Proximate Cause Explained: An Essay in Experimental Jurisprudence

Knobe, Joshua and Shapiro, Scott J.
University of Chicago Law Review,
Forthcoming.
https://ssrn.com/abstract=3544982

Abstract

Among the oldest debates in American jurisprudence concerns the concept of “proximate cause.” According to so-called formalists, the legal concept of “proximate cause” is the same as the ordinary concept of “cause.” The legal question of whether a cause is proximate for the purposes of establishing tort liability, therefore, is an objective matter about the external world determinable by familiar descriptive inquiry. By contrast, legal realists think that issues of proximate causation are disguised normative questions about responsibility. As the realists William Prosser and Robert Keeton put it, “Proximate cause is better called ‘responsible cause’.”

Recent work in cognitive science has afforded us new insights into the way people make causal judgments that were unavailable at the time of the original debate between formalists and realists. We now have access to the results of systematic experimental studies that examine the way people ordinarily think about causation and morality. This work opens up the possibility of a very different approach to understanding the role of causation in the law — one which combines the attractive features of both formalism and realism without accepting their implausible consequences.

In addition to providing a model for interpreting the case law of proximate cause, this paper also exemplifies a new way of doing legal theory — a method we call “experimental jurisprudence.” Experimental jurisprudence is the study of jurisprudential questions using empirical methods. Jurisprudential disputes about proximate cause are especially ripe for empirical analysis because the debate revolves around whether the legal concept of proximate cause is the same as the ordinary concept of causation. Interrogating the ordinary concept of causation, therefore, should shed light on this question.

The paper can be downloaded here.

The Objectivity Illusion in Medical Practice

Donald Redelmeier & Lee Ross
The Association for Psychological Science
Published November 2018

Insights into pitfalls in judgment and decision-making are essential for the practice of medicine. However, only the most exceptional physicians recognize their own personal biases and blind spots. More typically, they are like most humans in believing that they see objects, events, or issues “as they really are” and, accordingly, that others who see things differently are mistaken. This illusion of personal objectivity reflects the implicit conviction of a one-to-one correspondence between the perceived properties and the real nature of an object or event. For patients, such naïve realism means a world of red apples, loud sounds, and solid chairs. For practitioners, it means a world of red rashes, loud murmurs, and solid lymph nodes. However, a lymph node that feels normal to one physician may seem suspiciously enlarged and hard to another physician, with a resulting disagreement about the indications for a lymph node biopsy. A research study supporting a new drug or procedure may seem similarly convincing to one physician but flawed to another.

Convictions about whose perceptions are more closely attuned to reality can be a source of endless interpersonal friction. Spouses, for example, may disagree about appropriate thermostat settings, with one perceiving the room as too cold while the other finds the temperature just right. Moreover, each attributes the other’s perceptions to some pathology or idiosyncrasy.

The info is here.

New Report Suggests 'Moral Realism' May Lead To Better Moral Behavior

Medical News Today
Originally published February 1, 2013

Getting people to think about morality as a matter of objective facts rather than subjective preferences may lead to improved moral behavior, Boston College researchers report in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

In two experiments, one conducted in-person and the other online, participants were primed to consider a belief in either moral realism (the notion that morals are like facts) or moral antirealism (the belief that morals reflect people's preferences) during a solicitation for a charitable donation. In both experiments, those primed with moral realism pledged to give more money to the charity than those primed with antirealism or those not primed at all.

"There is significant debate about whether morals are processed more like objective facts, like mathematical truths, or more like subjective preferences similar to whether vanilla or chocolate tastes better," said lead researcher Liane Young, assistant professor of psychology at Boston College. "We wanted to explore the impact of these different meta-ethical views on actual behavior."

The entire story is here.

Moral realism as moral motivation: The impact of meta-ethics on everyday decision-making can be found here.