Freedom and moral responsibility have one foot in the practical realm of human affairs and the other in the esoteric realm of fundamental metaphysics—or so we believe. This has been denied, especially in the metaphysics-bashing era occupying the first two-thirds or so of the twentieth century, traces of which linger in the present day. But the reasons for this denial seem to us quite implausible. Certainly, the argument for the general bankruptcy of metaphysics has been soundly discredited. Arguments from Strawson (...) and others that our moral practices are too deeply embedded in human life to rest on anything as tenuous as a metaphysical doctrine far from the thoughts of ordinary people would seem to prove too much: we can easily imagine fantastic scenarios far from the thoughts of ordinary people—involving, say, alien manipulation or massive deception—that, if true, would clearly undermine claims to freedom and responsibility. For still other philosophers, the separation of the moral life from (some) metaphysical issues is prescriptive, not descriptive: it is a recommendation that we revise ordinary moral thought by severing its allegedly problematic links to metaphysics. (Some philosophers appear to hover undecided between such a prescriptive project and a Strawsonian descriptive claim.) We suspect that the prospects of retaining the binding force of ordinary moral thought, were such a reconceived moral practice widely embraced, are bleak. A transition to something closer to moral nihilism seems at least as likely. In any case, our interest here is in descriptive metaphysics, not revisionary. -/- To say as we do that freedom and moral responsibility have a partly metaphysical character is not to suggest that they can be had only if some highly specific version of a particular metaphysical framework is correct. Instead, we suggest in what follows, it is a broadly neo-Humean metaphysics that is not hospitable to freedom (for reasons distinctive to the metaphysics), while a broadly neo-Aristotelian metaphysics is. But we also think (and it is the main aim of our paper to show) that different versions of the neo- Aristotelian metaphysics lead to rather different metaphysical accounts of free and responsible action. Specifically, we will argue that (1) the most satisfactory account of human freedom within the broadly neo-Aristotelian metaphysics is agent-causal, but that (2) two different versions of the general metaphysics will lead to important differences in the agent-causal account of freedom. Adjust the details of your general metaphysics, and the details of your account of freedom are transformed in significant ways. Action theory cannot properly be pursued in isolation from general metaphysics. (shrink)

Volitionalism is a theory of action motivated by certain shortcomings in the standard causal theory of action. However, volitionalism is vulnerable to the objection that it distorts the phenomenology of embodied agency. Arguments for volitionalism typically proceed by attempting to establish three claims: (1) that whenever an agent acts, she tries or wills to act, (2) that it is possible for volitions to occur even in the absence of bodily movement, and (3) that in cases of successful bodily actions the (...) relation between volition and bodily movement is causal. I defend an argument for the second of these claims from an objection by Thor Grünbaum, but I show that several volitionalist arguments for the third are not compelling. I then argue that the dual aspect theory of action provides a better account of the relationship between an agent’s volition and the bodily movements she makes when she acts, insofar as it has the same advantages over the standard story as volitionalism without being open to the phenomenological objection. I also defend the dual aspect theory from an objection by A.D. Smith. Finally, I show why the dual aspect theory of action is a better alternative to volitionalism than the theory of action recently put forward by Adrian Haddock. In order to avoid the phenomenological objection Haddock suggests a disjunctive account of bodily movements. While disjunctivism should be taken seriously in the philosophy of action, on the dual aspect theory it is the category of volition, rather than bodily movement, that should receive a disjunctive analysis. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty’s notion of being motivated or solicited to act has recently been the focus of extensive investigation, yet work on this topic has tended to take the general notion of being motivated for granted. In this paper, I shall outline an account of what it is to be motivated. In particular, I shall focus on the relation between the affective character of states of being motivated and their intentional content, i.e. how things appear to the agent. Drawing on Husserl’s discussion (...) of perceptual awareness, I suggest that the intentional content of states of being motivated has a horizonal structure, in which both affective and perceptual features are implied. In states of being motivated, the agent becomes aware of certain possibilities for action, towards which they feel drawn. This structure is what Merleau-Ponty refers to as the “intentional arc” (1962, 136). (shrink)

If God brings about an event in the universe, does it have a preceding cause? For example, if the universe began with the Big Bang and if God brought it about, did the Big Bang then have a preceding cause? The standard answer is: yes, it was caused by a divine willing. I propose an alternative view: God’s actions, unlike human actions, are not initiated by willings, undertakings, or volitions, but God brings about the intended event directly. Presenting a solution (...) to the dilemma of free will I explain what ‘bringing about directly’ means and show that the question of what an action begins with is distinct from the question whether it is a basic action. (shrink)

Most answers to the mind-body problem are claims about the nature of mental properties and substances. But advocates of non-reductive physicalism have generally neglected the topic of the nature of substance, quickly nodding to the view that all substances are physical, while focusing their intellectual energy on understanding how mental properties relate to physical ones. Let us call the view that all substances are physical or are exhaustively composed of physical substances substance physicalism (SP). Herein, I argue that non-reductive physicalism (...) (NRP) cannot uphold substance physicalism and is thereby false. For NRP faces a mind problem: its commitment to property irreducibility prevents that which bears the mental properties—the mind, or on some views, the self or person—from being a physical thing. (shrink)

Emergence is a notorious philosophical term of art. A variety of theorists have appropriated it for their purposes ever since George Henry Lewes gave it a philosophical sense in his 1875 Problems of Life and Mind. We might roughly characterize the shared meaning thus: emergent entities (properties or substances) ‘arise’ out of more fundamental entities and yet are ‘novel’ or ‘irreducible’ with respect to them. (For example, it is sometimes said that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain.) Each (...) of the quoted terms is slippery in its own right, and their specifications yield the varied notions of emergence that we discuss below. There has been renewed interest in emergence within discussions of the behavior of complex systems and debates over the reconcilability of mental causation, intentionality, or consciousness with physicalism. (shrink)

This article aims to provide an elucidation of the doctrine of the Incarnation. A new ‘reduplication strategy’ and ‘compositional model’ is formulated through the utilisation of certain concepts and theses from contemporary metaphysics, which will enable the doctrine of the Incarnation to be explicated in a clear and consistent manner, and the oft-raised objections against it being fully dealt with.

“Free Will” is a philosophical term of art for a particular sort of capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alternatives. Which sort is the free will sort is what all the fuss is about. (And what a fuss it has been: philosophers have debated this question for over two millenia, and just about every major philosopher has had something to say about it.) Most philosophers suppose that the concept of free will is very (...) closely connected to the concept of moral responsibility. Acting with free will, on such views, is just to satisfy the metaphysical requirement on being responsible for one's action. (Clearly, there will also be epistemic conditions on responsibility as well, such as being aware—or failing that, being culpably unaware—of relevant alternatives to one's action and of the alternatives' moral significance.) But the significance of free will is not exhausted by its connection to moral responsibility. Free will also appears to be a condition on desert for one's accomplishments (why sustained effort and creative work are praiseworthy); on the autonomy and dignity of persons; and on the value we accord to love and friendship. (See Kane 1996, 81ff. and Clarke 2003, Ch.1.). (shrink)

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)

How all philosophical explanations of human consciousness and the fundamental structure of the cosmos are bizarre—and why that’s a good thing Do we live inside a simulated reality or a pocket universe embedded in a larger structure about which we know virtually nothing? Is consciousness a purely physical matter, or might it require something extra, something nonphysical? According to the philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel, it’s hard to say. In The Weirdness of the World, Schwitzgebel argues that the answers to these fundamental (...) questions lie beyond our powers of comprehension. We can be certain only that the truth—whatever it is—is weird. Philosophy, he proposes, can aim to open—to reveal possibilities we had not previously appreciated—or to close, to narrow down to the one correct theory of the phenomenon in question. Schwitzgebel argues for a philosophy that opens. According to Schwitzgebel’s “Universal Bizarreness” thesis, every possible theory of the relation of mind and cosmos defies common sense. According to his complementary “Universal Dubiety” thesis, no general theory of the relationship between mind and cosmos compels rational belief. Might the United States be a conscious organism—a conscious group mind with approximately the intelligence of a rabbit? Might virtually every action we perform cause virtually every possible type of future event, echoing down through the infinite future of an infinite universe? What, if anything, is it like to be a garden snail? Schwitzgebel makes a persuasive case for the thrill of considering the most bizarre philosophical possibilities. (shrink)

The standard objection to dualist theories of mind is that they seemingly cannot account for the obvious fact that mental phenomena cause our behaviour. On the plausible assumption that all our behaviour is physically necessitated by entirely physical phenomena, there appears to be no room for dualist mental causation. Some argue that dualists can address this problem by making minimal adjustments in their ontology. I argue that no such adjustments are required. Given recent developments in philosophy of causation, it is (...) plausible that mental phenomena cause behaviour in standard dualist ontologies. (shrink)

We examine Sophie Gibb’s emergent property-dualist theory of mental causation as double-prevention. Her account builds on a commitment to a version of causal realism based on a powers metaphysic. We consider three objections to her account. We show, by drawing out the implications of the ontological commitments of Gibb’s theory of mental causation, that the first two objections fail. But, we argue, owing to worries about cases where there is no double-preventive role to be played by mental properties, her account, (...) which solely affords mental properties a double-preventive role, is incomplete and vulnerable to a causal exclusion objection. We propose a friendly modification to her theory of mental causation that is consistent with her theory’s ontological commitments. Specifically, we sketch an account on which mental properties have a more pronounced causal-structuring role that is not exhausted by the role Gibb assigns them as double-preventers. The result is a novel emergentist theory of mental causation. (shrink)

Some philosophers working on the metaphysics of agency argue that if agency is understood in terms of settling the truth of some matters, then the power required for the exercise of intentional agency is an irreducible two-way power to either make it true that p or not-p. In this paper, the focus is on two-way powers in decision-making. Two problems are raised for theories of decision-making that are ontologically committed to irreducible two-way powers. First, recent accounts lack an adequate framework (...) for explaining decisions by the reasons of agents. Second, accepting ontologically irreducible two-way powers into one’s metaphysic of agency implies an ontological commitment to substance dualism. An ontologically less-costly alternative to irreducible two-way powers is offered. It is argued that a reductive account of two-way powers in terms of what George Molnar called “derivative powers” should be accepted. The reductive account can provide us with the truthmakers for talk about two-way powers. Moreover, the reductive account does not share the liabilities of accepting irreducible two-way powers. (shrink)

Thisarticle aims to provide an explication of the doctrine of the Incarnation. A ‘Transformational Model’of the doctrine is formulated within the metaphysicaland ontologicalframework of Jonathan Lowe (i.e. hisNon-Cartesian Substance Dualismand Four-Category Ontology). Formulating this modelwithinthisspecificframework will enable the doctrine of the Incarnationto be explicated in a clear and consistent manner, and the oft-raised objections against it can be answered.

The addiction literature is fraught with conceptual confusions, stalled debates, and an unfortunate lack of clear and careful attempts to delineate the phenomenon of addiction in a way that might lead to consensus. My dissertation has two overarching aims, one metaphysical and one practical. -/- The first aim is to defend an account of addiction as the systematic disposition to fail to control one’s desires to engage in certain types of behaviors. I defend the inclusion of desires and impaired control (...) in the definition, and I flesh out the notion of systematicity central to my dispositionalist framework. I engage the so-called ‘disease vs. choice’ debate, criticizing its presupposition that we are dealing here with a dichotomy and arguing that the movement towards a middle ground is the right track to take. I explain how the dispositionalist account can capture this middle ground and how it serves to expand upon existing views, in particular by filling in the metaphysical details. -/- The second aim is to show how the account I defend can help to unify the extant views and disciplinary perspectives in the literature. Both the dispositionalist aspect of my framework and the methodology adopted (applied ontology and systematic metaphysics) can move the literature towards both substantive and methodological unification. This will help to clear up conceptual confusions, resolve (or sometimes dissolve) apparently intractable disputes, situate different research perspectives with respect to each other, facilitate interdisciplinary dialogue, and help to frame important questions about addiction. Finally, I offer the beginnings of an ontology of addiction, which will provide a terminologically well-structured guide to the addiction literature in a way that will facilitate more effective and efficient communication and data management across disciplines. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to argue against the claim that agent causation is more fundamental than event causation. To accomplish this aim, I shall first briefly discuss the motivation behind agent causation. Second, I shall highlight the differences between agent causation and event causation. Third, I shall begin briefly with the weaker claim held by Timothy O’Connor and Randolph Clarke that there is no good reason to believe that event causation is more fundamental than agent causation. Fourth, I (...) shall discuss the stronger claim held by E. J. Lowe that agent causation is more fundamental than event causation, and raise objections against the various arguments Lowe advances for the stronger claim. To the extent that my objections against Lowe’s stronger claim succeed, they raise questions for O’Connor’s and Clarke’s weaker claim. (shrink)

The disappearing agent problem is an argument in the metaphysics of agency. Proponents of the agent-causal approach argue that the rival event-causal approach fails to account for the fact that an agent is active. This paper examines an analogy between this disappearing agent problem and the exclusion problem in the metaphysics of mind. I develop the analogy between these two problems and survey existing solutions. I suggest that some solutions that have received significant attention in response to the exclusion problem (...) have seen considerably less attention in response to the disappearing agent problem. For example, one solution to the exclusion problem is to reject the exclusion assumption. Analogously, one solution to the disappearing agent problem could be to deny the claim that the agent-causal approach and the event-causal approach are mutually exclusive. Similarly, proportionality theories of causation, a solution to the exclusion problem, can be transferred to the disappearing agent problem. After establishing the plausibility of the analogy between the two problems, I examine how this latter solution in particular can be transferred from the one problem to the other. (shrink)

To address what I call the “Uniformity”, “Capriciousness”, and “Reducibility” objections, recent agent-causation theories hold that agent-causation is a type of substance causation. Substance causation consists in substances producing effects by exercising or manifesting their powers. Importantly, these versions of agent-causation assume a realist metaphysics of powers, where powers are properties of substances that can exist unmanifested. However, the realist theories of powers that agent-causal theories have relied upon explicitly hold that powers—rather than their substances—are causes. Substances are merely derivative (...) causes, as the bearers of powers. Critics therefore argue that agent-causation is reducible to causation by the agent’s powers. In this paper, I argue that agent-causation is reducible to causation by the agent’s powers only if powers are self-exemplifying properties. I also offer reasons for why powers—especially agent-causal powers—are non-self-exemplifying properties, in support of the irreducibility of agent-causation. (shrink)

In the 70 years since Alan Turing’s ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’ appeared in Mind, there have been two widely-accepted interpretations of the Turing test: the canonical behaviourist interpretation and the rival inductive or epistemic interpretation. These readings are based on Turing’s Mind paper; few seem aware that Turing described two other versions of the imitation game. I have argued that both readings are inconsistent with Turing’s 1948 and 1952 statements about intelligence, and fail to explain the design of his game. (...) I argue instead for a response-dependence interpretation. This interpretation has implications for Turing’s view of free will: I argue that Turing’s writings suggest a new form of free will compatibilism, which I call response-dependence compatibilism. The philosophical implications of rethinking Turing’s test go yet further. It is assumed by numerous theorists that Turing anticipated the computational theory of mind. On the contrary, I argue, his remarks on intelligence and free will lead to a new objection to computationalism. (shrink)

Power enthusiasts are engaged in two projects: developing a decent metaphysical account of powers, and applying that account in order to make progress on various other philosophical issues, ranging from narrowly related topics such as causality to further removed ones such as free will, reasoning, or perception. I argue that an intermediate step may be taken, one that explores ‘varieties of power’ while still staying within the realm of, of ‘pure’ powers metaphysics. Taking this intermediate step provides a much more (...) interesting basis for those involved in project, ‘applied’ powers metaphysics. I articulate four such varieties of power by exploring various dimensions in which the explanatory profile of a power can be extended. I then briefly survey how these relate to various further metaphysical issues. (shrink)

В монографии представлены несколько смысловых блоков, связанных с восприятием и интерпретацией человеком исторического бытия. Ранние греческие мыслители пытались получить доступ к исходникам (началам) бытия, и эти интенции легли в основу научного знания, а также привели к появлению метафизики. В классической (и в неклассической) метафизике за основу была принята догма Пифагора и Платона о неизменности подлинной реальности, из чего следовало отрицание бытийного характера времени. Автор монографии отказывается от этой догмы и предлагает стратегию обновления метафизики и перехода ее к новому — постнеклассическому (...) — этапу. Поскольку трансформационный потенциал реальности наиболее явно представлен в историческом становлении, авторская стратегия реализуется в метафизике истории. При этом выявляются начала истории, в каком качестве выступают «дух», «культурно-историческая матрица» и «метафизический проект организации бытия» («онтологический проект»). Исследуются формы и механизмы «работы» человека с прошлым, обсуждаются вопросы, связанные с постижением логики исторического процесса, а также с ролью (творческой) личности в истории. Анализируются причины цивилизационных кризисов и очерчиваются возможные пути их разрешения, предлагается метафизическая интерпретация социальных и военных конфликтов. Завершает исследование рассмотрение трансформации человеческого естества под влиянием информационных, био- и нанотехнологий. (shrink)

In this paper, we investigate how contemporary metaphysics of powers can further an understanding of agent-causal theories of free will. The recent upsurge of such ontologies of powers and the understanding of causation it affords promises to demystify the notion of an agent-causal power. However, as we argue pace, the very ubiquity of powers also poses a challenge to understanding in what sense exercises of an agent’s power to act could still be free—neither determined by external circumstances, nor random, but (...) self-determined. To overcome this challenge, we must understand what distinguishes the power to act from ordinary powers. We suggest this difference lies in its rational nature, and argue that existing agent-causal accounts fail to capture the sense in which the power to act is rational. A proper understanding, we argue, requires us to combine the recent idea that the power to act is a ‘two-way power’ Powers and capacities in philosophy: the new aristotelianism, Routledge, New York, 2013) with the idea that it is intrinsically rational. We sketch the outlines of an original account that promises to do this. On this picture, what distinguishes the power to act is its special generality—the power to act, unlike ordinary powers, does not come with any one typical manifestation. We argue that this special generality can be understood to be a feature of the capacity to reason. Thus, we argue, an account of agent-causation that can further our understanding of free will requires us to recognize a specifically rational or mental variety of power. (shrink)

Many philosophers and scientists believe that we need an explanation as to why the laws of physics and the initial conditions of the universe are fine-tuned for life. The standard two options are: theism and the multiverse hypothesis. Both of these theories are extravagant and arguably have false predictions. Drawing on contemporary philosophy of mind, I outline a form of panpsychism that I believe offers a more parsimonious and less problematic explanation of cosmological fine-tuning.

This article explores the relationship between ethics and metaphysics in critical theory through immanent criticism of Fabian Freyenhagen's reconstruction of Adorno. Endorsing Freyenhagen's overall defence of Adorno's position, it argues that several important features of Adorno's position as Freyenhagen interprets it can be made intelligible only on broadly Aristotelian metaphysical presuppositions. These should be thematized explicitly rather than ignored. Moreover, these metaphysical presuppositions are on independent grounds plausible, as recent Aristotelian and critical realist work has indicated, and special difficulties arising (...) for them in the context of a radical negative critical theory can probably be overcome. Further conversation between critical theorists, Aristotelians and critical realists should prove fruitful in elaborating and defending a radical critical theory alternative to the dominant postmetaphysical paradigm. Progress in this direction, though, will entail rejecting the basic postmetaphysical premise that critical theory must proceed in a metaphysically neutral way. (shrink)

I defend the thesis that, if there are substances, substance causation (i.e., causation by substances) is the only sort of causation in the universe – or the only fundamental sort. Subsequently, I develop an account of substance causation that is partly grounded on a peculiar interpretation of absolute change (i.e., of entities' coming and ceasing to be) and qualitative change, on some ontological assumptions about modes (i.e., individual properties that ontologically depend on their bearers) and powers. Finally, I reply to (...) some objections against substance causation in general (e.g., C. D. Broad's objection against causes' being non-essentially-dated entities) and to some possible objections against my own account and I briefly explore three advantages given by the acceptance of the latter. (shrink)

It is a common view in modern scholarship on Buddhist ethics, that attachment to the self constitutes a hindrance to ethics, whereas rejecting this type of attachment is a necessary condition for acting morally. The present article argues that in Vasubandhu's theory of agency, as formulated in the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya (Treasury of Metaphysics with Self-Commentary), a cognitive and psychological identification with a conventional, persisting self is a requisite for exercising moral agency. As such, this identification is essential for embracing the ethics (...) of Buddhism and its way of life. The article delineates the method that Vasubandhu employs to account for the notion of a selfless moral agent, with particular emphasis on his strategies for dealing with one central aspect of agency, self-interested concern for the future. (shrink)

Saigle, Dubljevic, and Racine (2018) claim that Libet-style experiments are insufficient to challenge that agents have free will. They support this with evidence from experimen- tal psychology that the folk concept of freedom is consis- tent with monism, that our minds are identical to our brains. However, recent literature suggests that evidence from experimental psychology is less than determinate in this regard, and that folk intuitions are too unrefined as to provide guidance on metaphysical issues like monism. In light of (...) this, it is worthwhile to examine the authors’ insuf- ficiency claim under the assumption that monism is false and dualism true (our minds are not identical to our brains). We conclude that, were dualism true, then Libet- style experiments would tell us no more about freedom and moral responsibility than what the authors initially claimed, thus further bolstering their point that Libet-style experiments are ill-suited to speak to the free will of agents. In what follows we first discuss some of the reasons to be skeptical of using folk intuitions to make claims about the nature of freedom and moral responsibility. We then draw from the work of E. J. Lowe to demonstrate that Libet-style experiments would likely give the same results regardless of the truth of monism or dualism. (shrink)

A collection of essays, mostly original, on the actual and possible positions on free will available to Buddhist philosophers, by Christopher Gowans, Rick Repetti, Jay Garfield, Owen Flanagan, Charles Goodman, Galen Strawson, Susan Blackmore, Martin T. Adam, Christian Coseru, Marie Friquegnon, Mark Siderits, Ben Abelson, B. Alan Wallace, Peter Harvey, Emily McRae, and Karin Meyers, and a Foreword by Daniel Cozort.

Cognitive phenomenalism is the view that occurrent thoughts are identical with, or constituted of, cognitive phenomenology. This paper raises a challenge for this view: the cognitive fine-tuning problem. In broad brushstrokes the difficulty is that, for the cognitive phenomenalist, there is a distinction between three kinds of fact: cognitive phenomenal facts, sensory phenomenal facts, and functional facts. This distinction gives rise to the challenge of explaining why, in actuality, these three phenomena tend to be matched together in ways that respect (...) norms of rationality. Various solutions to this problem are explored – divine intervention, value-involving laws of nature, or basic capacities to respond to reasons – all of which are wildly at odds with naturalism. If cognitive phenomenalists want their view to be consistent with naturalism, as many do, they must come up with a naturalistic solution to the cognitive fine-tuning problem. (shrink)

A growing number of philosophers now hold that agent causation is required for agency, or free will, or moral responsibility. To clarify what is at issue, this paper begins with a distinction between agent causation that is ontologically fundamental and agent causation that is reducible to or realized in causation by events or states. It is widely accepted that agency presents us with the latter; the view in question claims a need for the former. The paper then examines a “disappearing (...) agent” argument from Derk Pereboom that is aimed at showing that free will requires agent causation that is ontologically fundamental. It is argued that the argument fails. Further, it is argued that, contrary to Pereboom’s claim, the issue raised by his disappearing agent argument is distinct from the problem of present luck that libertarian theories of free will face. The paper concludes with an assessment of the prospects for success of a disappearing agent argument showing that agent causation that is ontologically fundamental is required for agency tout court. (shrink)

Many philosophers want to say both that everything is determined by the physical and subject to physical laws and principles, and that certain mental entities cannot be identified with any physical entities. The problem of mental causation is to make these two assumptions compatible with the causal efficacy of the mental. The concern is that this physicalist picture of the world leaves no space for the causal efficacy of anything non-physical. The physical, as it is sometimes said, excludes anything non- (...) physical from doing causal work. (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)

This essay examines recent work on abilities to act. Different kinds of ability are distinguished, and a recently proposed conditional analysis of ability ascriptions is evaluated. It is considered whether abilities are causal powers. Finally, several compatibility questions concerning abilities, as well as the relation between free will and abilities of various kinds, are examined.

In the contemporary mental causation debate, two dualist models of psychophysical causal relevance have been proposed which entail that although mental events are causally relevant in the physical domain, this is not in virtue of them causing any physical event. It is widely assumed that the principle of the causal completeness of the physical domain provides a general argument against interactive dualism. But, whether the completeness principle presents a problem for these alternative forms of interactive dualism is questionable. In this (...) paper, focusing on the popular no-gap argument for the completeness principle, I explore one reason why. (shrink)

Jaegwon Kim’s (2005) most recent formulation of the so-called Supervenience Argument against Non-Reductive Physicalism is discussed. The two stages of Kim’s argument can be seen as instances of, what I will call, the Generalized Exclusion Argument.

In very general terms, an agent is a being with the capacity to act, and 'agency' denotes the exercise or manifestation of this capacity. The philosophy of action provides us with a standard conception and a standard theory of action. The former construes action in terms of intentionality, the latter explains the intentionality of action in terms of causation by the agent’s mental states and events. From this, we obtain a standard conception and a standard theory of agency. There are (...) alternative conceptions of agency, and it has been argued that the standard theory fails to capture agency. Further, it seems that genuine agency can be exhibited by beings that are not capable of intentional action, and it has been argued that agency can and should be explained without reference to causally efficacious mental states and events. Debates about the nature of agency have flourished over the past few decades in philosophy and in other areas of research. In philosophy, the nature of agency is an important issue in the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of psychology, the debates on free will and moral responsibility, in ethics, meta-ethics, and in the debates on the nature of reasons and practical rationality. For the most part, this entry focuses on conceptual and metaphysical questions concerning the nature of agency. In the final sections, it provides an overview of empirically informed accounts of the sense of agency and of various empirical challenges to the commonsense assumption that our reasons and our conscious intentions make a real difference to how we act. (shrink)

Beliefs are held to norms in a way that seems to require control over what we believe. Yet we don’t control our beliefs at will, in the way we control our actions. I argue that this problem can be solved by recognising a different form of control, which we exercise when we revise our beliefs directly for reasons. We enjoy this form of attitudinal control not only over our beliefs, but also over other attitudes, including intentions—that is, over the will (...) itself. Closely tied to our capacity for reasoning, attitudinal control is in important respects more fundamental than the voluntary control that we exercise over our actions. In the course of developing this account I respond to two objections recently raised against an earlier version of it by Booth. (shrink)

The hermeneutical tradition represented by Yorck, Heidegger, and Gadamer has distrusted Dilthey as suffering from the two sins of modernism: scientific “positivism” and individualistic and aesthetic “romanticism.” On the one hand, Dilthey’s epistemology is deemed scientistic in accepting the priority of the empirical, the ontic, and consequently scientific inquiry into the physical, biological, and human worlds; on the other hand, his personalist ethos and Goethean humanism, and his pluralistic life- and worldview philosophy are considered excessively aesthetic, culturally liberal, relativistic, and (...) subjective. This essay involves two tasks in response to this negative evaluation of Dilthey that has shaped our current understanding of his philosophical project; first, an interpretation of the issues at stake in Heidegger’s reception of and struggles with Dilthey. These issues touch upon language, historicity, and the nature of hermeneutics. Second, by pursuing this task in light of Guignon’s interpretation of Dilthey and Heidegger, I hope to question and challenge the “overcoming” of Dilthey’s epistemic and life-philosophical hermeneutics in the “ontological” or “philosophical” hermeneutics of Heidegger. (shrink)

In the context of the free will debate, both compatibilists and event-causal libertarians consider that the agent’s mental states and events are what directly causes her decision to act. However, according to the ‘disappearing agent’ objection, if the agent is nothing over and above her physical and mental components, which ultimately bring about her decision, and that decision remains undetermined up to the moment when it is made, then it is a chancy and uncontrolled event. According to agent-causalism, this sort (...) of problem can be overcome if one realizes that the agent herself, as an irreducible substance, is the true originator of her actions. I’ll present arguments that favor this view. Event-causalists have countered that if the agent identifies with some of the inner states that play the self-determining causal role in bringing about the action, then it is as though the action was directly caused by herself. I’ll object that this is not a distinctive aspect of free agency. Agent-causalism has been criticized from most naturalistically inclined fronts, and it must address risks of implausibility, contradiction and unintelligibility. Even though I’ll acknowledge these challenges, I’ll still argue that libertarian free will cannot be defended by any reductionist alternative, and that agent-causalism does not conflict with contemporary science but only with some of its unproven assumptions. (shrink)

What does it mean to say that mind-body dualism is causally problematic in a way that other mind-body theories, such as the psychophysical type identity theory, are not? After considering and rejecting various proposals, I advance my own, which focuses on what grounds the causal closure of the physical realm. A metametaphysical implication of my proposal is that philosophers working without the notion of grounding in their toolkit are metaphysically impoverished. They cannot do justice to the thought, encountered in every (...) introductory class in the philosophy of mind, that dualism has a special problem accounting for mental causation. (shrink)

There has in recent years been a significant surge of interest in non-materialist accounts of the mind. Property dualists hold that all substances (concrete particulars that persist over time) are material, but mental properties are distinct from physical properties. Substance dualists maintain that the mind or person is a non-material substance. This article considers the prospects for substance dualism given the current state of the debate. The best known type of substance dualism, Cartesian dualism, has traditionally faced a number of (...) objections, but many contemporary philosophers have sought to avoid these by formulating novel versions of the view. I identify three central claims held in common by all forms of substance dualism, consider recent arguments for these claims, and assess how successfully different types of substance dualism respond to the traditional objections. I argue that most contemporary forms of the view still face one or more of three major challenges, from bundle theories of the self, from the recently developed “phenomenal concepts strategy”, and from worries about explanatory simplicity. (shrink)

A fairly simple theory of the semantics of tense is obtained by combining three claims: (i) for any time t, a present-tense sentence `p' is either true or false at t; (ii) for any time t0 earlier than t, the future-tense sentence `It will be the case that p at t' is true at t0 if `p' is true at t, false otherwise; (iii) for any time t0 later than t, the past-tense sentence `It was the case that p at (...) t' is true at t0 if `p' is true at t, false otherwise. This theory, which has been called the theory of timeless truth, is often dismissed on the basis of its alleged incapacity to comply with indeterminism. Here, instead, it will be suggested that there is no reason to be dismissive. Section 1 provides some elucidations about the theory. Sections 2 and 3 explain how a foregone objection to it can be resisted. Sections 4 and 5 show that there is a plausible sense in which (i)-(iii) are compatible with indeterminism. Sections 6 and 7 dispel some misunderstandings that may lead to think that indeterminism is not vindicated in some important sense other than that outlined. (shrink)

While other philosophers have pointed out that Libet's experiment is compatible with compatibilist free will and also with weak libertarian free will, this article argues that it is even compatible with strong libertarian free will (SLF), \ie a person's ability to initiate causal processes. Contrary to what Libet suggested, the actions in the experiment were motivated by urges. It is in accordance with SLF that the urges had preceding unconcious causes. Furthermore, Libet's observation that vetoing is possible confirmes SLF.

Over the past few years, the tree model of time has been widely employed to deal with issues concerning the semantics of tensed discourse. The thought that has motivated its adoption is that the most plausible way to make sense of indeterminism is to conceive of future possibilities as branches that depart from a common trunk, constituted by the past and the present. However, the thought still needs to be further articulated and defended, and several important questions remain open, such (...) as the question of how actuality can be understood and formally represented in a branching framework. The present volume is intended to be a 360 degree reflection on the tree model. The contributions is gathers concern the model and its alternatives, both from a semantic and from a metaphysical point of view. ​. (shrink)

I take it that the following is a desideratum of our theories in the philosophy of mind. A theory in the philosophy of mind should help us better understand ourselves as agents and aid in our theorizing about the nature of action and agency. In this paper I discuss a strategy adopted by some defenders of nonreductive physicalism in response to the problem of causal exclusion. The strategy, which I refer to as “intralevelism,” relies on treating mental causation as intra (...) level mental to mental causation, rather than as involving any inter level mental to physical causation. I raise problems for intralevelist theories of mental causation that stem from action-theoretic considerations. Specifically, I focus on the failure of intralevelist proposals to account for the problem of basic causal deviance in the etiology of action. To the extent that intralevelism fails to make room for basic causal deviance, the strategy fails to satisfy the aforementioned desideratum, viz ., that our theories in the philosophy of mind should be of use in theorizing about action and agency. The upshot is that intralevelism is a less promising strategy for nonreductive physicalists than it appears at first glance. (shrink)

To have free will is to have what it takes to act freely. When an agent acts freely—when she exercises her free will—what she does is up to her. A plurality of alternatives is open to her, and she determines which she pursues. When she does, she is an ultimate source or origin of her action. So runs a familiar conception of free will.