According to orthodoxy, the most fundamental kind of causation involves one event causing another event. I argue against this event‐causal view. Instead, the most fundamental kind of causation is thing causation, which involves a thing causing a thing to do something. Event causation is reducible to thing causation, but thing causation is not reducible to event causation, because event causation cannot accommodate cases of fine‐grained causation. I defend my view from objections, including C. D. Broad's influential “timing” argument, and I (...) conclude with implications for agent‐causal theories of free will. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against Peter van Inwagen’s claim (in “Free Will Remains a Mystery”), that agent-causal views of free will could do nothing to solve the problem of free will (specifically, the problem of chanciness). After explaining van Inwagen’s argument, I argue that he does not consider all possible manifestations of the agent-causal position. More importantly, I claim that, in any case, van Inwagen appears to have mischaracterized the problem in some crucial ways. Once we are clear on (...) the true nature of the problem of chanciness, agent-causal views do much to eradicate it. (shrink)

An agent who is the victim of covert and nonconstraining control is unaware of being controlled and controllers get their way by manipulating the victims so that they willingly do what the controllers desire. Our primary objective is to argue that if cases of CNC manipulation undermine compatibilist accounts of the sort of control required for moral responsibility, they also undermine various agent‐causal and non‐agent‐causal libertarian accounts as well.

In Michael Moore's important book Causation and Responsibility, he holds that causal contribution matters to responsibility independently of its relevance to action. We are responsible for our actions, according to Moore, because where there is action, we typically also find the kind of causal contribution that is crucial for responsibility. But it is causation, and not action, that bears the normative weight. This paper assesses this claim and argues that Moore's reasons for it are unconvincing. It is suggested that sometimes (...) a person's responsibility for that to which he causally contributes depends on his recognition of an identity between himself and the protagonist of the event for which he is held responsible. Since this fact about identity is not captured by causal contribution, action matters to responsibility for reasons that are not exhausted by the fact that action involves causal contribution. The relevance of this idea for accomplice liability is also briefly discussed. (shrink)