 Hart and Honoré (1959 [1985]) suggest that conditions which are normal, or default, are background conditions; whereas those which are abnormal, or deviant, are causes. This distinction between normal, default, or inertial conditions and abnormal, deviant, or non-inertial causes has been appearing with increasing regularity in the recent literature. For instance, McGrath (2005) presents the following vignette: Abigail goes on vacation and asks her neighbor, Byron, to water her plant. Byron promises to water the plant, but doesn’t, and the plant dies. It sounds very natural to say that Byron’s failure to water the plant was a cause of its death; it sounds much worse to suggest that Abigail’s other neighbor, Chris, caused the plant to die by not watering it. However, it seems that the only relevant difference between Bryon and Chris is that Byron made a promise to water the plant, and Chris did not. So Byron’s failure to water the plant was abnormal, whereas Chris’s failure to water the plant was normal. McGrath’s example involves absences or omissions, but this feature of the case is incidental. Hitchcock and Knobe (2009) give the following case: while administrators are allowed to take pens, professors are not. Both Adriel the administrator and Piper the professor take pens. Later in the day, there are no pens left, and the Dean is unable to sign an important paper. Here, it seems much better to cite Piper than Adriel as a cause of the problem. And it seems that the only relevant difference is that Adriel was permitted to take the pen, but Piper was not. (For more, see Kahneman &amp; Miller 1986; Thomson 2003; and Maudlin 2004.)