Tensions in Practice: The baseline changes the responsibility question¶
Two questions about one intervention
Imagine an intervention followed by 6 units of harm. In this invented causal model, doing nothing would have produced 10, while a feasible alternative action would have produced 2. Compare the intervention with each baseline. It prevented 4 relative to doing nothing and left 4 avoidable relative to the alternative. The observed action has not changed; the question used in a responsibility inquiry has.
Identify the contribution
Ask what the intervention changed compared with no intervention.
Assess the avoidable remainder
Ask what more could have been prevented by the specified alternative.
Why these aims pull against each other
One baseline measures help supplied; the other measures improvement forgone. Substituting one for the other changes the sign without resolving control, foreseeability or a standard of responsibility.
Choose an arrangement to see what changes and what remains difficult.
Change means actual harm minus baseline harm. Compare the same rows across alternatives. Cells state explicit toy quantities, membership or permissions; colors do not supply additional meaning.
What this choice protects
What it costs
When it fits
Compare the arrangements
Compare with inaction
Subtract the harm under no intervention from the actual harm: 6 − 10 = −4.
| Actual harm | Baseline harm | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compare | 6 | 10 | −4 |
- What it protects
- Makes the mitigating contribution visible rather than attributing all remaining harm to the intervener.
- What it costs
- Does not test whether the intervener could reasonably have prevented more harm.
- When it fits
- Useful for an inquiry specifically about the causal contribution relative to no action.
Illustration note: This is an editorial, deliberately bounded illustration. Its stated rules and any numbers are invented, not observations, recommended settings, or predictions.
Compare with an alternative
Subtract the harm under the specified feasible alternative: 6 − 2 = +4.
| Actual harm | Baseline harm | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compare | 6 | 2 | +4 |
- What it protects
- Makes the remaining preventable harm visible under the declared alternative.
- What it costs
- Can obscure the help actually supplied if presented as the whole evaluation; a feasible alternative is not automatically one the actor could foresee or was obliged to choose.
- When it fits
- Useful when the inquiry concerns an avoidable remainder and the alternative and relevant duties can be justified.
Illustration note: This is an editorial, deliberately bounded illustration. Its stated rules and any numbers are invented, not observations, recommended settings, or predictions.
What this illustration does—and does not—establish
The source establishes the structural tension; the concrete alternatives and their conditional costs are editorial synthesis. No arrangement is a universal recommendation.
- All three harm values are stipulated counterfactual inputs, not measured causal effects.
- The arithmetic is one input to attribution, not a blame score or a legal or moral verdict. Control, foreseeability and normative standards remain unresolved.
- Both comparisons can be true simultaneously; they answer different questions rather than constitute competing descriptions of the actual event.
Source entries
Responsibility Attribution
Responsibility attribution The counterfactual gate depends on a baseline that the operation cannot itself supply supplies the local tension. The setting, alternative arrangements, and stipulated consequences are editorial applications.
The counterfactual gate depends on a baseline that the operation cannot itself supply
"Would the outcome have differed had the agent acted otherwise?" requires choosing what the agent would have done instead, and that comparison case is not given by the facts.