Works in Preparation:
Overdetermination Problems
I explain and distinguish between several different problems that are run together in the literature on causal overdetermination: (i) what is overdetermination?, (ii) is overdetermination ever actualized?, and (iii) is overdetermination a problem?
I argue that much of the confusion stems from working with a loosely defined overdetermination schema, rather than fully specified notions of overdetermination. The schema is:
(OD) Causes c1 and c2 overdetermine an effect e if distinct, occurring causes c1 and c2 are sufficient to cause e in the way that it occurs.
I show how different satisfiers for each portion of the schema (distinctness of causes, occurrence, causation, and precision in the way that the effect occurs) yield different notions of overdetermination. I then explain how separating the notions of overdetermination shows that some problems are more benign than others, and that some problems are not problems at all.
Understanding Overdetermination
I isolate and define a special class of causal overdetermination cases and look at their implications. There is a sort of overdetermination that is best understood as a particular kind of causal structure plus a particular intrinsic character of an effect: the effect is insensitive with respect to the force of the extra cause. Insensitivity of the effect distinguishes cases of symmetric overdetermination from joint causation, in which the causes "work together" to bring about an effect. An effect e is symmetrically overdetermined if: (i) Both occurring, complete causal processes c1 and c2 are sufficient to bring about e; and (ii) e is insensitive. An insensitive effect that is overdetermined is transworld identical to its singly-caused intrinsic duplicate in another possible world.
I show how Jonathan Schaffer?s cases of so-called "trumping preemption" are actually cases of symmetric overdetermination. I also show how Lewis? "influence view" of counterfactuals can handle this special sort of overdetermination case.
Moral Overdetermination
If a multinational corporation falsifies its accounting records, thus causing the loss of billions of dollars and thousands of jobs, who is responsible? The corporation is responsible, since the corporation causes the loss of the funds. But what is it to hold a corporation morally accountable? The corporation is made up of people. Corporations differ from the sums of people that constitute them: corporations have legal status that the people working in concert do not. Corporations are economically powerful, while people are not. Corporations have monetary values, while people do not.
This difference in properties motivates a nonreductionist metaphysics of social objects: corporations are not reducible to, but not entirely distinct from, the sums of people that constitute them. This is a move familiar to metaphysicians of ordinary objects and minds, who hold, respectively, that objects and minds are not reducible to, but not entirely distinct from, the things that realize them.
A problem for nonreductionists is causal overdetermination, in which each entity (the object and the particles, the mental state and the physical state, the corporation and the sum of people) is sufficient to bring about the same effect. I hold that the nonreductionist about social objects faces an extra problem: if both the corporation and the sum of people cause the loss of the funds, then both the corporation and the sum of people are morally responsible for the loss of the funds. I call this problem moral overdetermination.
(Please email me at
sjbern at u dot
arizona dot edu if
you would like a copy of any draft.)