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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that When coincidences intervene in a causal chain, earlier acts in that chain are not considered proximate causes of the resulting harm.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Hart and Honoré's 'Causation in the Law' (1959) distinguishes coincidences from interventions only when the coincidence is genuinely unforeseeable.
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    • 2.If a gift of knives foreseeably increases the probability of knife-related harm, the donor's causal contribution persists regardless of the specific intervening mechanism.
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    • 3.Proximate causation in consequentialist moral assessment tracks risk-imposition, not mechanistic contiguity, so foreseeable risk keeps earlier acts causally relevant.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Judith Jarvis Thomson's counterfactual analysis holds that causal relevance is preserved whenever removing the earlier act would eliminate the harm.
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    • 2.If the knives had not been gifted, the coincidental fall would have produced no knife-related death, making the gift a necessary condition for the harm.
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    • 3.A necessary condition for harm cannot be dismissed as non-proximate merely because an improbable intervening event was required to realize it.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.A coincidence (such as accidentally falling on the knives) intervenes in the causal chain between the gift and any resulting death.
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    • 2.Intervening coincidences, like intervening voluntary acts, sever proximate causal attribution to prior acts.
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