In 'Causes, Enablers, and the Counterfactual Analysis', recently pubfished in this journal, 1 Lawrence Brian Lombard argues that the concept of an enabler can be used to shed fight on certain apparent counterexamples to the counteffactual analysis of event causation. According to the counterfactual analysis he considers, it is sufficient for an event c to cause an event e that e be counterfactually dependent on c. Lombard claims that there are cases of counterfactual dependence of one event on another where the dependent event is not caused by, but is, rather, enabled by, the event on which it depends. He concludes that the counterfactual analysis must be, if not abandoned, then modified to exclude such cases (pp. 208--9). 2
Lombard also employs the concept of an enabler in an attempt to explain an asymmetry (pointed out by Jonathan Bennett) between delaying and hastening, roughly to the effect that while we tend to regard events that hasten other events as causes of the events they hasten, we tend not to regard events that delay other events as causes of the events they delay? According to Lombard, we are fight to do so, for while hasteners are typically causes of what they hasten, delayers are typically mere enablers, and not causes, of what they delay (p. 207).
In this paper, I shall argue that, in introducing the concept of an enabler, Lombard has not succeeded in isolating a class of events that it is appropriate to distinguish from causes. As a consequence, his attempt to explain the asymmetry between delaying and hastening is unsuccessful.
1. THE CONCEPT OF AN ENABLER
Lombard's distinction between enabling and causing takes as its starting point the fact that events are often counterfactually dependent on states