Can the absense of something ever be a cause? For example, image you forget to water your plants and your plants all die. Did your failure to water them cause the plants to die? Many people report the intuition you obviously have caused your plants to die, but shocking as it may at first seem, could this intuition actually be wrong? Links and Resources Helen Beebee The paper - "Causing and Nothingness" The volume - Counterfactuals and Causation Background on The Metaphysics of Causation On the Notion of Cause 'Philosophically Speaking' by Helen Steward Background on the philosophy of David Lewis Overview paper by Sara Bernstein "The metaphysics of omissions" New work in cognitive science by Henne et al. "A Counterfactual Explanation for the Action Effect" "A Demonstration of the Causal Power of Absences" by Tyron Goldschmidt (via DailyNous) get ready to lol Paper Quotes "The causal history of the world is a mass of causal processes: events linked by a vast and complex web of causal ...