The Incarnation and unity of consciousness

A number of people find the following thesis plausible:

1. Necessarily, the conscious states hosted in a single person at one time are unified in a single conscious state that includes them.

But now consider Christ crucified.

2. Christ has conscious pain states in his human mind.

3. Christ has no conscious pain states in his divine mind.

4. Christ has a conscious divine comprehension state in his divine mind.

5. Christ has no conscious divine comprehension state in his human mind.

6. Any conscious state is in a mind.

7. Christ has no minds other than a human and a divine one.

It seems that (2)–(7) contradict (1). For by (1), (2) and (4) it seems there is a conscious state in Christ that includes both Christ’s pain and Christ’s divine comprehension. But that state wouldn’t be in the divine mind because of (3) and wouldn’t be in the human mind because of (5). But it would have to be in a mind, and Christ has no other minds.

There is a nitpicky objection that (7) might be false for all we know—maybe Christ has some other incarnation on another planet. But that is a mere complication to the argument, given that none of these other incarnations could host the divine comprehension in the created mind.

But the argument I gave above fails if God is outside time. For then the “has” in (4) is compatible with the divine comprehension being atemporal, then it does not follow from (2) and (4) that the divine comprehension and the pain happen at the same time, as is required to contradict (1).

In other words, we have an argument from the Incarnation to God’s atemporality, assuming the unity of consciousness thesis (1).

That said, while I welcome arguments for divine atemporality, I am not convinced of (1).

More on benefiting infinitely many people

Once again let’s suppose that there are infinitely people on a line infinite in both directions, one meter apart, on positions numbered in meters. Suppose all the people are on par. Fix some benefit (e.g., saving a life or giving a cookie). Let L_n be the action of giving the benefit to all the people to the left of position n. Let R_n be the action of giving the benefit to all the people to the right of position n.

Write A ≤ B to mean that action B is at least as good as action A, and write A < B to mean that A ≤ B but not B ≤ A. If neither A ≤ B nor B ≤ A, then we say that A and B are noncomparable.

Consider these three conditions:

• Transitivity: If A ≤ B and B ≤ C, then A ≤ C for any actions A, B and C from among the {L_k} and the {R_k}.

• Strict monotonicity: L_n < L_n + 1 and R_n > R_n + 1 for all n.

• Weak translation invariance: If L_n ≤ R_m, then L_n + k ≤ R_m + k and if L_n ≥ R_m, then L_n + k ≥ R_m + k, for any n, m and k.

Theorem: If we have transitivity, strict monotonicity and weak translation invariance, then exactly one of the following three statements is true:

1. For all m and n, L_m and R_n are incomparable

2. For all m and n, L_m < R_n

3. For all m and n, L_m > R_n.

In other words, if any of the left-benefit actions is comparable with any of the right-benefit actions, there is an overwhelming moral skew whereby either all the left-benefit actions beat all the right-benefit actions or all the right-benefit actions beat all the left-benefit actions.

Proposition 1 in this paper is a special case of the above theorem, but the proof of the theorem proceeds in basically the same way. For a reductio, assume that (i) is false. Then either L_m ≥ R_n or L_m ≤ R_n for some m and n. First suppose that L_m ≥ R_n. Then the second and third paragraphs of the proof of Proposition 1 show that (iii) holds. Now suppose that L_m ≤ R_n. Let L_k^* = R_−k and R_k^* = L_−k. Say that A≤^*B iff A^* ≤ B^*. Then transitivity, strict monotonicity and weak translation invariance hold for ≤^*. Moreover, we have L_m ≤ R_n, so R_−m≤^*L_−n. Applying the previous case with  − m and  − n in place of n and m respectively we conclude that we always have L_j>^*R_k and hence that we always have L_j < R_k, i.e., (ii).

I suppose the most reasonable conclusion is that there is complete incomparability between the left- and right-benefit actions. But this seems implausible, too.

Again, I think the big conclusion is that human ethics has limits of applicability.

I hasten to add this. One might reasonably think—Ian suggested this in a recent comment—that decisions about benefiting or harming infinitely many people (at once) do not come up for humans. Well, that’s a little quick. To vary the Pascal’s Mugger situation, suppose a strange guy comes up to you on the street, and tells you that there are infinitely many people in a line drowning in a parallel universe, and asks you if you want him to save all the ones to the left of position 123 or all the ones to the right of position  − 11, because he can magically do either one, and nothing else, and he needs help in his moral dilemma. You are, of course, very dubious of what he is saying. Your credence that he is telling the truth is very, very small. But as any good Bayesian will tell you, it shouldn’t be zero. And now the decision you need to make is a real one.

Incommensurability in rational choice

When I hear that two options are incommensurable, I imagine things that are very different in value. But incommensurable options could also be very close in value. Suppose an eccentric tyrant tells you that she will spare the lives of ten innocents provided that you either have a slice of delicious cake or listen to a short but beautiful song. You are thus choosing between two goods:

1. The ten lives plus a slice of delicious cake.

2. The ten lives plus a short but beautiful song.

The values of the two options are very close relatively speaking: the cake and song make hardly any difference compared to the ten lives that comprise the bulk of the value. Yet, because the cake and the song are incommensurable, when you add the same ten lives to each, the results are incommensurable.

We can make the differences between the two incommensurables arbitrarily small. Imagine that the tyrant offers you the choice between:

3. The ten lives plus a chance p of a slice of delicious cake.

4. The ten lives plus a chance p of a short but beautiful song.

Making p be as small as we like, we make the difference between the options as small as possible, but the options remain incommensurable.

Well, maybe “noncomparable” is a better term than “incommensurable”, as it is a more neutral term, without that grand sound. Then we can say that (1) and (2) are “noncomparable by a slight amount” (relative to the magnitude of the overall goods involved).

There is a common test for incommensurability. Suppose A and B are options where neither is better than the other, and we want to know if they are equal in value or incommensurable. The test is to vary one of the two options by a slight amount of value, either positive or negative. If after the tweak the two options are still such that neither is better than the other, they must be incommensurable. (Proof: If A′ is slightly better or worse than A, and B is equal to A, then A′ will be slightly better or worse than B. So if A′ is neither better nor worse than B, we couldn’t have had B and A equal.)

But cases of things that are noncomparable by a slight amount show that we need to be careful with the test. The test still offers a sufficient condition for incommensurability: if the fact that neither is better than the other remains after making an option better or worse, we must have incommensurability. But if the two options are noncomparable by a very, very slight amount, a merely very slight variation in one could destroy the noncomparability, and generate a false positive for incommensurability. For instance, suppose that our two options are (3) and (4) with p = 10⁻¹⁰⁰. Now suppose the slight variation on (3) is that we suppose you are given a mint in addition to the goods in (3). A mint beats a 10⁻¹⁰⁰ chance of a song, even if it’s incommensurable with a larger chance of a song. So the variation on (3) beats the original (4). But we still have incommensurability.

(Note: There are two concepts of incommensurability. One is purely value based, and the other is agent-centric and based on rational choice. It is the second one that I am using in this post. I am comparing not pure values, but the reasons for pursuing the values. Even if the values are strictly incommensurable, as in the case of a certainty of a mint and a 10⁻¹⁰⁰ chance of a song, the former is rationally preferable at least for humans.)

Saving infinitely many lives

Suppose there is an infinitely long line with equally-spaced positions numbered sequentially with the integers. At each position there is a person drowning. All the persons are on par in all relevant respects and equally related to you. Consider first a choice between two actions:

1. Save people at 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, ... (red circles).

2. Save people at 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, ... (blue circles).

It seems pretty intuitive that (1) and (2) are morally on par. The non-negative evens and odds are alike!

But now add a third option:

3. Save people at 2, 4, 6, 8, ... (yellow circles).

The relation between (2) and (3) is exactly the same as the relation between (1) and (2)—after all, there doesn’t seem to be anything special about the point labeled with the zero. So, if (1) and (2) are on par, so are (2) and (3).

But by transitivity of being on par, (1) and (3) are on par. But they’re not! It is better to perform action (1), since that saves all the people that action (3) saves, plus the person at the zero point.

So maybe (1) is after better than (2), and (2) is better than (3)? But this leads to the following strange thing. We know how much better (1) is than (2): it is better by one person. If (1) is better than (2) and (2) is better than (3), then since the relationships between (1) and (2) and between (2) and (3) are the same, it follows that (1) must be better than (2) by half a person and (2) must be better than (3) by that same amount.

But when you are choosing which people to save, and they’re all on par, and the saving is always certain, how can you get two options that are “half a person” apart?

Very strange.

In fact, it seems we can get options that are apart by even smaller intervals. Consider:

4. Save people at 0, 10, 20, 30, 40, ....

5. Save people at 1, 11, 21, 31, 41, ....

and so on up to:

14. Save people at 10, 20, 30, 40, ....

Each of options (4)–(14) is related the same way to the next. Option (4) is better than option (14) by exactly one person. So it seems that each of options (4)–(13) is better by a tenth of a person than the next!

I think there is one at all reasonable way out, and it is to say that in both the (1)–(3) series and the (4)–(14) series, each option is incomparable with the succeeding one, but we have comparability between the start and end of each series.

Maybe, but is the incomparability claim really correct? It still feels like (1) and (2) should be exactly on par. If you had a choice between (1) and (2), and one of the two actions involved a slight benefit to another person—say, a small probability of saving the life of the person at  − 17—then we should go for the action with that slight benefit. And this makes it implausible that the two are incomparable.

My own present preferred solution is that the various things here seem implausible to us because human morality is not meant for cases with infinitely many beneficiaries. I think this is another piece of evidence for the species-relativity of morality: our morality is grounded in human nature.

Consciousness finitism

My 11-year-old has an interesting intuition, that it is impossible to have an infinite number of conscious beings. She is untroubled by Hilbert’s Hotel, and insists the intuition is specific to conscious beigs, but is unable to put her finger on what exactly bothers her about an infinity of conscious beings. It’s not considerations like “If there are infinitely many people, you probably have a near-duplicate.” Near-duplicates don’t bother her. It’s consciousness specifically. She is surprised that a consciousness-specific finitist intuition isn’t more common.

My best attempt at a defense of consciousness-finitism was that it seems reasonable to think of yourself as a uniformly randomly chosen member of the set of all conscious beings. But thinking of yourself as a uniformly randomly chosen member of a countably infinite set leads to the well-known paradoxes of countably infinite fair lotteries. So that may provide some sort of argument for consciousness-finitism. But my daughter insists that’s not where her intuition comes from.

Another argument for consciousness-finitism would be the challenges of aggregating utilities across an infinite number of people: If all the people are positioned at locations numbered 1,2,3,…, and you benefit the people at even-numbered locations, you benefit the same quantity of people as when you benefit the people whose locations are divisible by four, but clearly benefiting the people at the even-numbered locations is a lot better. I haven’t tried this family of arguments on my daughter, but I don’t think her intuitions come from thinking about well-being.

Still, I have a hard time believing in the impossibility of an infinite number of consciousnesses on the strength of such arguments. The main reason I have such a hard time is that it seems obvious that you could have a forward infinite regress of conscious beings, each giving birth to the next.

Teaching virtue

A famous Socratic question is whether virtue can be taught. This argument may seem to settle the question:

1. If vice can be taught, virtue can be taught.

2. Vice can be taught. (Clear empirical fact!)

3. So, virtue can be taught.

Well, except that what I labeled as a clear empirical fact is not something that Socrates would accept. I think Socrates reads “to teach” as a success verb, with a necessary condition for teaching being the conveyance of knowledge. In other words, it’s not possible to teach falsehood, since knowledge is always of the truth, and presumably in “teaching” vice one is “teaching” falsehoods such as that greed is good.

That said, if we understand “to teach” in a less Socratic way, as didactic conveyance of views, skills and behavioral traits, then (2) is a clear empirical fact, and (1) is plausible, and hence (3) is plausible.

That said, it would not be surprising if it were harder to teach virtue even in this non-Socratic sense than it is to teach vice. After all, it is surely harder to teach someone to swim well than to swim badly.

Relativism and natural law

Individual relativism and natural law ethics have something in common: both agree that the grounds of your ethical obligations are found in you. The disagreement, of course, is in how they are found. The relativist says that they are found in your subjectivity, in your beliefs and values that differ from person to person, while the natural lawyer thinks they are found in your human form, which is exactly like the human form of everyone else.

(Whether Kantianism shares this feature depends on how we read the metaphysics of rationality, namely whether our rationality as a genuine part of our selves, or as an abstraction.)

I think this commonality has some importance: it captures the idea that idea that we are in some sense morally beholden to ourselves rather than to something alien, something about which we could ask “Why should I listen to it?”

But I think in the end natural law does a better job being a non-alienating ethics. For we have good reason to think that my moral beliefs and values are etiologically largely the product of society around me and accidental features in my life. If these beliefs and values are what grounds my moral obligations, then my obligations are by and large the product of society and accident. (Think of the common philosophical observation that we do not choose our beliefs, but catch them like one catches a cold.) If I had lived in a different society with different accidental influences, I would have had different obligations on relativism. The obligations are, thus, largely the result of external and accidental influence on my cognition.

On the other hand, on natural law, my obligations are grounded in my individual human form which is my central and essential metaphysical constituent. Granted, I did not create this form for myself. But neither is it an accidental result of external influence—it defines me.

I think that as a society we feel that the variability of our individual beliefs and values makes us more autonomous if relativism is true. But once we realistically realize that this variability is largely due to external influence, our intuitions should shift. Natural law provides a more real autonomy.

Of course, on a theistic version of natural law, my form comes from God. Yes, but on orthodox Aristotelianism (which I am not sure I completely endorse) it is not an alien imposition, since I have no existence apart from that form.

Joshua Rasmussen moving to Baylor

I am very, very happy that my brilliant friend Joshua Rasmussen, of Azusa Pacific University, has accepted a full professor position in Baylor's Philosophy Department starting Fall 2024.

Disable Windows double-finger-click

My new work laptop did not have dedicated buttons, and by default Windows set it up so that a two-finger tap or click on the touchpad would trigger a right-button click. I turned on the non-default setting that lets me click in the lower-right part of the touchpad to get a right button click, and turned off the two-finger tap options. There is no way to turn off the option for generating a right-button click with a two-finger click. 

This might seem quite innocent, but I kept on getting fake right-button clicks instead of left-button clicks when clicking the touchpad. I changed the registry settings to make the right-click area really small. It didn't solve the problem. Finally, I figured out what was going on: I click the touchpad with the side of my right thumb. This seems to result in the touchpad occasionally registering the tip and joint of my right thumb as separate contacts. The bad right-clicks were driving me crazy. I searched through registry and Windows .sys and .dll files for some hidden option to turn off the two-finger click for right-button clicks, finding nothing. Nothing. I tried to install some older proprietary touchpad driver, but none of them worked.

Finally, it was time to write some code to disable the bad right clicks. After a bunch of hiccups (I almost never write code that interacts with the Windows API), and a Python-based prototype, I wrote a little C program. Just set disable-two-finger-right-click.exe to run as Administrator in Task Scheduler on login, and it takes care of it. The code uses rawinput to get the touchpad HID report, uses the HidP-* functions to parse it, and registers a low level mouse hook to remap the bad right clicks to left clicks based on some heuristics (mainly based around how long ago there was a two-finger click before the right click, while ignoring the official right-click area of the touchpad). 

So many hours that would have been saved if Microsoft just added an extra option.

Technology and dignitary harms

In contemporary ethics, paternalism is seen as really bad. On the other hand, in contemporary technology practice, paternalism is extremely widely practiced, especially in the name of security: all sorts of things are made very difficult to unlock, with the main official justification being that if if users unlock the things, they open themselves to malware. As someone who always wants to tweak technology to work better for him, I keep on running up against this: I spend a lot of time fighting against software that wants to protect me from my own stupidity. (The latest was Microsoft’s lockdown on direct access to HID data from mice and keyboards when I wanted to remap how my laptop’s touchpad works. Before this, because Chromecasts do not make root access available, to get my TV’s remote control fully working with my Chromecast, I had to make a hardware dongle sitting between the TV and the Chromecast, instead of simply reading the CEC system device on the Chromecast and injecting appropriate keystrokes.)

One might draw one of two conclusions:

1. Paternalism is not bad.

2. Contemporary technology practice is ethically really bad in respect of locking things down.

I think both conclusions would be exaggerated. I suspect the truth is that paternalism is not quite as difficult to justify as contemporary ethics makes it out, and that contemporary technology practice is not really bad, but just a little bad in the respect in question, even if that “a little bad” is very annoying to hacker types like me.

Here is another thought. While the official line on a lot of the locking down of hardware and software is that it is for the good of the user, in the name of security, it is likely that often another reason is that walled gardens are seen as profitable in a variety of ways. We think of a profit motive as crass. But at least it’s not paternalistic. Is crass better than paternalistic? On first, thought, surely not: paternalism seeks the good of the customer, while profit-seeking does not. On second thought, it shows more respect for the customer to have a wall around the garden in order to be able to charge admission rather than in order to control the details of the customer’s aesthetic experience for the customer’s own good (you will have a better experience if you start by these oak trees, so we put the gate there and erect a wall preventing you from starting anywhere else). One does have a right to seek reasonable compensation for one’s labor.

The considerations of the last paragraph suggest that the special harm of paternalistic behavior is a dignitary harm. There is no greater non-dignitary harm to me when I am prevented from rooting my device for paternalistic reasons than when I am prevented from doing so for profit reasons, but the dignitary harm is greater in the paternalistic case.

There is, however, an interesting species of dignitary harm that sometimes occurs in profit-motivated technological lockdowns. Some of these lockdowns are motivated by protecting content-creator profits from user piracy. This, too, is annoying. (For instance, when having trouble with one of our TV’s HDMI ports, I tried to solve the difficulty by using an EDID buffer device, but then I could no longer use our Blu-Ray player with that port because of digital-rights management issues.) And here there is a dignitary harm, too. For while paternalistic lockdowns are based on the presumption that lots of users are stupid, copyright lockdowns are based on the presumption that lots of users are immoral.

Objectively, it is worse to be treated as immoral than as stupid: the objective dignitary harm is greater. (But oddly I tend to find myself more annoyed when I am thought stupid than when I am thought immoral. I suppose that is a vice in me.) This suggests that in terms of difficulty of justification of technological lockdowns with respect to dignitary harms, the ordering of motives would be:

1. Copyright-protection (hardest to justify, with biggest dignitary harm to the user).

2. Paternalism (somewhat smaller dignitary harm to the user).

3. Other profit motives (easiest to justify, with no dignitary harm to the user).

Yet another tweak of the knowledge argument against physicalism

Here is a variant on the knowledge argument:

1. All empirical facts a priori follow from the fundamental facts.

2. The existence of consciousness does not a priori follow from the fundamental physical facts.

3. The existence of consciousness is an empirical fact.

4. Thus, there are fundamental facts that are not fundamental physical facts.

In support of 2, note that we wouldn’t be able to tell which things are conscious by knowing their physical constitution without some a posteriori data like “When I say ‘ouch’, I am conscious.”

Physicalism and "pain"

Assuming physicalism, plausibly there are a number of fairly natural physical properties that occur when and only when I am having a phenomenal experience of pain, all of which stand in the same causal relations to other relevant properties of me. For instance:

1. having a brain in neural state N

2. having a human brain in neural state N

3. having a primate brain in neural state N

4. having a mammalian brain in neural state N

5. having a brain in functional state F

6. having a human brain in functional state F

7. having a primate brain in functional state F

8. having a mammalian brain in functional state F

9. having a central control system in functional state F.

Suppose that one of these is in fact identical with the phenomenal experience of pain. But which one? The question is substantive and ethically important. If, for instance, the answer is (c), then cats and computers in principle couldn’t feel pain but chimpanzees could. If the answer is (i), then cats and computers and chimpanzees could all feel pain.

It is plausible on physicalism (e.g., Loar’s version) that my concept of pain refers to a physical property by ostension—I am ostending to the state that occurs in me in all and only the cases where I am in pain, and which has the right kind of causal connection to my pain behaviors. But there are many such states, as we saw above.

We might try to break the tie by saying that by reference magnetism I am ostending to the simplest physical state that has the above role, and the simplest one is probably (i). I don’t think this is plausible. Assuming naturalism, when multiple properties of a comparable degree of naturalness play a given role, ostension via the role is likely to be ambiguous, with ambiguity needing to be broken by a speaker or community decision. At some point in the history of biology, we had to decide whether to use “fish” at a coarse-grained functional level and include dolphins and whales as fish, or at a finer-grained level and get the current biological concept. One option might be a little more natural than the other, but neither is decisively more natural (any fish concept that has a close connection to ordinary language is going to have to be paraphyletic), and so a decision was needed. And even if (i) is somewhat simpler than (a)–(h), it is not decisively more natural.

This yields an interesting variant of the knowledge argument against physicalism.

1. If “pain” refers to a physical property, it is a “merely semantic” question, one settled by linguistic decision, whether “pain” could apply to an appropriately programmed computer.

2. It is not a “merely semantic” question, one settled by languistic decision, whether “pain” could apply to an appropriately programmed computer.

3. Thus, “pain” does not refer to a physical property.

Playing to win in order to lose

Let’s say I have a friend who needs cheering up as she has had a lot of things not go her way. I know that she is definitely a better badminton player than I. So I propose a badminton match. My goal in doing so is to have her win the game, so as to cheer her up. But when I play, I will of course be playing to win. She may notice if I am not, plus in any case her victory will be the more satisfying the better my performance.

What is going on rationally? I am trying to win in order that she may win a closely contested game. In other words, I am pursuing two logically incompatible goals in the same course of action. Yet the story makes perfect rational sense: I achieve one end by pursuing an incompatible end.

The case is interesting in multiple ways. It is a direct counterexample to the plausible thesis that it is not rational to be simultaneously pursuing each of two logically incompatible goals. It’s not the only counterexample to that thesis. A perhaps more straightforward one is where you are pursuing a disjunction between two incompatible goods, and some actions are rationally justified by being means to each good. (E.g., imagine a more straightforward case where you reason: If I win, that’ll cheer me up, and if she wins, that’ll cheer her up, so either way someone gets cheered up, so let’s play.)

The case very vividly illustrates the distinction between:

1. Instrumentally pursuing a goal, and

2. Pursuing an instrumental goal.

My pursuit of victory is instrumental to cheering up my friend, but victory is not itself instrumental to my further goals. On the contrary, victory would be incompatible with my further goal. Again, this is not the only case like that. A case I’ve discussed multiple times is of follow-through in racquet sports, where after hitting the ball or shuttle, you intentionally continue moving the racquet, because the hit will be smoother if you intend to follow-through even though the continuation of movement has no physical effect on the ball or shuttle. You are instrumentally pursuing follow-through, but the follow-through is not instrumental.

Similarly, the case also shows that it is false that every end you have you either pursue for its own sake or it is your means to something else. For neither are you pursuing victory for its own sake nor is victory a means to something else—though your pursuit of victory is a means to something else.

Given the above remarks, here is an interesting ethics question. Is it permissible to pursue the death of an innocent person in order to save that innocent person’s life? The cases are, of course, going to be weird. For instance, your best friend Alice is a master fencer, and has been unjustly sentenced to death by a tyrant. The tyrant gives you one chance to save her life: you can fence Alice for ten minutes, with you having a sharpened sword and her having a foil with a safety tip, and you must sincerely try to kill her—the tyrant can tell if you are not trying to kill. If she survives the ten minutes, she goes free. If you fence Alice, the structure of your intention is just as in my badminton case: You are trying to kill Alice in order to save her life. Alice’s death would be pursued by you, but her death is not a means nor something pursued for its own sake.

If the story is set up as above, I think the answer is that, sadly, it is wrong for you to try to kill Alice, even though that is the only way to save her life.

All that said, I still wonder a bit. In the badminton case, are you really striving for victory? Or are you striving to act as if you were striving for victory? Maybe that is the better way to describe the case. If so, then this may be a counterexample to my main thesis here.

In any case, if there is a good chance the tyrant can’t tell the difference between your trying to kill Alice and your intentionally performing the same motions that you would be performing if you were trying to kill Alice, it seems to me that it might be permissible to do the latter. This puts a lot of pressure on some thoughts about the closeness problem for Double Effect. For it seems pretty plausible to me that it would be wrong for you to intentionally perform the same motions that you would be performing if you were trying to kill Alice in order to save people other than Alice.

Overdetermining causation and prevention

Overdetermination seems to work differently for prevention and positive causation.

Suppose Timmy the turtle is wearing steel armor over his shell, because it looks cool. Alice shoots an arrow at Timmy’s back from the side, which glances off the armor. Let us assume that arrows shot at the back of an unarmored turtle from the side also harmlessly glance off the shell. Then we have two questions:

1. Did the armor prevent Timmy’s death?

2. Did the armor cause the arrow to glance off?

My intuition is that the answers are “no” and “yes”, respectively. You only count as preventing death if you are stopping something lethal. But I assumed that an arrow aimed at the back of an ordinary turtle from the side glances off the shell and is not lethal. On the other hand, it is clear that the arrow glanced off the armor, not the shell, and so it was the armor that redirected the flight.

Why the difference?

I think it may be this. There is a particular token flight-redirection event f₀ that the the armor caused. When you cause a token of a type, you automatically count as having cause an event of that type. So by causing f₀, the armor caused a flight-redirection event, a glancing-off.

However, it does not seem right to say that in preventing an event, one is causing a token non-occurrence. There would be too many non-occurrences in the ontology! Prevention is prevention of a type.

Poetic justice

If you try to con someone out of their money by proposing a complex scheme to them, and then you make a mistake in your calculations and end up having to give them a lot of money, that’s poetic justice.

1. Poetic justice is always justice.

2. Instances of justice are always the intentional work of a person.

3. Some instances of poetic justice are not the intentional work of any human person.

4. So, there exists a non-human person.

And God is the best candidate.