responsibility deserve more attention than they have hitherto received. But whereas it is hard to find a systematic treatment habitual acts within current accounts of moral responsibility, proponents of such accounts have turned their attention to a topic which, I suggest, is a closely related one: unwitting omissions. Habitual acts and unwitting omissions raise similar issues for a theory of responsibility because (...) they likewise invite us to rethink the assumption that moral responsibility requires awareness of the relevant features of one’s conduct. And given the increasing interest in the problem of responsibility for unwitting omissions, it is reasonable to expect that the theoretical moves made in response to this problem might be used to make sense of judgments of responsibility regarding habitual acts. I substantiate these points by inquiring into whether some well-known accounts of unwitting omissions can be used to explain how we can be responsible for things we do out of habit. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss a recent exchange of articles between Hugh McLachlan and John Coggon on the relationship between omissions, causation, and moral responsibility. My aim is to contribute to their debate by isolating a presupposition I believe they both share and by questioning that presupposition. The presupposition is that, at any given moment, there are countless things that I am omitting to do. This leads both McLachlan and Coggon to give a distorted account of the relationship between causation (...) and moral or (as the case may be) legal responsibility and, in the case of Coggon, to claim that the law’s conception of causation is a fiction based on policy. Once it is seen that this presupposition is faulty, we can attain a more accurate view of the logical relationship between causation and moral responsibility in the case of omissions. This is important because it will enable us, in turn, to understand why the law continues to regard omissions as different, both logically and morally, from acts, and why the law seeks to track that logical and moral difference in the legal distinction it draws between withholding life-sustaining measures and euthanasia. (shrink)

In some contexts, not saying S generates a conversational implicature: that the speaker didn’t have sufficient reason, all things considered, to say S. I call this an omissive implicature. Standard ways of thinking about conversational implicature make the importance and even the existence of omissive implicatures somewhat surprising. But I argue that there is no principled reason to deny that there are such implicatures, and that they help explain a range of important phenomena. This paper focuses on the roles omissive (...) implicatures play in Quantity implicatures—in particular, in solving the symmetry problem for scalar implicatures—and on the political and social importance of omissions where apologies, objections, or other communicative acts are expected or warranted. (shrink)

The characteristic asymmetry in intentionality attributions that is known as the Knobe effect can be explained by conjoining an orthodox theory of intentional action with a normative account of intentional omission. On the latter view: omissions presuppose some normative context; there are good reasons why the intentionality of omissions requires agents' knowledge rather than intention. The asymmetry in intentionality attributions in Knobe's cases can be seen to be derivative from an asymmetry in intentional omissions. The omissions account further explains (...) the Butler problem and some related puzzles. It also safeguards the simple view of intentional action from the asymmetry challenge. (shrink)

Omissions are metaphysically puzzling: Are they something or are they nothing? This paper develops and defends the constitution view of omissions, according to which a correct analysis of a person’s omission has the form “S omitted to X by Y-ing,” where her Y-ing is what constitutes her not-X-ing. The paper explains why the constitution view should be preferred to other views of omissions and defends the view against objections.

In the evolution of criminally relevant action in modern crime theory, social action has assumed a particular significance as a dogmatic element that enables the effective protection of legal assets in a society beset by risks. In the vast array of theories regarding the role of the guarantor and its legal and doctrinal development, as well as the jurisprudential extension of equivalence clauses of improper omissions that serve as amplifier devices of the criminal statue through an indirect adaptation, there is (...) a need to identify the most effective means to shield legal assets, which allows for an imputation of passive conducts, despite having an active typical description. This introduces the controversial figure of the improper omission, which is used with the function of perfecting all of the structural elements of the criminal conduct. When an individual knows he is in a position of guarantor and is aware of the potential consequences, but fails to take action, having the means to prevent a foreseeable outcome, this device serves to enhance the criminal protection of legal assets, fostering social solidarity as the basis of the criminal justice system. This system, by satisfying the function of general prevention of the punishment, ideally dissuades the individual from committing crimes with the threat of penalty. These theories are fundamental to understanding criminal responsibility by improper omission in the context of the objective imputation theory. By guiding the evolution and delimitation of its application, they serve as a significant factor in criminal social control in Colombia. (shrink)

Frankfurt-type examples seem to show that agents can be morally responsible for their actions and omissions even if they could not have done otherwise. Fischer and Ravizza's influential account of moral responsibility is largely based on such examples. I examine a problem with their account of responsibility in cases where we fail to act. The solution to this problem has a surprising and far reaching implication concerning the construction of successful Frankfurt-type examples. I argue that the role of the counterfactual (...) intervener in such examples can only be filled by a rational agent. (shrink)

This paper warns of two threats to moral responsibility that arise when accounting for omissions, given some plausible assumptions about how abilities are related to responsibility. The first problem threatens the legitimacy of our being responsible by expanding the preexisting tension that luck famously raises for moral responsibility. The second threat to moral responsibility challenges the legitimacy of our practices of holding responsible. Holding others responsible for their omissions requires us to bridge an epistemic gap that does not arise when (...) holding others responsible for their actions—one that we might often fail to cross. (shrink)

According to what I call theidentity view, omissions are actual events. For example, the nominal ‘Ali's non-jogging’ denotes whatever Ali is doing at the time she is said not to be jogging. Some have objected that omissions (and more generally absences) cannot be events, since the two do not have the same causal relations. I show how advocates of the identity view can offer a pragmatic account of the data the objection relies on.

It is widely held that one can be responsible for doing something that one was unable to avoid doing. This paper focuses primarily on the question of whether one can be responsible for not doing something that one was unable to do. The paper begins with an examination of the account of responsibility for omissions offered by John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, arguing that in many cases it yields mistaken verdicts. An alternative account is sketched that jibes with and (...) explains judgments about a variety of omissions cases, including intentional omissions as well as simple failures to act. (shrink)

L’omission de clitiques sujets préverbaux en frioulan : méthodologie et analyse à base de contraintesEn frioulan, les clitiques sujets en position préverbale sont omis en général quand le verbe est précédé de la particule négative, d’un clitique objet ou d’un pronom réfléchi. Toutefois, les conditions précises de cette omission n’ont pas été analysées jusqu’à présent de manière approfondie. Dans cet article, je propose une analyse dans le cadre de la théorie de l’optimalité fondée sur des données empiriques. L’analyse (...) est basée sur des jugements de grammaticalité de 52 locuteurs représentant les trois principales variétés frioulanes. Les données sont aussi comparées à celles d’un autre corpus, une bible frioulane. L’article conclut que l’omission des clitiques sujets est déterminée par la phonologie et par une stratégie visant à éviter les syncrétismes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Omissions and Chronological ComplexitiesJyoti Mohan (bio)The stated purpose of Chinese and Indian Ways of Thinking in Early Modern European Philosophy: The Reception and the Exclusion by Selusi Ambrogio is "to examine the European understanding of China and India within the histories of philosophy from 1600 to 1744."1 Specifically, Ambrogio sets out to investigate the antecedents of the "othering" of non-Western philosophies. How far back did the notion go, that (...) non-Western philosophies were inferior? While Ambrogio often extends his argument to non-Western philosophies in general, in this monograph he examines only what he defines as "orientalist" philosophies—the philosophies of India and China. Since Ambrogio is investigating the histories of philosophy written in Europe, this choice makes sense: India and China were the two philosophical giants that most European philosophers needed to include in their works in order to claim to be universalist. No philosopher who wrote about world philosophies—and by extension no historian of philosophy—could ignore India and China, whether it was to dismiss the philosophies emanating from these geographic regions as inferior, or to extol them as proof that Europe was not the birthplace of "original thought."Ambrogio has chosen a time span from 1600 to 1744 c.e. to represent "the year 1600 … [,] the publication of Barbaricae philosophae antiquitatum by Otto van Heurn[,] and 1744[,] the year of the publication of the last book of the Historia critica by Jakob Brucker."2 Within the limits of this time [End Page 220] span, Ambrogio examines the work of several scholars who included Indian and Chinese philosophies in their "world histories of philosophies" and delineates three major historiographical trends. His rationale for ending his study with Brucker's work is that after this eighteenth-century opus, "Asians were usually excluded from the histories of philosophy."3 This time span seems puzzling to me. I know that most, if not all, of the authors Ambrogio cites had successors in their individual traditions well into the nineteenth century, if not the twentieth. While many histories of philosophy focused solely on the Western and classical traditions (as they did during the period under review by Ambrogio as well), the work of historians and scholars on Orientalist philosophies continued to multiply. To the extent that Ambrogio diligently studies his sources and constructs his argument, his work is commendable, but as a historian my questions for Ambrogio have to do with the underlying rationale for the time span he has chosen, and, by that extension, by the choices of his sources. Below I collect evidence that Asians continue to be included in the histories of philosophy past 1744, and in so doing suggest that this fact has an impact on his historiographical model.For instance, I would like to understand why, in his choice of sources, he has omitted all colonial works, especially since he engages with the argument that descriptions and understandings of Indian and Chinese philosophies were meditated through lenses of proselytization and of conquest. Granted, he is beginning with historians of philosophy, but as the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries progressed, historians also diversified their writings—as Ambrogio acknowledges—into histories of religion for instance. The connections between, and descriptions of, non-Western religions and philosophies were so muddled that it is impossible to separate them, save by attending to the titles of individual authors' works as being about religion or philosophy, respectively.The contents of such works are so closely related, at least in the Indian context, that contemporary historians, especially of the colonial period and of Indology, do not quibble over whether these works are about religion or philosophy. For instance, Paul Masson-Oursel wrote in 1923 that the development of Indian philosophy was integral to and proceeded alongside the development of religion.4 Systems of philosophical thought in India operated within larger systems of religious practice. Based on this model, Masson-Oursel describes the development of Indian philosophy as proceeding from the needs of religion. So, for example, he theorized that the mix of an Indo-Iranian religion and a pastoral, fire-worshipping people with an older indigenous Dravidian culture of agriculture, Goddess worship, and belief in amulets, spells, talismans, and other... (shrink)

Introduction : what's the problem? -- The problem may lurk in Aristotle's ethics -- Aristotle's akratic : foreshadowing a solution -- A negligent omission at the root of all sinfulness : Anselm and the Devil -- Negligent vs. non-negligent : a Thomistic distinction directing us toward a solution -- Can I have your divided attention? : Scotus, indistinct intellections, and type-1 negligent omissions almost solved -- I can't get you out of my mind : Scotus, lingering indistinct intellections, and (...) type-2 negligent omissions -- Scotus's affection-ate corrective : a possible final solution to a type-2 variant -- Neglected treatises help solve negligence : the action theory of Francisco Suarez -- An answer that cannot be neglected : the solution -- Appendix A : translation of Nicomachean ethics 1146b31-1147b19. (shrink)

Omissions – any events, actions, or things that do not occur – are central to numerous debates in causation and ethics. This article surveys views on what omissions are, whether they are causally efficacious, and how they ground moral responsibility.

This essay offers an action-theoretic analysis of the distinction between positively bringing something about and passively letting something happen. The analysis, based on the notion of an agent''s bringing about some state of affairs, is closest to the analysis of omissions of Brand (1971), but utilizes the relatedness logic of Epstein (1979). Syntactic features bring out the idea that an action can be partially positive and partially negative, e.g., by not bringing about one thing an agent can bring about something (...) else. An ethical implication of this analysis is that a passive course of action is sometimes less culpable than an active one, just because it is passive. (shrink)

This paper examines three views of what an omission or an instance of refraining is. The view advanced is that in many cases, an omission is simply an absence of an action of some type. However, generally one’s not doing a certain thing counts as an omission only if there is some norm, standard, or ideal that calls for one’s doing that thing.

In this article we investigate origins of several cases of failure of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems employing machine learning and deep learning. We focus on omission and commission errors in (a) the inputs to the AI system, (b) the processing logic, and (c) the outputs from the AI system. Our framework yields a set of 28 factors that can be used for reconstructing the path of AI failures and for determining corrective action. Our research helps identify emerging themes of (...) inquiry necessary for developing more robust AI-ML systems. We are hopeful that our work will help strengthen the use of machine-learning AI by enhancing the rates of true positive and true negative judgements from AI systems, and by lowering the probabilities of false positive and false negative judgements. (shrink)

Determining the human activity that social processes consist in is a central task for the philosophy of the social sciences. This paper asks: which conception of agency arising from contemporary action theory is the most suitable for social science explanation? It is argued that a movement-centered, Davidsonian picture of agency is not suitable for explaining certain social processes such as strikes and boycotts because, instead of intentional bodily movements, they are explained by the intentional omissions of agents. I propose that (...) instead of intentional bodily movements, social processes are better explained by phenomena in which an agent is taking an active relation both to her mental or bodily processes as well as to what is happening around her. Thus, to fully explain social processes, a comprehensive theory of agency that can account for intentional actions and intentional omissions and a conception of agency that includes both materialist and volitionalist aspects is needed. (shrink)

The statement that we are currently failing to address some of humanity’s greatest challenges seems uncontroversial—we are not doing enough to limit global warming to a maximum of 2 °C and we are exposing vulnerable people to preventable diseases when failing to produce herd immunity. But what singles out such failings from all the things we did not do when all are unintended? Unlike their individualist counterparts, collective inaction and omission have not yet received much attention in the literature. (...) collective inaction, I argue, can be attributed to a group of agents where a collective action x that the agents did not perform was collectively feasible at time t where each agent in that group had sufficient reason to contribute to performing x or others had a reasonable expectation that they would perform x. I show that, perhaps surprisingly, we can speak of collective inaction even where only one member of the group fails to act. However, where large and dispersed groups of agents are concerned, there is often no meaningful way of attributing collective failings. Still, I contend that the failure to close the global emissions gap and—in some cases—to generate herd immunity are indeed on us. (shrink)

The criminal law presently distinguishes between actions and omissions, and only rarely proscribes failures to avert consequences that it would be an offense to bring about. Why? In recent years it has been persuasively argued by both Glover and Bennett that, celeris paribus, omissions to prevent a harm are just as culpable as are actions which bring that harm about. On the other hand, and acknowledging that hitherto “lawyers have not been very successful in finding a rationale for it,” Tony (...) Honoré has sought to defend the law's differential treatment. He proposes a “distinct-duties theory” that in addition to the general duties we owe to everyone, we also owe distinct duties to a more limited collection of people and associations, specified by features of our relationship with them. Where a distinct duty holds, breach by omission may well be no better than breach by positive action. But absent a distinct duty, omissions, per Honoré, are less culpable. They are mere failures to intervene and improve or rectify things, whereas actions are positive interventions which make things worse. And, thus, the law has good reason to differentiate between them. (shrink)

Literature on testimonial injustice and ways that perpetrators might combat it have flourished since Miranda Fricker’s ground-breaking work on testimonial injustice. Less attention has been given, however, to the role of bystanders. In this paper, I examine the accountability that bystanders may have for their omissions to redress testimonial injustice. I argue that bystander accountability applies in cases where it is opportune for bystanders to intervene, and if they are also sufficiently equipped and able to redress the testimonial injustice. Moreover, (...) I recommend that we move beyond virtue responsibilism for ameliorative thinking about testimonial injustice. (shrink)

Both the theoretical frameworks that organize the first part of Barbey & Sloman's (B&S's) target article and the empirical evidence marshaled in the second part are marked by distinctions that should not exist (i.e., false dichotomies), conflations where distinctions should be made, and selective omissions of empirical results that create illusions of theoretical and empirical favor.

But if there aren’t, then ‘they’ are not caused by anything and do not cause anything. That certainly appears to be false, however. John’s absence from our party might have been caused by his having fallen ill, and might cause a commotion. Dick’s not eating his soup might have been caused by his having fallen ill, and might cause a commotion.

If causalism is a complete theory of what it is to behave intentionally, it also has to account for intentional omissions. Carolina Sartorio, 513–530, 2009) has developed a powerful argument, the Causal Exclusion for Omissions, showing that intentional omissions cannot be explained by causalism. A crucial claim in the argument is that there is a causal competition between a mental omission and the mental action performed instead. In this paper I reject the argument by demonstrating that there is no (...) causal competition ever between an omission and the action performed instead. I propose what I call the Realisationist Conception of Omissions, which consists in considering omissions as multiply realisable absences whose realisers are specific positive actions. I further argue in favour of the Determinationist Conception of Omissions, according to which the relation between omissions and their realisers is a determinable/determinate relation. Since there can be no causal preemption between a determinable and its determinates, there can be no causal preemption between omissions and the actions performed instead, and causalism is safe. I also show that this view of omissions has some other independent advantages – like for example that of solving the problem of the spatio-temporal localisation of omissions. (shrink)

The Counterfactual Comparative Account of Harm says that an event is overall harmful for someone if and only if it makes her worse off than she otherwise would have been. I defend this account from two common objections.

Recent research has found that the omission of accent marks in Spanish does not produce slower word identification times in go/no-go lexical decision and semantic categorization tasks [e.g., cárcel = carcel], thus suggesting that vowels like á and a are represented by the same orthographic units during word recognition and reading. However, there is a discrepant finding with the yes/no lexical decision task, where the words with the omitted accent mark produced longer response times than the words with the (...) accent mark. In Experiment 1, we examined this discrepant finding by running a yes/no lexical decision experiment comparing the effects for words and non-words. Results showed slower response times for the words with omitted accent mark than for those with the accent mark present, thus suggesting a bias toward a “word” response for accented items in the yes/no lexical decision task. To test this interpretation, Experiment 2 used the same stimuli with a blocked design and a go/no-go lexical decision task. Results showed similar response times to words regardless of whether the accent mark was omitted. This pattern strongly suggests that the longer response times to words with an omitted accent mark in yes/no lexical decision experiments are a task-dependent effect rather than a genuine reading cost. (shrink)

Clarke's book on omissions is rich and subtle, filled with nuance and insight. It is chock-full of arguments, and helpful illustrations to back up these arguments, and it covers a lot of ground ver...

People generally accept that there is causation by omission—that the omission of some events cause some related events. But this acceptance elicits the selection problem, or the difficulty of explaining the selection of a particular omissive cause or class of causes from the causal conditions. Some theorists contend that dependence theories of causation cannot resolve this problem. In this paper, we argue that the appeal to norms adequately resolves the selection problem for dependence theories, and we provide novel (...) experimental evidence for it. (shrink)

Understanding what sorts of things one might be responsible for is an important component of understanding what one should do in situations where the administration of artificial hydration and nutrition are required to sustain the life of a patient. Relying on work done in the philosophy of action and on moral responsibility, I consider the implications of omitting the administration of artificial hydration and nutrition and instances in which the omitting agent would and would not be responsible for the death (...) of the patient. I am primarily interested in arguing against those who wish to seat responsibility for the death of a patient in an underlying pathology, even when the underlying pathology is not the cause of the patient’s death. (shrink)

Negligence and omission are closely related: commonly, in cases of negligent action, the agent has failed to turn her attention to some pertinent fact. But that omission is itself typically unwitting. A sufficient condition for blameworthiness for an unwitting omission is offered, as is an account of blameworthiness for negligent action. It is argued that one can be blameworthy for wrongdoing done from ignorance even if one is not blameworthy for that ignorance.