I found this insightful. However, it does seem a lot of the discussion is around the concept of causation by absence. I don't think it directly impacts the point but there is a good paper by Helen BeeBee [1] on the topic for those interested.
She discusses some views on how to reason about common sense statements like "Smith's failure to water her office plants caused their death". The salient views covered are:
1. causation by absence is impossible (making the plants statement false)
2. causation by absence is possible and attributing an absence to a cause is sound when the absence is "abnormal". This could be because Smith normally waters the plants, it was Smith's job to water the plants, or Smith made a promise to water the plants.
3. causation by absence is not possible, but it is valid to offer "causal explanations". This is the suggested approach in the paper. A causal explanation provides information about the causal history of an event, but doesn't need to specify a specific node in the causal graph. C causes E is a causal statement. E because C is a "causal explanation". E because C doesn't necessarily imply C causes E. So adopting this approach, The plants died because Smith failed to water them is a true statement that provides some additional explanatory information, Smith failing to water the plants caused their death is not.
I think these distinctions may have some minor implications on how you perceive blame.
She discusses some views on how to reason about common sense statements like "Smith's failure to water her office plants caused their death". The salient views covered are:
1. causation by absence is impossible (making the plants statement false)
2. causation by absence is possible and attributing an absence to a cause is sound when the absence is "abnormal". This could be because Smith normally waters the plants, it was Smith's job to water the plants, or Smith made a promise to water the plants.
3. causation by absence is not possible, but it is valid to offer "causal explanations". This is the suggested approach in the paper. A causal explanation provides information about the causal history of an event, but doesn't need to specify a specific node in the causal graph. C causes E is a causal statement. E because C is a "causal explanation". E because C doesn't necessarily imply C causes E. So adopting this approach, The plants died because Smith failed to water them is a true statement that provides some additional explanatory information, Smith failing to water the plants caused their death is not.
I think these distinctions may have some minor implications on how you perceive blame.
[1] https://philpapers.org/archive/BEECAN.pdf