Causal Judgments
I'm looking for some intuitions (just your immediate reaction) concerning the following cases (some of you have seen something like them already):
Case 1
Some person is riding through a European city in the Pope-mobile with the Pope's version of the Secret Service standing near. The Pope-mobile, as we all know, is a vehicle secured with bulletproof glass intended to protect the Pope from being shot. As the vehicle is slowly wading through a sea of devotees a gunshot rings out. One of the nearby servicemen jumps in front of the bullet and catches it in his chest before it gets to the glass. Now, being part of the Pope's security detail, the servicemen always know who is inside the vehicle. And in this case the servicemen know that the person in the Pope-mobile is an impostor Pope. Did the serviceman prevent the impostor Pope from getting shot?
Case 2
Some person is riding through a European city in the Pope-mobile with the Pope's version of the Secret Service standing near. The Pope-mobile, as we all know, is a vehicle secured with bulletproof glass intended to protect the Pope from being shot. As the vehicle is slowly wading through a sea of devotees a gunshot rings out. One of the nearby servicemen jumps in front of the bullet and catches it in his chest before it gets to the glass. Now, being part of the Pope's security detail, the servicemen always know who is inside the vehicle. And in this case the servicemen know that the person in the Pope-mobile is the Pope. Did the serviceman prevent the Pope from getting shot?
Your intuitions?
9 comments:
Well, my first intuition is that both cases are conceptually muddied to the point where there can't an appropriate intuition.
But, considering how that's probably not satisfying, my second first intuitions are no and no.
How are they so conceptually muddled?
I would say that, in both cases, the service men did not prevent the imposter/Pope from getting shot. But, they did prevent the bullet-proof glass from getting shot.
Parker, I'm kind of curious as to why these examples interest you. Can you provide more information in order to direct the discussion a bit more?
Yes, I too am caught up on the bullet-proof glass. I don't know if the examples are "muddled", but they are pretty long. What difference are you trying to highlight, Parker?
Is it important whether the person who fired the gun thought that the pope was inside the popemobile?
My initial reaction is no in neither case does the service man prevent the individual in the pope-mobile (Why can't I get Peter Griffin out my head??) from getting shot.
But a nagging thought is that bullet-proof glass can be pierced after all. And, "we all know" that the glass is bullet proof, so maybe this was a munition capable of piercing the glass? In which it would seem that the serviceman does prevent the assassination in both cases.
Or, the assassin was after the serviceman the whole time, knowing that the glass was bullet proof and that the serviceman would jump in front of the bullet anyway (I think I am beginning to read too much into this).
I too am perplexed at the provision of two examples with what appears to be an irrelevant difference.
Like everyone else my intuition is that in neither case did the secret service person prevent the occupant of the vehicle from being shot. I don't see what the difference is between the cases in regards to our causal judgments.
It seems that on both Woodward's and Lewis's view, neither action prevented anyone from being shot. For Lewis, in the closest world to that one, the serviceman does not jump in front of the bullet, and so the glass stops the bullet. On Woodward's account wiggling the value of the variable that represents whether the service man jumps in front of the bullet will not change the value of whether the occupant is shot.
Perhaps a more interesting case is one where you assign a some probability to how often the glass holds up. In those cases (say where there is a 25% chance that the glass will break) I would be more inclinded to say that the service man prevented the occupant from being shot.
Now suppose that instead of an impostor Pope in Case 1 it is some ordinary person you have never met or heard about.
Also suppose that in Case 2 it is you that is in the Pope-mobile.
In either case does the serviceman prevent the occupant (some ordinary person or you) from being shot?
Just testing the waters here.
It still seems to me that who the person is inside of the pope-mobile is irrelevant to causal judgments.
I think this is because we do not take the possibility of the glass breaking as a serious possibility.
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