Gnostic: Sunshinecorp has given a simplification ... snip snip ... damn you Sunshinecorp for leaving the work to me.
:)
sunshine understood the hypothetical is mine, and therefore
I am defining it as such that there is more than correlation involved.
There is a choice to not act. To me that implies causation, to you maybe not.
As you point out by mentioning dictionary and something being "a easier word" there is some semantic alignement required so we do not confuse each other.
Gnostic: She is hurt because she need to see you acting in a way that cater to her, by not satisfying her need that she created herself, she is hurt.
This is true, but does not make it false that my inaction hurt her. Actions / inactions and their consequences do not map perfectly one to one. The world is messy and interconnected. You even imply this with all your examples later on.
More critically, higher up you had written:
Gnostic: ... It is not ignoring Jane that Jane is hurt. Jane is hurt because she did not see you act in a way that cater to her.
This here is you avoiding the question I asked earlier?
Ignoring Jane hurts her AND she is hurt because I did not act "in way that cater to her". You make it appear as if the two are incompatible - an either / or logic.
They are compatible, they indeed correlate, and can both be true at the same time. Heck, they obviously are both true IMO.
So despite agreeing with much you wrote after this. Right here is where you IMO are making the logical error. Correlation does not imply causation, but causation does imply correlation. Finding a correlation therefore does not prove nor disprove causation. We need to look deeper than the obvious correlation.
Did my ignoring cause or not the hurt? Gnostic: Lets say you do not ignore her but take action by rejecting her. Will she see that and feel happy?
Lets say you accept her love and do lover stuff to her, but still see another girlfriend or marry another women, will she see that and feel happy?
These are IMO irrelevant hypotheticals.
The only relevant to answer the bolded question higher is:
Lets say you do not ignore her but take action by accepting her. Will she see that and feel happy? The answer is - because it's my hypothetical, and not unrealistic: Yes of course. That is precisely the point. The scenario is rather that I chose to not act, and that hurt her.
If I had chosen differently she would not have been hurt. That's what I mean by the hypothetical being mine.
A different hypothetical where she is hurt regardless of my acting or not is not interesting.
Another hypothetical where she is happy regardless of my acting or not likewise is not interesting.
My hypothetical is the interesting one, at least to consider the question we are discussing: can inaction cause harm?
So considering only my hypothetical, what do you argue about my inaction NOT having caused (partially) harm to Jane?
It seems to me what I am calling now partial causation, is exactly what you have called negligent causation... it's still causation, it's not just correlation.
And actually, I will stop quoting you here. You followed up with a number of different examples about all the conditions involved for Jane to hurt: light, lack of sound, electrochemistry, being alive, her parents having her, their ancestors having them, society being as it is, the universe existing.
I would argue not all of these are necessary - if you consider my hypothetical.
For example, I can tell you Jane was blind and deaf. So light or sound were irrelevant, the electrochemistry of her eyes as well.
But that's just a provocation and a bit of humor.
Let's assume all of your points are necessary. Are they sufficient?
My inaction is the sufficient cause, and so is Jane's need. Nothing else really matters to change the dynamics. You don't need to complicate it by looking at all the secondary conditions, or obvious preconditions, or whatever you want to call them.
Ok, I think and hope that should help us continue. Let me know if you want me to clarify anything or if I misunderstood you.