Abstract

The object of this dissertation is to discover a ground for our common-sense view that a person is morally responsible for her actions. I begin with the assumption that if we are justified in holding an agent morally responsible, it must be possible for her to do better or worse than she does. Using Bergson's concept of duration as the model for how conscious experience develops, I construct a schema for how actions happen that shows how it is possible for the agent to act otherwise than she does. I adopt Bergson's approach to understanding persons and their relationship to their actions because it accounts for the durational/mental aspect of the human being as well as the spatial/physical aspect. We can better understand how the person produces an action if we think of her not only as a living body with repeating life processes but also as an ongoing mental process. ;Bergson's approach can help us to understand and support theories of agent-causation. I have focused on Chisholm's concept of agent-causation and the difficulty in explaining how immanent causation happens. In Bergson's schema, making events happen is an integral part of the process of conscious experience that the human being is. As a physical body a person undergoes events; however, as a process of conscious experience, that same person becomes aware of those events in the context of her experience and can evaluate them in order to envision and implement a new approach to her situation. When the person operates in this creative mode, viewing her situation from what Bergson calls the natural standpoint, she immanently causes her own action. ;For morality, the important choice the agent makes is whether or not to assume the natural standpoint as the point of departure for her efforts. The agent can take the most credit for an action that she has developed herself. Such an action fully engages the agent's knowledge and abilities, and so best represents the person that the agent becomes through completing the action. Even in allowing habit to direct her efforts, however, the agent is minimally responsible for her action insofar as she could have chosen to bypass those directions and to act creatively