It is natural to think that at root, agents are beings that act. Agents do more than this, however – agents omit to act. Sometimes agents do so intentionally. How should we understand intentional omission? Recent accounts of intentional omission have given causation a central theoretical role. The move is well-motivated. If some form of causalism about intentional omission can successfully exploit similarities between action and omission, it might inherit the broad support causalism about intentional action enjoys. In this paper (...) I consider the prospects for causalism about intentional omission. I examine two recent proposals: one Carolina Sartorio (2009) defends, and one Randolph Clarke (2010a) defends. I argue these versions fail, and for a similar reason. Reflection on the function of intention for agency brings this reason to light, and motivates a novel causalism about intentional omission. On the account I go on to defend necessarily, an agent J intentionally omits to A only if an intention of J’s with relevant content (or the intention’s acquisition) causes in J a disposition not to A. Though the causal work done by intentions to omit differs in some cases from the causal work done by intentions to act, it turns out that causalism about intentional behavior (i.e., about action and omission) is viable. (shrink)

It is widely held that one can be responsible for doing something that one was unable to avoid doing. This paper focuses primarily on the question of whether one can be responsible for not doing something that one was unable to do. The paper begins with an examination of the account of responsibility for omissions offered by John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, arguing that in many cases it yields mistaken verdicts. An alternative account is sketched that jibes with and (...) explains judgments about a variety of omissions cases, including intentional omissions as well as simple failures to act. (shrink)

A critical survey of the main philosophical theories about events and event talk, organized in three main sections: (i) Events and Other Categories (Events vs. Objects; Events vs. Facts; Events vs. Properties; Events vs. Times); (ii) Types of Events (Activities, Accomplishments, Achievements, and States; Static and Dynamic Events; Actions and Bodily Movements; Mental and Physical Events; Negative Events); (iii) Existence, Identity, and Indeterminacy.

In this paper I argue that there is an important anomaly to the causalist/compatibilist paradigm in the philosophy of action and free will. This anomaly, which to my knowledge has gone unnoticed so far, can be found in the philosophy of Harry Frankfurt. Two of his most important contributions to the field – his influential counterexample to the Principle of Alternate Possibilities and his ‘guidance’ view of action – are incompatible. The importance of this inconsistency goes far beyond the issue (...) of coherence within Frankfurt’s philosophy. I shall argue that this inconsistency represents an important anomaly within the causalist/compatibilist framework; so that we should start to seriously consider having to move on from the established paradigm. (shrink)

How do we control what we do not do? What are the relevant guiding mental states when an agent intentionally omits to perform an action? I argue that what happens when an agent intentionally omits is a two-part metacognitive process in which a representation of an action is brought to the agent’s mind for further processing and evaluated by her as something not to be done. Without a representation of the action not done, the agent cannot further process the possibility (...) of her own action; she cannot intentionally try to not do something, resist performing an action, or decide or choose to not perform an action. The literature on people with frontal lobe damage suggests that without metacognitive control of action, a person automatically follows what the environment affords or what others are doing. Through at least procedural metacognitive control of action, agents are able to intentionally omit. This view has explanatory power over a variety of intentional omissions and over a variety of agents. It answers central questions in the philosophy of intentional omissions: who is capable of intentionally omitting, when and where intentional omissions unfold, and what are the relevant guiding mental states on which the control of intentional omissions is based? The answers to these questions contribute in part to naturalizing agency, at least when it comes to negative agency, our ability to guide the non-performance of our actions. (shrink)

The statement that we are currently failing to address some of humanity’s greatest challenges seems uncontroversial—we are not doing enough to limit global warming to a maximum of 2 °C and we are exposing vulnerable people to preventable diseases when failing to produce herd immunity. But what singles out such failings from all the things we did not do when all are unintended? Unlike their individualist counterparts, collective inaction and omission have not yet received much attention in the literature. collective (...) inaction, I argue, can be attributed to a group of agents where a collective action x that the agents did not perform was collectively feasible at time t where each agent in that group had sufficient reason to contribute to performing x or others had a reasonable expectation that they would perform x. I show that, perhaps surprisingly, we can speak of collective inaction even where only one member of the group fails to act. However, where large and dispersed groups of agents are concerned, there is often no meaningful way of attributing collective failings. Still, I contend that the failure to close the global emissions gap and—in some cases—to generate herd immunity are indeed on us. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Frankfurt’s ‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility’ broke with the tradition of understanding the kind of freedom required for responsibility in terms of alternative possibilities. At the same time, it inspired and motivated a new family of views in its place: views that focus exclusively on actual sequences or the actual causes of behaviour. But, what exactly does that ‘exclusiveness’ claim amount to? At first sight, it may seem natural to interpret it as the claim that the only facts that (...) are relevant to an agent’s freedom are certain facts about actual causes. This would imply that any non-actual facts are simply irrelevant to the freedom of agents. This paper argues that this interpretation is mistaken, and proposes a better one. It also discusses the related but more general question of the type of project that we are invested in when giving a theory of freedom: Are we interested in the bottom-level grounding facts, or are we interested in some higher-level facts? (shrink)

When evaluating theories of causation, intuitions should not play a decisive role, not even intuitions in flawlessly-designed thought experiments. Indeed, no coherent theory of causation can respect the typical person’s intuitions in redundancy (pre-emption) thought experiments, without disrespecting their intuitions in threat-and-saviour (switching/short-circuit) thought experiments. I provide a deductively sound argument for these claims. Amazingly, this argument assumes absolutely nothing about the nature of causation. I also provide a second argument, whose conclusion is even stronger: the typical person’s causal intuitions (...) are thoroughly unreliable. This argument proceeds by raising the neglected question: in what respects is information about intermediate and enabling variables relevant to reliable causal judgment? (shrink)

In some recent work on omissions, it has been argued that the causal theory of action cannot account for how agency is exercised in intentionally omitting to act in the same way it explains how agency is exercised in intentional action. Thus, causalism appears to provide us with an incomplete picture of intentional agency. I argue that causalists should distinguish causalism as a general theory of intentional agency from causalism as a theory of intentional action. Specifically, I argue that, while (...) intentional actions may best be understood as the causal products or outcomes of causings, we should identify exercises of intentional agency with causal processes. With a causalist account of intentional agency sketched, I respond to the challenge to causalism from omissions. I argue that when an agent intentionally omits there is a causal process that has a zero-sum outcome. But the causal process is sufficient to make it true that the agent exercises intentional agency in intentionally omitting. (shrink)

I argue against various versions of the ‘attitude’ view of consent and of the ‘action’ view of consent: I show that neither an attitude nor an action is either necessary or sufficient for consent. I then put forward a different view of consent based on the idea that, given a legitimate epistemic context, absence of dissent is sufficient for consent: what is crucial is having access to dissent. In the latter part of the paper I illustrate my view of consent (...) by applying it to the case of consenting to being an organ donor. (shrink)

I argue that we should give up the fight to rescue causal theories of action from fundamental challenges such as the problem of deviant causal chains; and that we should rather pursue an account of action based on the basic intuition that control identifies agency. In Section 1 I introduce causalism about action explanation. In Section 2 I present an alternative, Frankfurt’s idea of guidance. In Section 3 I argue that the problem of deviant causal chains challenges causalism in two (...) important respects: first, it emphasizes that causalism fails to do justice to our basic intuition that control is necessary for agency. Second, it provides countless counterexamples to causalism, which many recent firemen have failed to extinguish – as I argue in some detail. Finally, in Section 4 I argue, contra Al Mele, that control does not require the attribution of psychological states as causes. (shrink)

We are responsible for some things but not for others. In this thesis, I investigate what it takes for an entity to be responsible for something. This question has two components: agents and actions. I argue for a permissive view about agents. Entities such as groups or artificially intelligent systems may be agents in the sense required for responsibility. With respect to actions, I argue for a causal view. The relation in virtue of which agents are responsible for actions is (...) a causal one. I claim that responsibility requires causation and I develop a causal account of agency. This account is particularly apt for addressing the relationship between agency and moral responsibility and sheds light on the causal foundations of moral responsibility. (shrink)

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)

Moral philosophers have mostly condemned the condonation of a bad act as being close to complicity in wrongdoing or, at best, as indicative of a lax moral conscience. I argue, in contrast, that condoning a wrongful act is sometimes not only permissible but positively virtuous. After considering the nature of condonation, I describe a range of circumstances in which it may be an appropriate response to wrongdoing, expressing such virtues as compassion and mercifulness, tolerance of human frailty, a love of (...) amity, and a proper respectfulness for others’ autonomy as moral agents. (shrink)

When the absence of an event causes some outcome, it is an instance of omissive causation. For instance, not eating lunch may cause you to be hungry. Recent psychological proposals concur that the mind represents causal relations, including omissive causal relations, through mental simulation, but they disagree on the form of that simulation. One theory states that people represent omissive causes as force vectors; another states that omissions are representations of contrasting counterfactual simulations; a third argues that people think about (...) omissions by representing sets of iconic possibilities – mental models – in a piecemeal fashion. In this paper, we tease apart the empirical predictions of the three theories and describe experiments that run counter to two of them. Experiments 1 and 2 show that reasoners can infer temporal relations from omissive causes – a pattern that contravenes the force theory. Experiment 3 asked participants to list the possibilities consistent with an omissive cause – it found that they tended to list particular privileged possibilities first, most often, and faster than alternative possibilities. The pattern is consistent with the model theory, but inconsistent with the contrast hypothesis. We marshal the evidence and explain why it helps to solve a long-standing debate about how the mind represents omissions. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the problem of omission for the counterfactual comparative account of harm. A given event harms a person, on this account, when it makes her worse off than she would have been if it had not occurred. The problem arises because cases in which one person merely fails to benefit another intuitively seem harmless. The account, however, seems to imply that when one person fails to benefit another, the first thereby harms the second, since the second (...) person would have been better off if the first had benefited her. I argue that the cases of failing to benefit at issue are in fact cases of harming. They are cases of preventive harm. I also argue that we can explain away the intuition that no harm occurs in these cases, and that the relevant implication of the counterfactual comparative account is consistent with a variety of plausible views about the moral significance of harm. (shrink)

Alvarez and Steward think the power of agency is a two-way power; Lowe thinks the will is. There is a problem for two-way powers. Either there is a unified description of the manifestation-type of the power, or not. If so, two-way powers are really one-way powers. If not, two-way powers are really combinations of one-way powers. Either way, two-way powers cannot help distinguish free agents from everything else. I argue the problem is best avoided by an Aristotelian view, which posits (...) a distinctive unity of explanation proper to two-way powers, grounded in a distinctive form of reasoning. (shrink)

We take ourselves to be able to omit to perform certain actions and to be at times responsible for these omissions. Moreover, omissions seem to have effects and to be manifestations of our agency. So, it is natural to think that omissions must be events. However, very few people writing on this topic have been willing to argue that omissions are events. Such a view is taken to face three significant challenges: (i) omissions are thought to be somehow problematically negative, (...) (ii) it is unclear where the event of an omission would be located, and (iii) if we accept any omissions as events, it seems like there would be far too much causation involving them. In this paper, I develop a novel view of omissions as events and as actions that provides answers to these challenges. (shrink)

It is argued that intentionally omitting requires having an intention with relevant content. And the intention must play a causal role with respect to one’s subsequent thought and conduct. Even if omissions cannot be caused, an account of intentional omission must be causal. There is a causal role for one’s reasons as well when one intentionally omits to do something.

If a person's head moves, she may or may not have moved her head, and, if she did move it, she may have actively performed the movement of her head or merely, by doing something else, caused a passive movement. And, if she performed the movement, she might have done so intentionally or not. This short array of contrasts (and others like them) has motivated questions about the nature, variety, and identity of action. Beyond the matter of her moving, when (...) the person moves her head, she may be indicating agreement or shaking an insect off her ear. Should we think of the consequences, conventional or causal, of physical behavior as constituents of an action distinct from but ‘generated by’ the movement? Or should we think that there is a single action describable in a host of ways? Also, actions, in even the most minimal sense, seem to be essentially ‘active’. But, how can we explain what this property amounts to and defend our wavering intuitions about which events fall in the category of the ‘active’ and which do not? (shrink)

The folk picture of agency suggests that human beings have basic agency over some of their omissions. For example, someone may follow through on a decision never to support a political party without doing anything in order to make themselves omit. A number of features appear to signal their agency: the omission is not just called intentional, it is also seen as an achievement and explained in terms of the reasons for the decision. Some philosophers have tried to debunk the (...) appearance and argue that agency over omissions always proceeds from agency over actions (on the model of Ulysses ordering his crew to tie him to the mast). Others have tried to uphold the appearance by understanding basic agency over omissions on the model of their theories of action (and most often on the model of causal theories). Against both groups, I argue for a vindication of the appearance in terms of a theory of sui generis basic agency over omissions. Basic intentional omissions are the behavioral outcomes of fluent control by their agents’ intentions. When an intention to omit fluently controls for the right omission, the omission is an intentional achievement performed because of the intention. The intention appropriately regulates the agent’s behavior so as to ensure the intended omission. We can therefore see basic agency over omissions as regulative and distinct from the agency exercised over actions. (shrink)

If causalism is a complete theory of what it is to behave intentionally, it also has to account for intentional omissions. Carolina Sartorio, 513–530, 2009) has developed a powerful argument, the Causal Exclusion for Omissions, showing that intentional omissions cannot be explained by causalism. A crucial claim in the argument is that there is a causal competition between a mental omission and the mental action performed instead. In this paper I reject the argument by demonstrating that there is no causal (...) competition ever between an omission and the action performed instead. I propose what I call the Realisationist Conception of Omissions, which consists in considering omissions as multiply realisable absences whose realisers are specific positive actions. I further argue in favour of the Determinationist Conception of Omissions, according to which the relation between omissions and their realisers is a determinable/determinate relation. Since there can be no causal preemption between a determinable and its determinates, there can be no causal preemption between omissions and the actions performed instead, and causalism is safe. I also show that this view of omissions has some other independent advantages – like for example that of solving the problem of the spatio-temporal localisation of omissions. (shrink)

It is often assumed that, while ordinary actions are events, ‘negative actions’ are absences of events. I claim that a negative action is an ordinary, ‘positive’ event that plays a certain role. I argue that my approach can answer standard objections to the identity of negative actions and positive events.