B7: Graded Causation

这个项目的目的是发展一种因果度理论。许多上下文似乎暗示因果关系允许程度。例如，如果两家公司共同造成了一些环境破坏，我们不仅关心他们是否都对破坏负有责任，而且还关心他们的责任有多大。这些问题与责任归属问题密切相关，因为至少在一定程度上，假设行动者可以对结果负责的程度取决于他们对结果的因果贡献程度，这是初步合理的。另一个关键问题是如何处理过度决定情景中的因果程度，因为现有的因果程度理论通常暗示，如果存在更多的过度决定原因，因果贡献将减少。然而，如果因果关系的程度对责任的程度有影响，这个结果似乎是有问题的。这个项目的工作假设是，一个适当的分级因果关系理论应该满足两种类型的充分性条件：(i)源于关于因果关系和规范性判断之间关系的经验结果的条件，以及（ii）关于因果关系和责任之间关系的形而上学考虑所施加的条件。总体目标是开发一种考虑两种充分性条件的分级因果关系的定量度量。

The aim of this project is to develop a theory of degrees of causation. Many contexts seem to imply that causation allows for degrees. For instance, if two companies jointly cause some environmental damage, we are often not only interested in whether they both contributed to the damage, but also in how large their contribution was. Such questions are closely related to questions of responsibility ascription, since it is prima facie plausible to assume that the degree to which agents can be held responsible for an outcome depends, at least to a certain extent, on how much they causally contributed to it. A further crucial question is how to deal with degrees of causation in overdetermination scenarios, since extant theories of degrees of causation typically imply that causal contribution will decrease if more overdetermining causes are present. However, if degrees of causation have an impact on degrees of responsibility, this consequence seems problematic.The working hypothesis of this project is that an adequate theory of graded causation should satisfy two types of adequacy conditions: (i) conditions stemming from empirical results concerning the relationship between causal and normative judgements, and (ii) conditions imposed by metaphysical considerations concerning the relationship between causation and responsibility. The overarching goal is to develop a quantitative measure of graded causation that takes both types of adequacy conditions into account.