In a recent paper I argued that agent causation theorists should be compatibilists. In this paper, I argue that compatibilists should be agent causation theorists. I consider six of the main problems facing compatibilism: (i) the powerful intuition that one can't be responsible for actions that were somehow determined before one was born; (ii) Peter van Inwagen's modal argument, involving the inference rule (β); (iii) the objection to compatibilism that is based on claiming that the ability (...) to do otherwise is a necessary condition for freedom; (iv) "manipulation arguments," involving cases in which an agent is manipulated by some powerful being into doing something that he or she would not normally do, but in such a way that the compatibilist's favorite conditions for a free action are satisfied; (v) the problem of constitutive luck; and (vi) the claim that it is not fair to blame someone for an action if that person was determined by forces outside of his or her control to perform that action. And in the case of each of these problems, I argue that the compatibilist has a much more plausible response to that problem if she endorses the theory of agent causation than she does otherwise. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that many scholars involved in the contemporary free will debates have underappreciated the philosophical appeal of agent causation because the resources of contemporary emergentism have not been adequately introduced into the discussion. Whereas I agree that agent causation’s main problem has to do with its intelligibility, particularly with respect to the issue of how substances can be causally relevant, I argue that the notion of substance causation can be clearly articulated (...) from an emergentist framework. According to my proposal, a free agent is _a causally powerful substance that emerges in an anomic way from her constitutive mental events_, downwardly constraining, selecting and, in this way, having control on them. As we shall see, this particular concept of agent causation not only makes sense of the deep insight behind agent libertarianism, but it also provides us with the resources to solve some of the main objections that have been raised against it. It is true that here I cannot develop a complete defense of the evidential credentials of emergentism. Still, even if the considerations that follow do not serve to convince detractors of agent causal libertarian accounts of free will, they do suggest that libertarian agent causation is more promising than is typically acknowledged. (shrink)

My primary aim is to defend a nonreductive solution to the problem of action. I argue that when you are performing an overt bodily action, you are playing an irreducible causal role in bringing about, sustaining, and controlling the movements of your body, a causal role best understood as an instance of agent causation. Thus, the solution that I defend employs a notion of agent causation, though emphatically not in defence of an account of free will, (...) as most theories of agent causation are. Rather, I argue that the notion of agent causation introduced here best explains how it is that you are making your body move during an action, thereby providing a satisfactory solution to the problem of action. (shrink)

Several philosophers claim that the phenomenology of one’s own agency conflicts with standard causal theories of action, couched in terms of causation by mental events or states. Others say that the phenomenology is prima facie incompatible with such a theory, even if in the end a reconciliation can be worked out. Here it is argued that the type of action theory in question is consistent with what can plausibly be said to be presented to us in our experience of (...) our agency. Several routes to a claim that there is nevertheless a prima facie incompatibility are examined, and all are found wanting. The phenomenology of agency, it is argued, is no threat to a standard causal theory of action. (shrink)

Sometimes you make a choice. Whether or not you made it was up to you. The choice was free. But how can this be? A scientific view of the world may leave no room for free choice. Free will literature continually explodes. Yet experts still focus on control or on a power to do otherwise. Sadly, they neglect another intuitive feature of free will: being an underived source or ultimate originator. When acting freely, one is a self-determined, self-directed, sole author (...) of change. Surprisingly, though the literature is replete with this pre-theoretic feature of free will, virtually no one makes rigorous use of it when constructing arguments. Equipped with fresh research, this book contends that agent-causation—currently an unpopular theory—deserves serious reconsideration. Only agent-causation accounts for ultimate origination, and popular objections fail under rigorous scrutiny. This book is tightly argued. It challenges and deepens recent advances in free will scholarship made by Peter van Inwagen, Robert Kane, Carl Ginet, Randy Clarke, Stewart Goetz, Tim O’Connor, and others. (shrink)

Some people endorse a view called incompatibilism, which states that free will is incompatible with determinism. No free action could possibly be determined, they think. More informatively, incompatibilists think it is impossible that someone’s freely acting be causally guaranteed to happen by things that occur before she freely acts. Some people hold a view called libertarianism, which states both that incompatibilism is true and that someone actually performs a free action. Other people reject incompatibilism. They hold to compatibilism, which is (...) the view that it is possible that previous happenings in the world could absolutely causally guarantee—that is, could cause in a deterministic way—that someone freely acts. In this chapter, I argue that libertarianism is, for the time being at least, the most sensible view. (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)

The article aims at formulating a philosophical framework and by this giving some means at hand to save human libertarian freedom, God’s omniscience and God’s ”eternity’. This threefold aim is achieved by 1) conceiving of an agent as having different possibilities to act, 2) regarding God’s knowledge -- with respect to agents -- not only as being ”propositional’ in character but also as being ”experiential’: God knows an agent also from the ”first person perspective’, as the agent (...) knows herself, and, 3), formulating ”eternity’ and ”temporality’ as being homeomorphically related to each other. This gives rise to a coherent interplay that saves both human libertarian freedom and God’s omniscient ”view from eternity’. (shrink)

The problem of freedom and determinism has vexed philosophers for several millennia, and continues to be a topic of lively debate today. One of the proposed solutions to the problem that has received a great deal of attention is the Theory of Agent Causation. While the theory has enjoyed its share of advocates, and perhaps more than its share of critics, the theory’s advocates and critics have always agreed on one thing: the Theory of Agent Causation (...) is an incompatibilist theory. That is, both believers and nonbelievers in the theory have taken it for granted that the most plausible version of the Theory of Agent Causation is one according to which freedom and determinism are incompatible. In fact, so entrenched is this assumption that no one on either side of the debate has ever questioned it. Yet it turns out that this assumption is wrong – the most plausible version of the Theory of Agent Causation is a compatibilist one. (shrink)

This article examines Nietzsche’s analysis of the phenomenology of agent causation. Sense of agent causation, our sense of self-efficacy, is tenacious because it originates, according to Nietzsche’s hypothesis, in the embodied and situated experience of effort in overcoming resistances. It arises at the level of the organism and is sustained by higher-order cognitive functions. Based on this hypothesis, Nietzsche regards the sense of self as emerging from a homeostatic system of drives and affects that unify such (...) as to maintain self-efficacy levels. He relies on the same hypothesis to explain the emergence of an ascetic moral system and its specific, interpretive-affective ‘mechanism of willing’. The article aligns Nietzsche’s account of agent causation with Albert Bandura’s self-efficacy studies and Antonio Damasio’s recent account of self-systems as homeostatic systems. (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.

In this paper, I offer one example of conceptual change. Specifically, I contend that the discovery that viruses could cause cancer represents an excellent example of branch jumping, one of Thagard’s nine forms of conceptual change. Prior to about 1960, cancer was generally regarded as a degenerative, chronic, non-infectious disease. Cancer causation was therefore usually held to be a gradual process of accumulating cellular damage, caused by relatively non-specific component causes, acting over long periods of time. Viral infections, on (...) the other hand, were generally understood to be acute processes, whereby single, specific and necessary causal agents acted alone to produce disease. However, during the 1960s and 1970s, a number of cancers were discovered to have an infectious aetiology. Of particular note were two—Burkitt’s lymphoma and cervical cancer—which I will discuss in detail later in this piece. Together, these discoveries led, in the short term, to a tentative aetiological reclassification of some types of cancer as infectious diseases and, in the longer term, to a full-blown reclassification of cancer as an aetiological disease branch in its own right. This process of reclassification forms the empirical basis for my concluding remarks on the influence of classification upon causation in medicine. Through this, I aim to demonstrate that conceptual change, far from being a purely abstract concern of the philosopher of science, is of substantial import to scientific practitioners. (shrink)

In many spheres, the law takes the legal concept of causation to correspond to the folk concept (the correspondence assumption). Courts, including the US Supreme Court, tend to insist on the "common understanding" and that which is "natural to say" (Burrage v. United States) when it comes to expressions relating to causation, and frequently refuse to clarify the expression to juries. As recent work in psychology and experimental philosophy has uncovered, lay attributions of causation are susceptible to (...) a great number of unexpected factors, some of which seem rather peripheral to causation. One of those is the norm effect (Knobe & Fraser, 2008): Agents who, in acting as they do, break a salient norm, are more likely to be considered as having caused a certain consequence than when they do not violate a norm. According to some (e.g., Alicke, 1992) this constitutes a bias. According to others (e.g., Sytsma, 2020), the folk concept of causation is sensitive to normative factors, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In this paper, we explore the question whether the norm effect should be considered a bias from the legal perspective on the one hand, and from the psychological perspective on the other. To do this, we test whether norms which are nonpertinent to the consequences or outright silly also impact causation judgements. The data from two preregistered experiments (total N=593) clearly show they do. This, we argue, makes the bias interpretation plausible from the psychological perspective, and both plausible and problematic from the legal perspective. It also shows that the law should abstain from unreflectively assuming conceptual correspondence between legal and ordinary language concepts. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend the agent/patient distinction against critics who argue that causal interactions are symmetrical. Specifically, I argue that there is a widespread type of causal interaction between distinct entities, resulting in a type of ontological asymmetry that provides principled grounds for distinguishing agents from patients. The type of interaction where the asymmetry is found is when one of the entities undergoes a change in kind, structure, powers, or intrinsic properties as a result of the interaction while (...) the other does not. Interactions of this type are widespread in molecular biology and chemistry. I focus specifically on (i) the actions of enzymes on substrates and (ii) water molecules breaking the bonds of polarized molecules. Finally, I respond to objections by laying out and to a limited extent defending three commitments of my account: emergent entities and powers, realism about chemical kinds or structures, and the assumption of the agent/patient distinction in functional attributions in biology. (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)

Extant research has shown that ordinary causal judgments are sensitive to normative factors. For instance, agents who violate a norm are standardly deemed more causal than norm-conforming agents in identical situations. In this paper, we explore two competing explanations for the Norm Effect: the Responsibility View and the Bias View. According to the former, the Norm Effect arises because ordinary causal judgment is intimately intertwined with moral responsibility. According to the alternative view, the Norm Effect is the result of a (...) blame-driven bias. In a series of five preregistered experiments (N = 2688), we present evidence that predominantly favours the Bias View. In particular, and against predictions made by the Responsibility View, we show that participants deem agents who violate nonpertinent or silly norms – norms that do not relate to the outcome at hand – as more causal, and that this effect cannot be explained in terms of plausible mediators such as the agent’s foreknowledge and desire, or the foreseeability of harm. We close with a discussion regarding the implications of these findings, in as regards the just assessment of proximate cause in the law. (shrink)

A growing body of literature has revealed ordinary causal judgement to be sensitive to normative factors, such that a norm-violating agent is regarded more causal than their non-norm-violating counterpart. In this paper, we explore two competing explanations for this phenomenon: the Responsibility View and the Bias View. The Bias View, but not the Responsibility View, predicts features peripheral to the agent’s responsibility to impact causal attributions. In a series of three preregistered experiments (N = 1162), we present new (...) evidence that the Norm Effect arises from such peripheral features, namely from nonpertinent or entirely silly norm violations. Furthermore, we show that this effect cannot be explained by recourse to the agent’s foreknowledge or desire of the outcome, nor by its foreseeability: the Norm Effect arises even when participants judge the norm-violating agent’s doing as equally foreseeable. This, we argue, provides evidence in favour of the Bias View. (shrink)

Positions taken in the current debate over free will can be seen as responses to the following conditional: -/- If every action is caused solely by another event and a cause necessitates its effect, then there is no action to which there is an alternative (C). -/- The Libertarian, who believes that alternatives are a requirement of free will, responds by denying the right conjunct of C’s antecedent, maintaining that some actions are caused, either mediately or immediately, by events whose (...) effects could be different, even if they were to recur under identical circumstances. We have here a denial of Laplacian Determinism (LD), according to which the condition of the world at any instant makes only one state possible at any other instant. One prominent defender of this view, Robert Kane, holds that unless an agent’s neural mechanisms operated indeterministicly in forming her character she is not responsible for its manifestations. This requirement is entailed by the principle of “ultimate responsibility” (UR) according to which an act is freely willed only if (a) its agent is personally responsible for its performance in the sense of having caused it to occur by voluntarily doing something that was avoidable and (b) there is no sufficient condition for its performance for which its agent is not personally responsible. The orthodox Compatibilist, adducing counterexamples to UR, argues that even if C and its antecedent are true, free will is possible. Ned Markosian has provided the Compatibilist with yet another response to UR-based objections to her view, wedding it to the notion of agent causation: here the deterministic causing of an act by its agent is necessary and sufficient for its being “morally free.” I criticize this view as inconsistent with the agent causalist's belief that moral responsibility precludes causation of a choice by any power other than the maker thereof: he being its efficient cause. (shrink)

Event-causal libertarians maintain that an agent’s settling of whether certain states-of-affairs obtain on a particular occasion can be reduced to the causing of events by certain mental events or states, such as certain desires, beliefs and/or intentions. Agent-causal libertarians disagree. A common critique against event-causal libertarian accounts is that the agent’s role of settling matters is left unfilled and the agent “disappears” from such accounts—a problem known as the disappearing agent problem. Recently, Franklin has argued (...) that an “enriched” event-causal account can overcome this problem. Franklin, however, doesn’t consider whether, as Pereboom argues, the agent as decider of “torn decisions” disappears from even enriched accounts. As I show here, Franklin’s enriched account takes some modifying if it is to overcome Pereboom’s torn decision problem—a special case of the disappearing agent problem. However, as I also show, there is a more fundamental problem facing event-causal libertarian accounts. It is implausible that an agent qua event or state simultaneously settles whether and how she intervenes. The upshot is that events and/or states lack an ability essential to completely fulfilling an agent’s role qua settler. This isn’t a problem for agent-causal accounts like the one offered by Steward because in as much as an agent qua substance settles whether her body moves in certain ways on certain occasions she simultaneously settles whether and how she intervenes. As a consequence, event-causal libertarians face a dilemma, or rather several, that agent-causal libertarians do not. This may ultimately be explained by the irreducibility of causation by agents to causation by events. (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)

An influential view in the ethics of self-defence is that causal responsibility for an unjust threat is a necessary requirement for liability to defensive harm. In this article, I argue against this view by providing intuitive counterexamples and by revealing weaknesses in the arguments offered in its favour. In response, adherents of the causal view have advanced the idea that although causally inefficacious agents are not liable to defensive harm, the fact that they may deserve harm can justify harming them (...) in the course of defending oneself. I argue that this strategy is ad hoc and leads to more problems than it solves. Once we allow normative facts outside our account of liability to affect a person's moral protection against harm, the lieability verdicts cannot tell us whether there is a relevant moral asymmetry between the victim and the target of defence. In conclusion, the causal view is wrong and causal responsibility for an unjust threat is not a necessary requirement for liability to defensive harm. (shrink)

This paper discusses a puzzling tension in attributions of moral responsibility in cases of resultant moral luck: we seem to hold agents fully morally responsible for unlucky outcomes, but less-than-fully-responsible for unlucky outcomes brought about differently than intended. This tension cannot be easily discharged or explained, but it does shed light on a famous puzzle about causation and responsibility, the Thirsty Traveler.

The paper discusses the category of one of the most fundamental expressions of agency, those movements of agents that are actions. There have been three dominant views of action since the 1960s: 1. the Causal Theory of Action, 2. the Tryings/Willings view, and 3. Agent Causation. These views claim that actions are: 1. events of bodily movements which have the right causes; 2. specific types of mental events causing events of bodily movements; 3. instances of the causal relationship (...) between agents and events of bodily movements. Among other arguments, a specific interpretation of the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs has been taken by defenders of the Tryings/Willings views and Agent Causation to support their main claims. The paper argues that these three views mischaracterise actions of bodily movements. It argues for this by highlighting some implausible claims and problems of the three views; by offering an interpretation of the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs that does not lend support to these views; and finally, by providing an alternative view of actions. This view is the Pluralist View according to which agents’ movements are the activations of agents’ abilities to move. (shrink)

Nearly all defences of the agent-causal theory of free will portray the theory as a distinctively libertarian one — a theory that only libertarians have reason to accept. According to what I call ‘the standard argument for the agent-causal theory of free will’, the reason to embrace agent-causal libertarianism is that libertarians can solve the problem of enhanced control only if they furnish agents with the agent-causal power. In this way it is assumed that there is (...) only reason to accept the agent-causal theory if there is reason to accept libertarianism. I aim to refute this claim. I will argue that the reasons we have for endorsing the agent-causal theory of free will are nonpartisan. The real reason for going agent-causal has nothing to do with determinism or indeterminism, but rather with avoiding reductionism about agency and the self. As we will see, if there is reason for libertarians to accept the agent-causal theory, there is just as much reason for compatibilists to accept it. It is in this sense that I contend that if anyone should be an agent-causalist, then everyone should be an agent-causalist. (shrink)

Agent-based models (ABMs) are one type of simulation model used in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast to equation-based models, ABMs are algorithms that use individual agents and attribute changing characteristics to each one, multiple times during multiple iterations over time. This paper focuses on three philosophical aspects of ABMs as models of causal mechanisms, as generators of emergent phenomena, and as providers of explanation. Based on my discussion, I conclude that while ABMs cannot help much with (...) causal inference, they can be viewed as etio-prognostic explanations of illness occurrence and outcome. (shrink)

In seinem Buch "Free Agents" stellt der Neurowissenschaftler und Evolutionsgenetiker Kevin Mitchell ein evolutionäres Erklärungsmodell für den freien Willen vor. Aus philosophischer Sicht relevant ist das Buch vor allem, weil es ein zentrales Credo der aktuellen Freiheits-Debatte in Frage stellt, nämlich die Auffassung, ein naturwissenschaftlich vertretbares Freiheitsverständnis müsse mit dem Determinismus im Einklang stehen. Mitchell geht auf Distanz zum Kompatibilismus und nimmt mit naturwissenschaftlicher Argumentation für die libertarische Gegenposition Partei (auch wenn er selbst diesen Ausdruck nicht verwendet). Sein Buch ist (...) zweifellos das bisher umfassendste Werk dieser Art, und seine durchwegs nachvollziehbar aufgebaute Argumentation wird mit viel empirischer Evidenz aus Physik, Biochemie und Evolutionsbiologie unterlegt. Das zentrale Element seines Ansatzes ist die Qualifizierung lebender Organismen als Akteure. Alle Lebewesen sind gemäß Mitchell "autonomous entities, imbued with purpose and able to act on their own terms" (19). Rund die Hälfte seines Buches widmet Mitchell dem Thema, wie sich die Fähigkeiten der Lebewesen als Akteure im Laufe der Evolutionsgeschichte entwickelt und ausdifferenziert haben. Er zeigt Schritt für Schritt auf, wie aus der Sensorik und Bewegungssteuerung niedriger Organismen immer raffiniertere Formen der Verhaltenssteuerung mithilfe von Nervensystemen erwuchsen. Auf dieser Basis kommt er dann etwa in der Mitte seines Buches eingehend auf den Determinismus zu sprechen, und er weist diesen mit überzeugenden Argumenten einschließlich seiner kompatibilistischen Spielart zurück, und mit ihm zusammen gleich auch den Reduktionismus. Unbestimmtheit und Naturgesetzlichkeit schließen sich gemäß Mitchell keineswegs aus, und entscheidend ist für ihn, dass in komplexen Systemen die physikalischen Elementarvorgänge die Dynamik und Entwicklung des Gesamtsystems nicht vollständig determinieren: Sie sind nicht "causally comprehensive" (280). Unbestimmtheit scheint damit ein Element der Natur zu sein, welches Gesetzmäßigkeiten höherer Ordnung überhaupt erst möglich macht. Dies gilt sowohl für den auf Variation und Selektion beruhenden Evolutionsprozess als Ganzes, als auch für die durch ihn entstandene Fähigkeit tierischer Lebewesen zur zielgerichteten Steuerung ihres Verhaltens. Freies Handeln wird so gesehen zur am höchsten entwickelten Form der Fähigkeit, sich die wegen der Unbestimmtheit in der Natur vorhandenen Spielräume zu Nutze zu machen (harnessing indeterminacy). Die oft als naturgesetzlich unmöglich gebrandmarkte Vorstellung einer top-down wirkenden Akteurkausalität (agent causation) wird in Mitchells systembasiertem Erklärungsansatz zum naturwissenschaftlich erklärbaren Phänomen, und das gleiche gilt dementsprechend auch für die Freiheit nach libertarischem Verständnis. Wichtig zu erwähnen ist schließlich noch, dass Mitchell darunter keineswegs eine unbedingte Freiheit versteht, nicht "some nebulous, spooky, mystical property granted to us by the gods", sondern schlicht und einfach "an evolved biological function that depends on the proper functioning of a distributed set of neural resources" (282), welche uns die Fähigkeit zur bewussten und rationalen Kontrolle über unsere Handlungen verleiht - nicht mehr, aber auch nicht weniger. Bis jetzt hat Mitchells Buch vor allem im Leserkreis naturwissenschaftlicher Sachbuchliteratur Anklang gefunden. Darüber hinaus ist es aber schlichtweg allen zu empfehlen, die am Thema Willensfreiheit interessiert sind, und fast noch mehr denjenigen, die von diesem Thema genug haben in der Meinung, dazu ließe sich ohnehin nichts Neues mehr sagen. Vor allem ist aber zu hoffen, dass das Buch auch seinen Weg in das philosophische Seminar an Hochschulen findet, wo es den Schriften Daniel Dennetts, des wohl berühmtesten Kompatibilisten, gegenübergestellt werden sollte, denn der Vergleich ist interessant, weil dessen evolutionsbasierter Naturalismus abgesehen von den fundamentalen Differenzen bezüglich Determinismus und Reduktionismus demjenigen Mitchells gar nicht so unähnlich ist. (shrink)

A view that emancipates free will by means of quantum indeterminism is frequently rejected based on arguments pointing out its incompatibility with what we know about quantum physics. However, if one carefully examines what classical physical causal determinism and quantum indeterminism are according to physics, it becomes clear what they really imply–and, especially, what they do not imply–for agent-causation theories. Here, we will make necessary conceptual clarifications on some aspects of physical determinism and indeterminism, review some of the (...) major objections against libertarian conjectures, and show that there is no conceptual incompatibility preventing us from taking a ‘quantum-libertarian’ approach to the problem of free will. In particular, we will illustrate the possible role of self-causation (causa sui) as a potential solution to otherwise apparently incompatible or even paradoxical statements concerning free will and quantum indeterminism. (shrink)

In this chapter, I attempt to show that evil exists only if what I call Agent Causal Theism (ACT) is true. According to ACT, human beings are immaterial, conscious agents endued (by God) with a power of self-motion: the power to think, decide, and act for ends in light of reasons, but without being externally caused to do so (even by God himself). By contrast, I argue that there is no space for evil in the worldviews of naturalistic Darwinism (...) or theistic Calvinism. (shrink)

This chapter revolves around the problem of the disappearing agent. Shepherd suggests that as typically formulated, the problem relies on an improper focus upon the causation of action, and an inadequate characterization of agency. One result is that a key function of mental action for human agents tends to be misconstrued. Furthermore, Shepherd argues that an adequate characterization of agency illuminates why agents may seem (misleadingly) to disappear in some cases of action, and illuminates as well a key (...) function of mental action for human (and similar) agents. According to the sketch offered in this chapter, mental action enables human agents to rationally glue themselves together. (shrink)

In this paper, I take a critical look at Sartorio’s book Causation and Free Will (2016). Sartorio offers a rich defence of an actual-sequence view of freedom, which pays close attention to issues in the philosophy of causation and how they relate to freedom. I argue that although this focus on causation is illuminating, Sartorio’s project nevertheless runs into some serious difficulties. Perhaps most worrying amongst them is whether the agent-based reason-sensitivity account, offered by Sartorio, is (...) consistent with Frankfurt-style cases – the very cases which are provided as the sole reason to endorse an actual-sequence view of freedom. I suggest that given that powers and causation are so intimately bound together, the debate is skewed somewhat by thinking of these as rivals. (shrink)

There has been an increasing interest into how to build Artificial Moral Agents (AMAs) that make moral decisions on the basis of causation rather than mere correction. One promising avenue for achieving this is to use a causal modelling approach. This paper explores an open and important problem with such an approach; namely, the problem of what makes a causal model an appropriate model. I explore why we need to establish criteria for what makes a model appropriate, and offer-up (...) such criteria which appeals to normative considerations. (shrink)

1. Introduction: a look back at the reasons vs. causes debate. 2. The interventionist account of causation. 3. Four objections to interventionism. 4. The counterfactual analysis of event causation. 5. The role of free agency. 6. Causality in the human sciences. -- The reasons vs. causes debate reached its peak about 40 years ago. Hempel and Dray had debated the nature of historical explanation and the broader issue of whether explanations that cite an agent’s reasons are causal (...) or not. Melden, Peters, Winch, Kenny and Anscombe had contributed their anticausal conceptions. The neo-Wittgensteinians seemed to be winning the day when in 1963 Donald Davidson published his seminal paper “Actions, Reasons, and Causes”. Davidson’s paper devastated the Wittgensteinian camp. It contained, among other things, a powerful attack on the logical connection argument. Davidson argued that the existence of a logical or conceptual connection between descriptions can never eliminate a causal relation, which holds between events simpliciter, not between events under certain descriptions. Davidson maintained that in a way, reasons can be causes. When somebody acts for a certain reason, his intentional attitudes, or rather changes in his attitudes, cause his bodily movements. Davidson also argued that rationalization is a species of causal explanation. For the definition of action, he argued that intentional actions are bodily movements caused in the right way by beliefs and desires that rationalize them. Davidson’s paper paved the way for causal theories of action, which superseded neo-Wittgensteinian analyses in the following decades. The causal theory was rapidly adopted by Alvin Goldman, David Armstrong, Paul Churchland, Myles Brand and many others, entering the mainstream and dominating the philosophy of action to this very day. In 1971 Georg Henrik von Wright published his book "Explanation and Understanding". The second chapter did not deal with agency, but with causation. It developed a new account of causation, the interventionist or experimentalist account. Focusing on causation, von Wright remedied a major shortcoming of the reasons vs. causes debate. The concept of causality, and the nature of the causal relation, received little attention in this debate, a fact that holds true for both camps. Mostly it was simply taken for granted that, as Hempel had declared, “causal explanation is a special type of deductive-nomological explanation”. One camp then aligned intentional explanations with D-N explanations, while the other camp insisted on their disparity. So strictly speaking, the label “reasons/causes debate” was a misnomer. The controversy dealt primarily with the question as to whether intentional explanations can take the form of D-N explanations, while the notion of causation, and the metaphysics of the causal relation, were left obscured. With von Wright’s new approach, the situation changed. Von Wright was primarily concerned with causation, but his approach contained an implicit attack on the causal theory of action as well. His core idea was that the notion of causality is intimately linked with, or even derived from, the notion of intentionally making something happen. Other philosophers, even Hume, had considered such a connection before, but often just to reject this view, regarding it as a kind of myth belonging to the infancy of the human mind. Von Wright took the idea seriously. He submitted the analysis that p is the cause of q if and only if by doing p we could bring about q. The causal theory of action was also concerned with the relation between causation and agency, to which its name bears witness. The causal theory of action holds that actions are bodily movements with a certain causal history. This is why von Wright’s account constituted a momentous challenge to the causal theory: it reversed the direction of conceptual dependency between both notions. Davidson and his followers tried to define what an intentional action is by using the notion of causation. The causal condition which the causal theory sets is part of the definition of “doing something intentionally”. Von Wright claimed that the conceptual dependency is the other way round. He used the notions of doing, and bringing about, to explain what causal relations are. So, instead of a causal theory of action, he advocated an agency theory of causation, as it may be dubbed. It is remarkable how seldom this clash of opinions about conceptual primacy is reflected in the literature. There are few exceptions: Fred Stoutland noticed the conflict, and he published a number of papers in which he compared Davidson’s and von Wright’s views. Von Wright’s book "Explanation and Understanding" was widely read and discussed in the seventies, especially in Europe. But it strikes me that especially in North America, where the causal theory of action became the orthodoxy of the day, von Wright’s challenge went largely unnoticed. Even Davidson did not seem to take it seriously. He nowhere takes notice of the interventionist theory of causation, while he does discuss von Wright’s earlier book "Norm and Action". As is well-known, Davidson favoured an alternative account of causation, based on “the principle of the nomological character of causality”, as he somewhat clumsily called it, or, later and less clumsily, “the cause-law thesis”. Davidson’s firm adherence to a nomological theory of causality may explain why he did not take much interest in alternative accounts. [...] -/- . 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According to the causal theory of photography (CTP), photographs acquire their depictive content from the world, whereas handmade pictures acquire their depictive content from their makers’ intentional states about the world. CTP suffers from what I call the Problem of the Missing Agent: it seemingly leaves no room for the photographer to occupy a causal role in the production of their pictures and so is inconsistent with an aesthetics of photography. In this paper, I do three things. First, I (...) amend CTP with Fred Dretske’s distinction between triggering and structuring causes, thereby overcoming the Problem of the Missing Agent. Second, I argue that CTP so amended in fact illuminates two aesthetic interests that we may take in photographs, focussing on photographic portraiture and street photography. Third, I show how reflection on the aesthetics of photography serves to support aesthetic anti-empiricism: the view that the aesthetic value of artworks consists, at least in part, in achievement rather than sensory pleasure. (shrink)

The debate on compatibility of fate with human responsibility lasted for five hundred years of the Stoic school and it is still with us in terms of contemporary discussions of the compatibility of determinism and free will. Chrysippus was confronted with the standard objection: It would be unjust to punish criminals “if human beings do not do evils voluntarily but are dragged by fate.” Chrysippus uses the famous illustration of the cylinder and cone, which cannot start moving without being pushed. (...) However, when this has happened, from then on the cylinder rolls and the cone spins by their own nature. I explore the cylinder analogy and its modern relevance from the perspective of thought experiments. I argue that it helps us isolate the main causal factor (the locus of responsibility and agency) and insulate this factor from the rest of the causal history and causal background. The cylinder/cone analogy is a compatibilistic tool, a kind of “mental distillation” in which we separate in imagination those aspects (causal factors) which are relevant for moral responsibility from those which are not. I suggest, somehow anachronistically, but in line both with contemporary compatibilism and Chrysippian views on causal structure of agency that the actions of an agent are “fated” from the theoretical point of view, but they are up to her from the practical point of view. (shrink)

This paper discusses methodological similarities between Collingwood's approach to causation and contemporary manipulability-based views. Firstly, I argue that on both approaches there is a preoccupation with the origin of causal concepts which further connects to the aim of establishing the priority of a certain concept/sense of causation as more fundamental. The significant difference lies in Collingwood's focus on the logical and historical priority (Collingwood's sense I) while in more recent theories the focus has been on psychology (i.e., on (...) different philosophical concepts of causation tested in psychological setting-- Woodward, Waskan, Gijsbers & de Bruin). Secondly, I argue that on both Collingwood's views and contemporary approaches (especially Menzies & Price, Price, but also Woodward) there is an important connection between causation and the agent's perspective. This can be subsumed under what Collingwood identifies as the main presupposition underlying causal thought: the relation between the agent's perceived situation and the agent's desired situation/ goal. More broadly, the recent views on causation under discussion share Collingwood's aim of elucidating the problem of causation through investigating causal knowledge and thus can be integrated with his wider project of addressing metaphysical issues through the means of epistemology. (shrink)

Omissions are sometimes linked to responsibility. A harm can counterfactually depend on an omission to prevent it. If someone had the ability to prevent a harm but didn’t, this could suffice to ground their responsibility for the harm. Michael S. Moore’s claim is illustrated by the tragic case of Peter Parker, shortly after he became Spider-Man. Sick of being pushed around as a weakling kid, Peter became drunk on the power he acquired from the freak bite of a radioactive spider. (...) When a police officer called to Spider-Man to stop an escaping burglar, which he could have done easily, he failed to act. He was through taking orders. The omission was followed by a crime. That very same burglar later robbed Peter’s own house and when challenged he shot dead Peter’s Uncle Ben. Later, Spider-Man tracked down the killer and, when seeing his face close up, the possibility of prevention dawned on him. He could have stopped this crook and had he done so Uncle Ben would still be alive. Stan Lee’s tale of power finished with a Shakespearean twist. Young Peter realised the truth of the WGPCGR-thesis: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility. We too will endorse the WGPCGR-thesis. There is a close connection between our notions of moral and legal responsibility and the powers we have as causal agents. This will be particularly important when it comes to the case of omissions: where we had the power to act but failed to do so. We hope to show the connections between the notions of power, cause, act, omission and responsibility but also some of the nuances. We will do so with particular reference to Moore’s account in Causation and Responsibility. (shrink)

It is reasonably well accepted that the explanation of intentional action is teleological explanation. Very roughly, an explanation of some event, E, is teleological only if it explains E by citing some goal or purpose or reason that produced E. Alternatively, teleological explanations of intentional action explain “by citing the state of affairs toward which the behavior was directed” thereby answering questions like “To what end was the agent’s behavior directed?” Causalism—advocated by causalists—is the thesis that explanations of intentional (...) action are both causal and teleological. By contrast, non-causalism—advocated by non-causalists—is the thesis that explanations of intentional action are teleological but not causal. Familiarly, the problem of causal deviance plagues causalism. But while some have supposed that the problem is grave enough that causalism is bound to suffer a global breakdown, the rumors of causalism’s demise are greatly exaggerated. In what follows, I note that every instance of causal deviance is also an instance of teleological deviance and that teleological deviance is a problem for causalist and non-causalist alike, a problem that causalists may be better able to deal with. Or so I argue. (shrink)

I happen to believe that though human experiences are to be characterized as pluralistic they are all rooted in the one reality. I would assume the thesis of pluralism but how could I maintain my belief in the realism? There are various discussions in favor of realism but they appear to stay within a particular paradigm so to be called “internal realism”. In this paper I would try to justify my belief in the reality by discussing a special use of (...) indexicals. I will argue for my indexical realism by advancing the thesis that indexicals can be used as an inter-agentic referential term. Three arguments for the thesis will be presented. The first argument derives from a revision of Kaplan-Kvart’s notion of exportation. Their notions of exportation of singular terms can be analyzed as intra-agentic exportation in the context of a single speaker and theirs may be revised so as to be an inter-agentic exportation in the context of two speakers who use the same indexicals. The second is an argument from the notion of causation which is specifically characterized in the context of inter-theoretic reference. I will argue that any two theories may each say “this” in order to refer what is beyond its own theory. Two theories address themselves to ‘this’ same thing though what ‘this’ represents in each theory turn out to be different objects all together. The third argument is an argument which is based on a possibility of natural reference. Reference is used to be taken mostly as a 3-place predicate: Abe refers an object oi with an expression ej. The traditional notion of reference is constructive and anthropocentric. But I would argue that natural reference is a reference that we humans come to recognize among denumerably many objects in natural states: at a moment mi in a natural state there is a referential relation among objects o1, o2, o3, . . , oj, o j+1, . . which interact to each other as agents of information processors. Natural reference is an original reference which is naturally given and to which humans are passive as we derivatively refer it by using ‘this’. (shrink)

This paper argues that influential Mahāyāna ethicists, such as Śāntideva, who allow for moral rules to be proscribed under the expediency of a compassionate aim, seriously compromise the very notion of moral responsibility. The central thesis is that moral responsibility is intelligible only in relation to conceptions of freedom and human dignity that reflect a participation in, and sharing of, interpersonal relationships. The central thesis of the paper is that revisionary strategies, which seek to explain agency in event-causal terms, set (...) the stage for moral epiphenomenalism. On the view I defend here, an effective compatibilist solution to the problem of reconciling freedom of the will and determinism depends on expanding, rather than eliminating, the complex register of factors that underpin the experiential aspects of our moral life. (shrink)

Niche construction is a concept that captures a wide array of biological phenomena, from the environmental effects of metabolism to the creation of complex structures such as termite mounds and beaver dams. A central point in niche construction theory is that organisms do not just passively undergo developmental, ecological, or evolutionary processes, but are also active participants in them Evolution: From molecules to men, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983; Laland KN, Odling-Smee J, Feldman MW, In: KN Laland and T Uller (...) Evolutionary causation: Biological and philosophical reflections, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2019). In this paper, we distinguish between two fundamentally different ways in which organisms are active participants: as agents and as contributors. Roughly, organisms act as agents when niche constructing effects are a result of a goal-directed behavior over which the organisms have some degree of control. Organisms act as contributors when the niche constructing effects do not arise from a goal to perform the constructive activity. As illustrative examples we discuss plants altering leaf-morphology to optimize light exposure as reported by Sultan and bacteria creating novel niches through excreting energy-rich metabolites. The difference between agential and contributional niche construction is important for understanding the different ways organisms can actively participate in development, ecology, and evolution. Additionally, this distinction can increase our understanding of how the capacity of agency is distributed across the tree of life and how agency influences developmental and evolutionary processes. (shrink)

Philosophers of dispositionalism deny the Humean account of causality in terms of constant conjunction, contiguity, temporal priority and contingency. And some of them go further to explain the causal relation not between events or objects, but between properties, in terms of reciprocity, simultaneity, ubiquity, intentionality and holism. But their exposition seems to remain fragmented even though they try to make use of the notions of intentionality and holim. I would inquire reasons why it is piecemeal, by analysing that they employ (...) these notions of intentionality and holism which has been constructed within the dualistic tradition. If one wants to make the dispositional project to be powerful, she should look for the notions of intentionality and holism which are free of the dualistic traits and which have been constructed in the tradition of naturalism. The concept of integrationality may be a candidate for such a task. This conception was coined in Zhongyong under the name of cheng in that there is nothing without cheng, and was developed in one of Sok-hon Ham's thesis that any entity in the world contains "seed" within it to realize objectives shared by all involved. Humans are privileged and distinct from other natures, but there is continuity between them. An example of the integrationality applied to the case of humans would be that realization of myself and realizations of all others are one and not two. I would summarize notions of "cheng" and "seed" by offering the integrationality thesis, that is, that there is integrationality in any entity like dispositions such that the integrationality is a power to realize the embedded objective of it in the context where it interacts with all others. I would claim that integrationality is a metaphysical basis for a way of human thinking, by arguing that it is a necessary part of presupposition for our understanding of the world without which the world is not intelligible. The notion of integrationality is involved empirically as well as conceptually. Empirically, there are numerous reports from physics, biology and information science, which provide with a clue which may well be taken to show the ubiquitous integrationality. But some conceptual considerations would also indicate necessarily toward the same direction. These would include various theses of ontology, epistemology, disposition, modality, naturalized intentionality, fitting and topics like these. I will investigate some of them in order to justify my claim of this paper. (shrink)

The Buddha, unlike the Upaniṣadic or Brahmanical way, has avoided the concept of the self, and it seems to be left with limited conceptual possibilities for free will and moral responsibility. Now, the question is, if the self is crucial for free will, then how can free will be conceptualized in the Buddhist ‘no-self’ (anattā) doctrine. Nevertheless, the Buddha accepts a dynamic notion of cetanā (intention/volition), and it explicitly implies that he rejects the ultimate or absolute freedom of the will, (...) but not the minimal power of free will. It seems that the Buddha’s view shifts from agent causation (independent ownership) to a causal sequence of impersonal processes (psychophysical factors). This paper claims to shed clarity on ‘whether free will is viable in the context of the anattāvāda in Buddhism.’ It mainly studies the secondary sources (even though it has also discussed the primary sources) and their interpretations of freedom of the will and how it further does argue for a compatibility approach of free will in Buddhist thought. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: This is a little piece directed at the newcomer to Aristotle, making some general remarks about reading Aristotle at the beginning and end, with sandwiched in between, a brief and much simplified discussion of some common misunderstandings of Aristotle's philosophy, concerning spontaneity, causal indeterminism, freedom-to-do-otherwise, free choice, agent causation, logical determinism, teleological determinism, artistic creativity and freedom (eleutheria).

Newly emerging neuroscientific evidence has important ramifications for the metaphysics of free will. In light of this new evidence, I examine the two most common notions of Libertarianism. I argue that advocates for both the agent-causation and causal indeterminist models of libertarian free will suppose a misguided depiction of what constitutes a free decision. In order to retain a consistent standpoint, I argue that libertarians must view the conscious decision-making process as one of an Architectural nature. Libertarians suppose (...) (depending on their notion) that humans are either the primary cause of their actions, or that they at least have the option to do otherwise. For either of these claims to be necessarily the case, I argue that libertarians must regard humans as having the ability to create their decisions. This ability is a requirement of the Architectural framework, which I explain in detail. I continue my case against libertarian free will, by demonstrating that the Architectural conception is also mistaken, and that the conscious decision-making process is instead one of an Archaeological nature. In this new paradigm, our conscious minds simply discover decisions, rather than create them. I show that both neuroscientific and philosophical evidence support this new model of conscious decision making and I examine how this Archaeological view of conscious discovery significantly undermines libertarian free will. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Active Powers Active Powers, Human Agency, and Liberty Agent Causation and Volitionism Conclusion: Agent Causation References Further reading.

By means of the Rollback Argument, this paper argues that metaphysically robust probabilities are incompatible with a kind of control which can ensure that free actions are not a matter of chance. Our main objection to those (typically agent-causal) theories which both attribute a kind of control to agents that eliminates the role of chance concerning free actions and ascribe probabilities to options of decisions is that metaphysically robust probabilities should be posited only if they can have a metaphysical (...) explanatory role but probabilities can explain anything only if chance has a role. First, we reconstruct the Rollback Argument. Second, we criticize the standard ways of reconciling non-chancy control with metaphysically robust probabilities. Finally, we respond to those worries that are related to the thought experiment of the Rollback Argument. (shrink)

The enduring problem of free will has defied resolution across centuries. There is reason to believe that novel factors must be integrated into the analysis to make progress. Within the current physicalist framework, these factors encompass emergence and information theory, in the context of constraints imposed by physical limits on the representation of information. Furthermore the common, but vague, characterization of free will as 'being able to act differently' is rephrased into an explicatum more suitable for formal analysis. It is (...) argued that the mind is an ontologically open system; a causal high-level system, the dynamics of which cannot be reduced to the states of its associated low-level neural systems, not even if it is rendered physically closed. A positive answer to the question of free will for conscious agents is subsequently outlined. (shrink)

Flew strongly defends a compatibilist thesis in the free will debate before going on to totally object to theistic libertarianism. His objections basically rely on his compatibilism embracing the notion of agent causation, which is not very common in compatibilist theses. Since he is a strong proponent of ordinary language philosophy, he also holds that linguistic analyses can certainly solve the free will problem as well as many other problems of philosophy. In doing so, he first uses the (...) paradigm cases based on our common sense experience and then assumes the verity of principle of alternative possibilities. This study attempts to show, on the one hand, that there are some serious difficulties in both his justification of compatibilism and his objections to theistic libertarianism, and on the other hand, that he cannot easily defend both at the same time. (shrink)