Higiene en la manipulación de alimentos

Example (18):

CAR RACE#4*: (my own example) Suppose example CAR RACE#3* (example 17) again, except this time suppose that the race car driver (who loses the race) is in cahoots with evil scientists. Suppose the driver has been instructed by the evil scientists to drive at exactly 70mph during the first half of the race, but accelerate to over that speed half way through the race. Suppose that if the race car driver accelerated over or dipped below 70mph, a pair of rocket boosters would activate causing the race car to win the race at outrageously high velocities. Suppose that the driver’s car has a malfunction after the first ¼ of the race, resulting in the fact that the race car can’t shift off 70mph. The race car loses the race (only just - by a microscopic distance in fact), and the wagon wins by breaking the ribbon (E).

In this example, we can see that not-too-distant alterations to a non cause of the ribbon breaking (the race car driving over half way through the race), counterfactually imply a

substantial range of alterations to an effect (the ribbon breaking), because had the race car at such points been altered in its velocity, then it would have accelerated to superluminal velocities which would have therein altered the ribbon breaking. Thus, a non-cause is analysed as a causal influencer of the effect; the incorrect analysis.

Examples (17) and (18) thus serve to demonstrate how the influence analysis is neither necessary nor sufficient for causation. We can easily see that appealing to modifications to the influence analysis (such as that provided by the influence chains or influence fixing analysis, or by appealing to ‘relatively inert zones’) do not help us here in either of these examples, and so our influence analyses are neither necessary nor sufficient for causal influence.

So far our examples of late pre-emption have been only slightly tougher examples for our analyses. The real trouble with these examples confronts the quasi-dependence and would be dependence analyses, which (upon certain interpretations) appear to over-generate causes by appeal to any of the late pre-emption examples visited thus far:

The quasi-dependence analysis has mixed results: Recall the details of the quasi- dependence analysis; where C and E are distinct actual events, then:

 C causes E iff E quasi-depends on C.

 E quasi-depends on C iff there is an isonomic duplicate of a process from E to C, in which the duplicate of E counterfactually depends on the duplicate of C.

First we notice that in all of our examples there is an isonomic duplicate containing C, E and the process running from C to E which elicits counterfactual dependence. Take any of the CAR RACE late pre-emption examples: There is an isonomic duplicate of the wagon starting, and the process of the wagon travelling from the start point to the ribbon, in which the ribbon breaking (E) counterfactually depends on the wagon starting (C). There is such a duplicate, because there are possible cases (just like the actual one in which the wagon starts, travels, and breaks the ribbon), in which certain background events are not present (such as the sports car travelling on its route), and in which the relevant sort of dependence holds. Thus the analysis analyses the cause as a cause in each of the examples, and demonstrates an early success.

Whether the quasi-dependence analysis analyses the sports car’s route as a non-cause is contingent on what we take isonomic duplicates to be. Recall, Lewis’ criterion was that isonomic duplicates didn’t need to be precise, strict duplicates of events, but simply reasonably similar ones. Taking Lewis at his word, his analysis over-generates causes by analysing the pre-empted back-up cause as an actual cause. To see this, we need but consider any of the cases of CAR RACE, as follows:

We suppose that in the actual case in which the sports car takes its route, the car is a microscopic distance away from breaking the ribbon, but was just caught short by the wagon. Now, there is an isonomic duplicate of the process of the sports car travelling on its route up to the ribbon, in which the ribbon breaking (E) counterfactually depends on

the wagon taking its route (C). This is the case for two reasons: firstly this is because Lewis’ notion of a duplicate (i.e. as a very similar case indeed) is loose enough to permit of counterpart cases in which the sports car really does cause the ribbon breaking (the actual case in which it doesn’t and the possible case in which it does are only microscopically different), and secondly, because there are such very similar possible cases in which the sports car does cause the ribbon breaking and counterfactual dependence is elicited between the ribbon breaking and the sports car travelling on its route (we need only think of counterpart cases in which there is no wagon). Thus, Lewis’ quasi-dependence analysis analyses the pre-empted back-up cause as a cause in this example, and is thusinsufficientfor causation.

A possible revision might help Lewis here, as follows: We might revise the quasi- dependence analysis such that the isonomic duplicates appealed to in our analysis are strict isonomic duplicates (i.e. cases with exactly the same events and laws). However, the problem with this idea is that the quasi-dependence analysis (call the revised version the ‘strict’ quasi-dependence analysis) would be unnecessary for causation (i.e. it would not always analyse all causes as causes). To see this, consider the following example of late pre-emption: