Causation and Responsibility H.L.A. Hart and A.M. Honoré- They focus on the role of causation in determining legal as compared to moral responsibility. - They focus on 3 cases that illustrate the potential difficulties in tracing the consequencesfrom what seems initially to be simple causes: o Case 1:  Forest Fire- A flings a lighted cigarette into the bracken at the forest.- It starts a fire. o Hart and Honoré argue that though blaming A is easy, we have not taken the breeze to be a cause in the same way we have taken A’s flinging of the lit cigarette to be the cause. o Case 2:  Forest Fire - A flings a lighted cigarette into the bracken at the forest. - Just as the flames are about to die out, person B purposely pours gasoline onto the dying embers. - Fire spreads. o Here Hart and Honoré state that unlike case 1, A is not the cause of the forest fire. o B is, because B has exploited the circumstances. o Case 3 Fight - A hits B and falls to the ground. - A tree also falls to the ground and kills B. o According to Hart and Honoré, while A may be the cause ofthe bruises, A is not responsible for B’s death. o The tree is. Responsibility in Law and Morals - In the moral judgments of ordinary life we have occasion to blame people because they have caused harm to others, and also, if less frequently, to insist that morally they are bound to compensate those to whom they have caused harm. - There is a recognition, perhaps diminishing, of this non-causal grounds of responsibility outside the lawo Responsibility is sometimes admitted by on person or a group of persons, even if no precaution has been neglected by them, for harm done by persons related to them in a special way, either by family ties or as members of the same social or political association.- To limit the types of harm which the law will recognize is not enougho Even if the types of harm are limited it would still be too much for any society to punish or exact compensation from individuals whenever their connection with harm of such types would justify moral censure. - Conversely, social needs may require that compensation should be paid and even (though less obviously) that punishment be inflicted where no such connection betweenthe person held responsible and the harm exists. Tracing Consequences- “To consequences no limit can be set”: “Every event which would not have happened if an earlier event had not happened is the consequence of that earlier event.” o These two propositions are not equivalent in meaning and are not equally or in the same way at variance with ordinary thought.  It is not that this unrestricted use of “consequences” is unintelligible or never found - It is indeed used to refer to bizarre of fortuitous connections or coincidenceso But the point is that the various causal notions employed for the purposes of explanation, attribution of responsibility, or the assessment of contributions to the course of history carry with them implicit limits which are similar in these different employments.  The second proposition, defining consequence in terms of “necessary condition,” with which theorists are really concerned. - Consider the detail of three simple cases. o A forest fire breaks out, and later investigation shows that shortly before the outbreak A had flung away a lighted cigarette into the bracken at the edge of the forest, the bracken caught fire, a light breeze got up, and fanned the flames in the direction of the forest.  A’s action was the cause of the fire, whether he intended it or not. - The breeze which sprang up after A dropped the cigarette, and without which the fire would not have spread to the forest, was not only subsequent to his action but entirely independent of it o It was, however, a common recurrent feature of the environment, and, as such, it is thought of not as an “intervening” force but as merely part of the circumstances in which the cause “operates” o A throws a lighted cigarette into the bracken which catches fire. o Just as the flames are about to flicker out, B, who is not acting in concert with A, deliberately pours petrol on them. o The fire spreads and burns down the forest.  A’s action, whether or not he intended the forest fire, was not the cause of the fire.- B’s waso A hits B who falls to the ground stunned and bruised by the blow  At that moment a tree crashes into the ground and kills B. o A has certainly caused B’s bruises but not his death For though the fall of the tree was, like the evening breeze in our earlier example, independent of and subsequent to the initiation action, it wouldbe differentiated from the breeze in any description in casual terms of theconnection of B’s death with A’s action.  The connection between A’s action and B’s death in the first case would naturally be described in the language of a coincidence. - It was a coincidence. o It just happened that, at the very moment when A knockedB down, a tree crashed at the very place where he fell and killed him. - We speak of a coincidence whenever the conjunction of two or more events in certain spatial or temporal relations o Is very unlikely by ordinary standardso Is for some reason significant or importanto Provided that they occur without human contrivance o Are independent of each other. o One further criterion in addition to these four must be satisfied if a conjunction of events is, to rank as a coincidence and as a limit when the consequences of the action are traced.Sua Culpa Joel Feinberg - He lays out 3 criteria for someone to be at fault and then reformulates the first, specifiesthe second, and brings the 3 into question, answering potential objections about it. o Concept of “his fault” in kids and adult alike has origin in the law  To explain the concept of “his fault” have to explain what both lawyers and of laymen do with the phrase and how it is possible for each to understand and to communicate with the other by means of it. o Some terminology (not super important, just clarifies some things): At fault = to blame  Often if responsible -> blameworthy -> usually liable  But one can be to blame for an occurrence without being liable for it “Morally responsible for” is being responsible for something in the sense of “chargeable to one as one’s fault”  Not talking about when a man has fault, but rather he was at fault (to blame), which is to say that the harm is/was his