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Full Idea
Although you cannot cause a fire by delaying something's burning, you can cause a fire by hastening something's burning.
Gist of Idea
Delaying a fire doesn't cause it, but hastening it might
Source
Jonathan Bennett (Event Causation: counterfactual analysis [1987], p.223)
Book Ref
'Causation', ed/tr. Sosa,E. /Tooley,M. [OUP 1993], p.223
A Reaction
A very nice observation which brings out all sorts of problems about identifying causes. Bennett is criticising the counterfactual account. It is part of the problem of pre-emption, where causes are queueing up to produce a given effect.
| 8435 | Causes are between events ('the explosion') or between facts/states of affairs ('a bomb dropped') [Bennett] |
| 8437 | The full counterfactual story asserts a series of events, because counterfactuals are not transitive [Bennett] |
| 8436 | Either cause and effect are subsumed under a conditional because of properties, or it is counterfactual [Bennett] |
| 8438 | A counterfactual about an event implies something about the event's essence [Bennett] |
| 8439 | Maybe each event has only one possible causal history [Bennett] |
| 8440 | Maybe an event's time of occurrence is essential to it [Bennett] |
| 8441 | Delaying a fire doesn't cause it, but hastening it might [Bennett] |