This theory accords to volitions the status of basic mental actions, maintaining that these are spontaneous exercises of the will--a "two-way" power which ...

This paper examines libertarian accounts that appeal to event causation but avoid appeal to agent causation. Such views are modest in their metaphysical commitments and may be modest, as well, in what they promise. It is argued that an action-centered version should be preferred; on such a view, indeterminism is required in the direct production of decision or other action. Although a view of this kind does not improve on compatibilist accounts when it comes to moral responsibility, they may be (...) preferable in other respects. (shrink)

Autonomous Agents addresses the related topics of self-control and individual autonomy. "Self-control" is defined as the opposite of akrasia-weakness of will. The study of self-control seeks to understand the concept of its own terms, followed by an examination of its bearing on one's actions, beliefs, emotions, and personal values. It goes on to consider how a proper understanding of self-control and its manifestations can shed light on personal autonomy and autonomous behaviour. Perspicuous, objective, and incisive throughout, Alfred Mele makes a (...) convincing case for the value of individual autonomy. (shrink)

The dilemma of free will is that if actions are caused deterministically, then they are not free, and if they are not caused deterministically then they are not free either because then they happen by chance and are not up to the agent. I propose a conception of free will that solves this dilemma. It can be called agent causation but it differs from what Chisholm and others have called so.

The shortest form of the Basic Argument against free will and moral responsibility runs as follows: [1] When you act, you do what you do—in the situation in which you find yourself—because of the way you are. [2] If you do what you do because of the way you are, then in order to be fully and ultimately responsible for what you do you must be fully and ultimately responsible for the way you are. But [3] You cannot be fully (...) and ultimately responsible for the way you are. So [4] You cannot be fully and ultimately responsible for what you do. This paper restates the Basic Argument and varies it in several different ways. (shrink)

This book investigates what it means, and whether it is coherent, to say that there is a God.

I think that virtually all contemporary theists, agnostics and atheists believe this is logically possible. Indeed, the main philosophical tradition from Plato to the present has assumed that the sentence, "God is the originating cause of the universe", does not express a logical contradiction, even though many philosophers have argued that this sentence either is synthetic and meaningless (e.g., the logical positivists) or states a synthetic and a priori falsehood (e.g., Kant and Moore), or states a synthetic and a posteriori (...) falsehood (e.g., contemporary defenders of the probabilistic argument from evil). (shrink)

It has seemed to a number of recent scholars that God's acts in the world must have the fundamental character of being ‘ basic acts ’. Grace Jantzen has argued that ‘a theist wants to say that all of God's actions in the world are direct and basic …he does everything directly, without intervening apparatus…God can perform any physical action, and any such action on God's part is direct, basic ’. Robert Ellis has claimed that ‘if we limit “ basic (...) ” action to action upon/within one's body then God's immediate action upon the physical universe may qualify under such a description whether or not one holds to a view of the world as the body of God [a view endorsed by Jantzen] … All God's actions would [therefore] seem to be “ basic ”. And William P. Alston has suggested that ‘it is a live possibility that all God's actions are basic ’. The question to be addressed is what theological and/or philosophical reasons can be advanced to make the case for regarding all divine action as basic? Would there be any significant diminution in affirming divine power if most or many of God's actions were non- basic? (shrink)

This comprehensive reference provides an exhaustive guide to current scholarship on the perennial problem of Free Will--perhaps the most hotly and voluminously debated of all philosophical problems. While reference is made throughout to the contributions of major thinkers of the past, the emphasis is on recent research. The essays, most of which are previously unpublished, combine the work of established scholars with younger thinkers who are beginning to make significant contributions. Taken as a whole, the Handbook provides an engaging and (...) accessible roadmap to the state of the art thinking on this enduring topic. (shrink)

Human agents, unless they be crazed by some impediment of mind, are usually all too painfully aware of the risks inherent in their task of exercising agency. We are vulnerable as we act to forces not fully within our control, to unsound judgements which we ourselves make, and to the limits of our own reach which we sometimes miss or ignore. However, it is common enough in orthodox Christian circles, when transposing the concepts of action and agency to the divine, (...) to remove the element of risk which so closely accompanies our own experience of action. God, it is claimed, is the perfect agent – who never fails – who accomplishes all and everything he sets out to do. (shrink)

_The Divine Attributes_is an engaging analysis of the God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam from the perspective of rational theology.

How are God and creatures related? How can one reconcile the sovereigntyand power of God with creatures' capacity to act freely? Kathryn Tanner's important and original work seeks an answer in the featuresand limits of traditional Christian discourse. Her search for a unique kernal orregulative dimension of the Christian doctrine of God-world relations leadsher to identify in the tradition an operative "grammar&334; of meaningful theological discourse that not only informs the past but can guide the future.

This provocative book refurbishes the traditional account of freedom of will as reasons-guided "agent" causation, situating its account within a general metaphysics. O'Connor's discussion of the general concept of causation and of ontological reductionism v. emergence will specially interest metaphysicians and philosophers of mind.