Who murdered Smith?

Who murdered Smith in this causation puzzle? "Three men, Brown, Jones and Smith were walking in the desert. One night, Brown poisons the water in Smith's water bottle. Later that night, Jones drills a hole in Smith's water bottle. The next day, Smith dies of thirst."

Dale E. Miller Faculty Member, Philosophy and Religious Studies, Old Dominion University

Suppose that before Smith had swallowed any water Jones had shot him. In that case, I think, it would be obvious that while Brown attempted to kill Smith, Jones did in fact kill him. This case, I think, is fundamentally the same as that one. The fact that both attempts were via Smith's canteen is a red herring. Perhaps Brown is as blameworthy as Jones, but he did not kill Smith.

Ro Smith Graduate Student, Philosophy, University of York

Brown attempts murder, but it is Jones who murders him. Brown's murderous action was not to depreive Smith of drinking water, it was to poison his drinking water. This would probably have killed Smith (although he might have been saved by stomach pumping or other counterfactual situations), but as Smith never drank the water, he was not poisoned, and, therefore, Brown's intended action was not fulfilled. For Brown, Smith's death is merely a fortuitous coincidence.

Jones committed the murderous action of emptying Smith's water bottle, and it was lack of water that Smith died of. Counterfactual situations such as stomach pumping would not have saved Smith, as the cause of his death was not poisoning, but the fact that he had no water. If Jones had not acted, it is not certain that Brown's action would have succeeded in killing him. However, regardless of whether Brown acted or not, Jones's depriving him of water would have guarranteed his death. He died of the consequences of what Jones did, not what Brown did, even if what Brown did would have killed him had Jones not acted.

Therefore, Jones killed Smith

David C Wood Faculty Member, Philosophy, Vanderbilt University

(1) Jones tells me that he punctured Smith's bottle after seeing Brown add the poison. He did not want Smith to know that Brown (Smith's best friend) had betrayed him. He planned to share his own bottle with Smith, who, sadly, was too proud to accept his offer. 

(2) Smith was dying of cancer, and asked Brown and Jones independently to help him quit this mortal coil, but not to tell him how they planned to do this. Brown obliged with the poison. Jones with the drill. Either way, assisted suicide. 

(3) Jones thought he was saving Smith from Brown's poison, and planned to refill Smith's bottle later in the evening. Unfortunately, he got drunk, and forgot, and Smith died accidentally.

Franck Billé Post-Doc, Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge

Neither Brown nor Jones were prepared to share their own water bottles with Smith and they let him die of thirst. They are both responsible for his death.

Peter J. King Faculty Member, Philosophy, University of Oxford

First stab (which overlaps with some of what other people have said):

There are two interconnected parts to the question - and it's surely in the interconnections that the puzzle is generated. First, there's the issue of causation (and the question explicitly calls it a causation puzzle -- something many respondents seem either to have missed or to have dismissed). Secondly, there's the issue of responsibility, which the central use of the term "murder" forces on us.

First, then, which action caused Smith's death? The four options would seem to be: poisoning the water, holing the bottle, both, and neither. Smith didn't drink the poison, so the first option is ruled out. Holing the bottle clearly didn't cause Smith's death directly -- but it would surely only have been be the indirect cause if it had deprived him of life-saving liquid, and it didn't; it deprived him of poison that would have killed him. (Note that, if Jones had known of the poison and, unable to warn Smith directly, had drilled the hole in order to save Smith’s life, then no question of murder would have arisen. The fact that Smith’s death followed would not have been laid at Jones’ door; he did his best to save Smith, and if he’d done nothing, Smith would still have died.) The second option is thus also ruled out.

     I don't see how the two actions could be seen as a parts of a complex whole describable as the cause of Smith's death. Causal overdetermination is also ruled out in the usual sense. There's a sense, though, in which the two actions do work together: counterfactually. After all, if Jones hadn't acted, then Brown's action would have caused Smith's death; if Brown hadn't acted, then Jones' action would have caused Smith's death. The problem is that the most natural (logically natural -- not commonsensically natural) reading of this is that Brown's and Jones' actions each served to absolve the other of the murder. That only leaves the fourth option: neither action was the cause of Smith's death.

     This sounds odd to most people; if Brown and Jones hadn’t acted, then surely Smith would -ceteris paribus - have survived. I think that its oddity arises because we confuse causality and moral blameworthiness. After all, what did cause Smith's death? He died of thirst. Neither Brown nor Jones caused his thirst (that was caused by the heat of the desert). Brown tried directly to kill Smith by poison, but was unwittingly foiled by Jones. On the other hand, Jones tried to remove Smith's access to life-preserving water, but Brown's action meant that there was no life-preserving water; thus Jones’ action had no effect (well, it probably caused Smith to feel despair at the end).

　

     Secondly, who was responsible? (Note, this isn’t a legal question, which would probably be in any case answered differently under different legal systems; I’m concerned only with the responsibility of agency.) If neither action was the cause of Smith's death, then neither Brown nor Jones is a murderer, though they are both clearly guilty of attempted murder.

     But, as I said a moment ago, if Brown and Jones hadn’t acted, then surely Smith would - ceteris paribus - have survived. That might not have affected the answer to the causal question, but surely it affects what we say about responsibility? I don’t think so. If Brown and Jones had each innocently performed an action that wouldn’t have killed Smith, but together the actions led to his death, we’d not have called them responsible. Their evil intentions show that they’re bad people, and we want them to be responsible -- but we shouldn’t let that affect our assessment.

     And what, after all, has been lost? Smith would still be dead if we called Brown and Jones responsible, and our moral assessment of them would be the same.

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