There is certainly an important difference here between cause and blameworthiness. In law, as in many cases in philosophy when one wants to make a moral appraisal, we are interested in more than mere causation. Culpability is often an additional requirement, and that can make things murky. Further, even more murkiness is introduced by the presence of moral luck, which some have argued might be highly intractable. However, for the purposes of EA assessments, I think basic counterfactual causation is sufficient. In precise terms, I think it is enough for a cause to be merely necessary, if not sufficient, for us to evaluate it as being useful. Let’s say that I convince Smith to donate a million dollars to an effective charity. It is certainly true that such a donation wouldn’t have been possible if Smith hadn’t earned that million dollars, but it is also true that the donation wouldn’t have occurred had I not made my pitch to Smith. We can say both factors (me pitching Smith and Smith earning the money) are necessary but not sufficient, assuming it is in fact true that Smith wouldn’t have made a similar donation without me. This does open up the possibility that both Smith and I can say that we “caused” a million dollars to be donated to an effective charity, but I’m not sure that’s actually problematic. Without either one of our actions occurring, the donation wouldn’t have happened.
When extrapolating this concept over the course of multiple cause/effect cycles, however, I believe there may be an epistemic problem. Using Singer’s vegetarian in the cafeteria example, it is very hard to know how many of the subsequent vegetarians would have come to accept vegetarianism through other channels. We might not even be able to attribute all of Singer’s vegetarianism to this one individual, as it seems like Singer might be the sort of person who would have at some point accepted vegetarianism anyway. In other words, even playing the counterfactual game, it isn’t clear what the otherwise outcome might have been. This seems to be a problem that we would face in any large set of cause/effect cycles.
There is certainly an important difference here between cause and blameworthiness. In law, as in many cases in philosophy when one wants to make a moral appraisal, we are interested in more than mere causation. Culpability is often an additional requirement, and that can make things murky. Further, even more murkiness is introduced by the presence of moral luck, which some have argued might be highly intractable. However, for the purposes of EA assessments, I think basic counterfactual causation is sufficient. In precise terms, I think it is enough for a cause to be merely necessary, if not sufficient, for us to evaluate it as being useful. Let’s say that I convince Smith to donate a million dollars to an effective charity. It is certainly true that such a donation wouldn’t have been possible if Smith hadn’t earned that million dollars, but it is also true that the donation wouldn’t have occurred had I not made my pitch to Smith. We can say both factors (me pitching Smith and Smith earning the money) are necessary but not sufficient, assuming it is in fact true that Smith wouldn’t have made a similar donation without me. This does open up the possibility that both Smith and I can say that we “caused” a million dollars to be donated to an effective charity, but I’m not sure that’s actually problematic. Without either one of our actions occurring, the donation wouldn’t have happened.
When extrapolating this concept over the course of multiple cause/effect cycles, however, I believe there may be an epistemic problem. Using Singer’s vegetarian in the cafeteria example, it is very hard to know how many of the subsequent vegetarians would have come to accept vegetarianism through other channels. We might not even be able to attribute all of Singer’s vegetarianism to this one individual, as it seems like Singer might be the sort of person who would have at some point accepted vegetarianism anyway. In other words, even playing the counterfactual game, it isn’t clear what the otherwise outcome might have been. This seems to be a problem that we would face in any large set of cause/effect cycles.