Problems With "but For" Causation
Since but-for causation is very easy to show and does not assign culpability (but for the rain, you would not have crashed your car – the rain is not morally or legally culpable but still constitutes a cause), there is a second test used to determine if an action is close enough to a harm in a "chain of events" to be a legally culpable cause of the harm. This test is called proximate cause.
There are several competing theories of proximate cause.
Read more about this topic: Proximate Cause
Famous quotes containing the words problems and/or causation:
“It’s so easy during those first few months to think that the problems will never end. You feel as if your son will never sleep through the night, will always spit up food after eating, and will never learn to smile—even though you don’t know any adults or even older children who still act this way.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“The very hope of experimental philosophy, its expectation of constructing the sciences into a true philosophy of nature, is based on induction, or, if you please, the a priori presumption, that physical causation is universal; that the constitution of nature is written in its actual manifestations, and needs only to be deciphered by experimental and inductive research; that it is not a latent invisible writing, to be brought out by the magic of mental anticipation or metaphysical mediation.”
—Chauncey Wright (1830–1875)