Robert Kane’s libertarian theory is often attacked on the grounds that undetermined self-forming actions are not amenable to contrastive explanation. I propose that we should understand contrastive explanations in terms of an appeal to structuring causes. Doing so reveals that Kane’s claim that there can be no contrastive explanation for self-forming actions is not an unwanted implication of his appeal to indeterminism, but is actually an implication of the fact that the agent’s will is not yet appropriately structured. I then (...) explain how this can assist Kane with the luck objection. (shrink)

Central to Robert Kane’s libertarian free will is the distinction between two kinds of action: undetermined self-forming actions by means of which we shape our characters, and actions that are determined by our freely formed characters. Daniel Dennett challenges the coherence of this distinction, but I argue that his arguments rely on highly controversial assumptions. In an effort to improve on Dennett’s criticism, I argue that some considerations about non-self-forming actions, when coupled with Kane’s naturalistic framework, imply that all choices (...) are undetermined, which undercuts the distinction between his two categories of action. I then show that this conclusion threatens to undermine the very idea of self-formation Kane seeks to develop. (shrink)

Neil Levy mounts two arguments against Robert Kane’s influential libertarian theory. According to the first, because Kanean self-forming actions are undetermined, there can be no contrastive explanation for why agents choose as they do rather than otherwise, in which case how they choose appears to be a matter of luck. According to the second, if one grants Kane the claim that agents are responsible for their undetermined choices in virtue of the fact that they made efforts of will to choose (...) them, the fact that agents engage in dual efforts of will leads to an implausible doubling of the agent’s responsibility. We defend Kane from both objections. We argue against the first by clarifying the nature of contrastive explanation in the context of Kane’s theory and we argue against the second by showing that the kind of doubling of responsibility implied by an agent’s dual efforts of will is, in fact, innocuous. (shrink)

For those who maintain that free will is incompatible with causal determinism, a persistent problem is to give a coherent characterization of action that is neither determined by prior events nor random, arbitrary, lucky or in some way insufficiently under the control of the agent to count as free action. One approach—that of Roderick Chisholm and others—is to say that a third alternative is for an action to be caused by an agent in a way that is not reducible to (...) event causal terms. A different approach than the Chisholmian appeal to primitive substance causation is one that, instead, involves causal relations purely among events. This paper presents a particular event-causal indeterminist account of free action, describing both its attractions and recent objections to it, and then proposes a revised version, with the aim of supporting the plausibility of an event-causal indeterminist approach to free will. (shrink)

En utilisant le cadre théorique développé par Jaegwon Kim, soit l’opposition entre le réalisme explicatif et l’irréalisme explicatif, ainsi que quelques observations sur la métaphysique et l’épistémologie de l’explication, je réexamine le désaccord opposant Robert Kane à Richard Double au sujet du principe de l’explication rationnelle. Je défends la position de Kane sur la double rationalité et je soutiens que le principe proposé par Double possède un champ d’application plus limité qu’il le prétend. Je montre aussi que, contrairement à ce (...) que suppose Double, la façon dont Kane entend expliquer l’action ne se transforme pas en une forme d’irréalisme explicatif. (shrink)