Agent Causation and Event Causation in the Production of Free Action

1996 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randolph Clarke ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Free Action ◽  
Agent Causation

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.

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.

Minimal Event-Causal Libertarianism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Evan Franklin
Keyword(s):  
Free Action ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Human Action

This chapter explains the differences between agency reductionism and nonreductionism, explains the varieties of libertarianism, and sets out the main contours of minimal event-causal libertarianism, highlighting just how minimal this theory is. Crucial to understanding how minimal event-causal libertarianism differs from other event-causal libertarian theories is understanding the location and role of indeterminism in human action, the kinds of mental states essential to causing free action, the nature of nondeterministic causation, and how the theory is constructed from compatibilist accounts. The chapter argues that libertarians must face up to both the problem of luck and the problem of enhanced control when determining the best theoretical location of indeterminism.

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.

scholarly journals $$ T\overline{T} $$-like flows in non-linear electrodynamic theories and S-duality

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Babaei-Aghbolagh ◽  
Komeil Babaei Velni ◽  
Davood Mahdavian Yekta ◽  
H. Mohammadzadeh
Keyword(s):  
Type Theory ◽  
Free Action ◽  
Momentum Tensor ◽  
Flow Equation ◽  
Supersymmetric Model ◽  
Deformation Problem ◽  
Dimensional Spacetime ◽  
Non Linear ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Simple Integration

Abstract We investigate the $$ T\overline{T} $$ T T ¯ -like flows for non-linear electrodynamic theories in D(=2n)-dimensional spacetime. Our analysis is restricted to the deformation problem of the classical free action by employing the proposed $$ T\overline{T} $$ T T ¯ operator from a simple integration technique. We show that this flow equation is compatible with $$ T\overline{T} $$ T T ¯ deformation of a scalar field theory in D = 2 and of a non-linear Born-Infeld type theory in D = 4 dimensions. However, our computation discloses that this kind of $$ T\overline{T} $$ T T ¯ flow in higher dimensions is essentially different from deformation that has been derived from the AdS/CFT interpretations. Indeed, the gravity that may be exist as a holographic dual theory of this kind of effective Born-Infeld action is not necessarily an AdS space. As an illustrative investigation in D = 4, we shall also show that our construction for the $$ T\overline{T} $$ T T ¯ operator preserves the original SL(2, ℝ) symmetry of a non-supersymmetric Born-Infeld theory, as well as $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = 2 supersymmetric model. It is shown that the corresponding SL(2, ℝ) invariant action fixes the relationship between the $$ T\overline{T} $$ T T ¯ operator and quadratic form of the energy-momentum tensor in D = 4.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document