The Model-Dependency of Represented Causal Contribution
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: The Stoic dichotomy of control divides what is "up to us" from what is not. This paper asks a narrower question about external outcomes: how does an agent's represented causal contribution change when a model includes more contributors or pathways? The Shapley value, introduced in cooperative game theory, measures a participant's average marginal contribution across every possible order in which participants could join a coalition. I apply that measure to a compatible family of coalitional games indexed by model scope. Two counterexamples establish the central result. Adding a substitute can reduce an existing agent's value, while adding a necessary complement can raise it from zero. Scope expansion therefore has no general monotonic direction. The result concerns contribution represented by a chosen game. It does not measure Stoic control or moral responsibility without further premises about agency, knowledge, intention, and reasons-responsiveness. A stipulated single-agent game supplies a limited analogy to Stoic prohairesis and Islamic niyyah. Qur'an 99:7-8 concerns exhaustive moral accounting, not a theorem that every causal participant has a positive Shapley share.
Author: Janjua, Weqaar
Institution: University of Limerick
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7204479978
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