Harming future persons

Suppose that Vance smashes a number of glass jars in the forest. He enjoys smashing the glass jars.  And, since no one is around when he smashes them, he harms no one in the process.  A few days after Vance smashes the glass jars a young child walks into the same wooded area, trips on a rock and falls onto the shards of glass left over by Vance’s jar smashing that took place a few days earlier.  The child fails to get medical attention and bleeds to death.  Under the circumstances, we would likely say that Vance’s smashing the glass jars just is Vance’s harming the child. Once the jars were smashed, there was nothing left for Vance to do. We believe that “smashing the glass jars” and “harming the child” refer to the same act.

Of course that’s not the only interpretation of the event.  One might argue that it was the child’s carelessness that caused him to trip on the rock.  Just because Vance smashed the glass jars and the child happened to fall on some of them, it is incorrect to say that Vance’s smashing the glass jars is harming the child.  After all, Vance never intended to harm anyone; he just chose that particular spot to smash jars because no one was around and no one would be harmed by his smashing jars.

We could alter the example a bit to make us less likely to say that Vance’s smashing is a harming event.  What would we say if it weren’t a few days later but a few years or a few hundred years later that the child were harmed?  Saying that Vance harmed the child by smashing the jars seems odd because the harm to the child may not take place until after Vance has died.  So, if we were to say that “Vance harmed the child,” then we would be ascribing an action to Vance who is already dead. This is odd because deceased people cannot act in any way.

So, if the smashing is not a harming in cases where the agent dies beforehand, then I believe that infers we can say that the smashing is not a harming in the first case, either.  The agent did not know the child would trip and fall on the shards of glass.  Moreover, when we explain the agent’s reasons for action, we do not say that Vance’s harming future people, namely the child.  When he stops smashing the glass jars, his action is done.  If we think of his action as a stepwise progression toward a termination point, we cannot ascribe to him an alternative motive or alternative explanation of action where he intentionally harms the child. So, an explanation of Vance’s smashing that includes the harming of the child is ad hoc.