Free Will, Agent Causation, and “Disappearing Agents”

Noûs ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randolph Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Agent Causation

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Evan Franklin
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Causal Role ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Agent Causation ◽  
The Right

This chapter lays out the book’s central question: Assuming agency reductionism—that is, the thesis that the causal role of the agent in all agential activities is reducible to the causal role of states and events involving the agent—is it possible to construct a defensible model of libertarianism? It is explained that most think the answer is negative and this is because they think libertarians must embrace some form of agent-causation in order to address the problems of luck and enhanced control. The thesis of the book is that these philosophers are mistaken: it is possible to construct a libertarian model of free will and moral responsibility within an agency reductionist framework that silences that central objections to libertarianism by simply taking the best compatibilist model of freedom and adding indeterminism in the right junctures of human agency. A brief summary of the chapters to follow is given.

Causation, Action, and Free Will

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfred R. Mele
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Free Action ◽  
Philosophy Of Action ◽  
Agent Causation ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Indeterministic Causation

Many issues at the heart of the philosophy of action and of philosophical work on free will are framed partly in terms of causation. The leading approach to understanding both the nature of action and the explanation or production of actions emphasizes causation. What may be termed standardcausalism is the conjunction of the following two theses: firstly, an event's being an action depends on how it was caused; and secondly, proper explanations of actions are causal explanations. Important questions debated in the literature on free will include: is an action's being deterministically caused incompatible with its being freely performed? Are actions free only if they are indeterministically caused? Does the indeterministic causation of an action preclude its being freely performed? Does free action require agent causation? This article concentrates on issues about action and free will that centrally involve causation.

scholarly journals Flanagan and Cartesian free will: a defense of agent causation

Disputatio ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (21) ◽  
pp. 69-90
Author(s):  
John Lemos
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Agent Causation ◽  
Common Misconceptions

Abstract In a recent book, The Problem of the Soul, Owen Flanagan discusses the Cartesian, or agent causation, view of free will. According to this view, when a person acts of his own free will his action is not caused by antecedent events but is caused by the agent himself, and in acting the agent acts as an uncaused cause. Flanagan argues at length that this view is false. In this article, I defend the agent causation view against Flanagan’s criticisms and I go on to critically address his own ‘neo-compatibilist’ alternative to the agent causation view. In doing so, I hope to exhibit some common misconceptions about the nature of the agent causation view and to show that this is a view that deserves more serious consideration.

Event Causation and Agent Causation

2001 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. J. Lowe
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Distinct Species ◽  
The Other ◽  
Rational Agent ◽  
Agent Causation ◽  
Intentional Causation

It is a matter of dispute whether we should acknowledge the existence of two distinct species of causation – event causation and agent causation – and, if we should, whether either species of causation is reducible to the other. In this paper, the prospects for such a reduction either way are considered, the conclusion being that a reduction of event causation to agent causation is the more promising option. Agent causation, in the sense understood here, is taken to include but not to be restricted to the intentional causation of an event by a rational agent. But, it is argued, there are certain special features of intentional causation, understood as a sub-species of agent causation, which make the agent-causation approach to human agency a particularly promising one with which to tackle the problem of free will.

scholarly journals Agent causation as a solution to the problem of action

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 656-673 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Brent
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Causal Role ◽  
Agent Causation ◽  
Satisfactory Solution ◽  
Body Move

AbstractMy 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.

Free Will and the Burden of Proof

2003 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 107-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
William G. Lycan
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Free Action ◽  
Burden Of Proof ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Agent Causation ◽  
The Right ◽  
Business As Usual

Here are some things that are widely believed about free will and determinism.(1) Free will is prima facie incompatible with determinism.(2) The incompatibility is logical or at least conceptual or a priori.(3) A compatibilist needs to explain how free will can co-exist with determinism, paradigmatically by offering an analysis of ‘free’ action that is demonstrably compatible with determinism. (Here is the late Roderick Chisholm, in defence of irreducible or libertarian agent-causation: ‘Now if you can analyse such statements as “Jones killed his uncle” into eventcausation statements, then you may have earned the right to make jokes about the agent as cause. But if you haven't done this, and if all the same you do believe such things as that I raised my arm and that Jolns [sic] killed his uncle, and if moreover you still think it's a joke to talk about the agent as cause, then, I'm afraid, the joke is entirely on you.’)(4) Free will is not impugned by quantum indeterminism, at least not in the same decisive way that it is impugned by determinism. To reconcile free will with quantum indeterminism takes work, but the work comes under the heading of metaphysical business-as-usual; to reconcile free will with determinism requires a conceptual breakthrough.And listen to Laura Waddell Ekstrom on the burden of proof.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfred R. Mele
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Free Action ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Agent Causation ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Standard Terminology

This chapter introduces key concepts and provides a preview of the book. Featured concepts include action, action-individuation, intention, intentional action, and free will. Some standard terminology in the literature on free will is introduced, including agent causation, compatibilism, determinism, incompatibilism, and libertarianism. The notion of free action central to the book is identified as moral-responsibility-level free action—free action of such a kind that if all the freedom-independent conditions for moral responsibility for a particular action were satisfied without that sufficing for the agent’s being morally responsible for it, the addition of the action’s being free to this set of conditions would entail that he is morally responsible for it.

scholarly journals VI—Panpsychism and Free Will: A Case Study in Liberal Naturalism

2020 ◽  
Vol 120 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-144
Author(s):  
Philip Goff
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
Macro Level ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Agent Causation ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Liberal Naturalism ◽  
The Mind

Abstract There has been a resurgence of interest in panpsychism in contemporary philosophy of mind. According to its supporters, panpsychism offers an attractive solution to the mind–body problem, avoiding the deep difficulties associated with the more conventional options of dualism and materialism. There has been little focus, however, on whether panpsychism can help with philosophical problems pertaining to free will. In this paper I will argue (a) that it is coherent and consistent with observation to postulate a kind of libertarian agent causation at the micro-level, and (b) that if one if believes in libertarian agent causation at the macro-level, there are significant advantages in also postulating its existence at the micro-level.

Two Libertarian Theories: or Why Event-causal Libertarians Should Prefer My Daring Libertarian View to Robert Kane's View

2017 ◽  
Vol 80 ◽  
pp. 49-68
Author(s):  
Alfred R. Mele
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Agent Causation ◽  
Indeterministic Causation ◽  
Free Actions ◽  
Libertarian View

AbstractLibertarianism about free will is the conjunction of two theses: the existence of free will is incompatible with the truth of determinism, and at least some human beings sometimes exercise free will (or act freely, for short).1 Some libertarian views feature agent causation, others maintain that free actions are uncaused, and yet others – event-causal libertarian views – reject all views of these two kinds and appeal to indeterministic causation by events and states.2 This article explores the relative merits of two different views of this third kind. One is Robert Kane's prominent view, and the other is the ‘daring libertarian’ view that I floated in Free Will and Luck.3 (I labeled the view ‘daring’ to distinguish it from a more modest libertarian view that I floated a decade earlier.)4 I say ‘floated’ because I am not a libertarian. I do not endorse incompatibilism; instead, I am agnostic about it. But if I were a libertarian, I would embrace my daring libertarian view (or DLV, for short). This article's thesis is that event-causal libertarians should prefer DLV to Kane's ‘dual or multiple efforts’ view.5

Personal Agency

2003 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 211-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. J. Lowe
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Personal Agency ◽  
Agent Causation ◽  
Large Measure ◽  
Causal Relations ◽  
Modern Form

Why does the problem of free will seem so intractable? I surmise that in large measure it does so because the free will debate, at least in its modern form, is conducted in terms of a mistaken approach to causality in general. At the heart of this approach is the assumption that all causation is fundamentally event causation. Of course, it is well-known that some philosophers of action want to invoke in addition an irreducible notion of agent causation, applicable only in the sphere of intelligent agency. But such a view is generally dismissed as incompatible with the naturalism that has now become orthodoxy amongst mainstream analytical philosophers of mind. What I want to argue is that substances, not events, are the primary relata of causal relations and that agent causation should properly be conceived of as a species of substance causation. I shall try to show that by thus reconceiving the nature of causation and of agency, the problem of free will can be made more tractable. I shall also argue for a contention that may seem even less plausible at first sight, namely, that such a view of agency is perfectly compatible with a volitionist theory of action.

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