This chapter contains sections titled: Agent Causation Choice Agent Causation (Cont.) Knowledge Moral Responsibility Moral Responsibility for Virtue and Vice Determinism and Compatibilism Criticisms Notes Bibliography.

The conscious awareness of voluntary action is associated with systematic changes in time perception: The interval between actions and outcomes is experienced as compressed in time. Although this temporal binding is thought to result from voluntary movement and provides a window to the sense of agency, recent studies challenge this idea by demonstrating binding in involuntary movement. We offer a potential account for these findings by proposing that binding between involuntary actions and effects can occur when self-causation is implied. (...) Participants made temporal judgements concerning a key press and a tone, while they learned to consider themselves as the cause of the effect or not. Results showed that implied self-causation increased temporal binding. Since intrinsic motor cues of movement were absent, these results suggest that sensory evidence about the key press caused binding in retrospect and in line with the participant’s sense of being an agent. (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)

Galen Strawson has claimed that "the impossibility of free will and ultimate moral responsibility can be proved with complete certainty." Strawson, I take it, thinks that this conclusion can be established by one argument which he has developed. In this argument, he claims that rational free actions would require an infinite regress of rational choices, which is, of course, impossible for human beings. In my paper, I argue that agent causation theorists need not be worried by Strawson's argument. (...) For agent causation theorists are able to deny a key principle which drives the regress. Oversimplifying things a bit, the principle states that if one is responsible for her rational actions, then she was antecedently responsible for the reasons on which she acted. (shrink)

In this dissertation I take exception with a widely held philosophical doctrine, according to which agents are only blameworthy for the bad actions they have chosen to bring about. My argument strategy is to present cases in which agents are blamed for involuntary actions that are not in any way connected to their culpable and voluntary choices. These failures correspond, I suggest, to occasions of culpable ignorance where agents have been negligent or careless. More specifically, I claim that violations of (...) natural duties of respect and consideration, and certain acquired role-type duties, are blamed ;-.ithout any voluntary consent. If my examples are persuasive, then the point is reached where a normative principle of 'voluntary consent' does not in fact coincide with people's actual practices and 'considered judgements'. In the final sections of the dissertation, I argue against the plausibility of keeping the principle and revising our judgements. (shrink)

Christopher Franklin argues that the hard luck view, which I have recently defended, is misnamed: the arguments turn on absence of control and not on luck. He also argues that my objections to agent-causal libertarianism depend on a demand, for a contrastive explanation that guarantees the choice the agent makes, which would be question-begging in the dialectical context. In response to the first objection, I argue that though Franklin may be right that it is absence of control (...) that matters to freedom and not luck, we often are unable to discern whether an agent lacks sufficient control without asking whether the event is lucky for the agent; hence we cannot dispense with worries about luck in favor of concern about control. In response to the second worry, I argue that though Franklin is right in claiming that there is a perfectly good explanation regarding how the agent-causal power is exercised, it is not an adequate explanation given the context, because the same kind of explanation is available on event-causal theories. Agent-causal libertarians aim to avoid the luck objection which they acknowledge is powerful against event-causal libertarians; if it is true that they can offer nothing more than the latter kinds of theories in the way of control over actions, they fail in their aim. (shrink)

Wegner (2002) fails to (1) distinguish conscious will and voluntariness; (2) account for everyday willed acts; and (3) individuate thoughts and acts. Wegner incorrectly implies that (4) we experience acts as willed only when they are caused by unwilled thoughts; (5) thoughts are never true causes of actions; and (6) we experience ourselves as first performing mental acts which then cause our intentional actions.

We turn to the “Intelligibility Question” about free will: How, if at all, can one make sense of a free will that is incompatible with determinism? If free choices are not determined, they must be undetermined. But undetermined events, it is often argued, occur by chance; and choices or actions that occur by chance would be “arbitrary,” “capricious,” “random,” “irrational,” and not under the control of agents – hence not responsible actions at all. These familiar charges are traced to “plurality (...) conditions” for free will: free agents must not only be able to choose and choose otherwise, they must be able to choose and choose otherwise, either way rationally, voluntarily, intentionally, and having voluntary control over their choices. In order to satisfy these plurality requirements, traditional incompatibilist or libertarian theories of free will have usually appealed to obscure or mysterious forms of agency or causation, which are problematic for a number reasons discussed in the chapter. (shrink)

I Introduction The question of this paper is, what would it be to act with freedom of the will? What kind of control is inchoately in view when we speak, pretheoretically, of being ‘self- determining’ beings, of ‘freely making choices in view of consciously considered reasons’ (pro and con) - of its being ‘up to us’ how we shall act? My question here is not whether we have (or have any reason to think we have) such freedom, or what is (...) the most robust account of our freedom compatible with late twentieth-century science. Many contemporary philosophers are all too ready to settle for a deflationary account of freedom and declare victory, with some brief remarks reminding us that we were created a little lower than the angels. I am not so sanguine about the ability of such accounts to leave reasonably intact our judgments about human autonomy, dignity, and responsibility. But, as I’ve said, that’s not my concern here. Instead, I want to revisit the question of what exactly ‘self-determination’, on our ordinary conception, comes to. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Shakespeare’s Troilus and CressidaW. R. EltonIn Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida there occurs a particular pattern of parallels with Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics regarding ethical-legal questions surrounding an action: issues of the role of the voluntary or the involuntary, of volition and choice, of choice and virtue, and of virtue and habitual action. 1Aristotle’s EN was familiar to Elizabethan higher education and was reprinted in (...) translation in numerous editions, with commentaries, in the sixteenth century. 2 Twice Shakespeare alludes to Aristotle by name: first, recalling his ethics, in Taming of the Shrew (I.i.32)—cf. I.i.18–20 on [End Page 331]Virtue and that part of philosophy... that treats of happiness By virtue specially to be achiev’d,and second, in Troilus (II.ii.166–67) on Aristotle and “moral philosophy.” 3Opening EN, III, Aristotle distinguishes those actions that are “voluntary” from those that are “involuntary,” remarking the necessity to determine their limits. Such a course, he adds, is “useful also for legislators with a view to the assigning both of honours and of punishments” (1109 b 32–34). What Aristotle examines, in effect, is the procedure of determining culpability for an act. 4Under what circumstances and to what extent is one responsible for his action? In addition to the voluntary and the involuntary, there are such act-related dualisms as volition and choice, choice and virtue, and virtue and habitual practice. Such ethical-legal issues are appropriate to a play whose war-plot turns on an abductor’s culpability for an action and the subsequent issue of prescriptive possession—the Grecian claim to Helen against her Trojan possessors. 5The VoluntaryIn Troilus Aristotle’s voluntary-involuntary distinctions seem exemplified. 6 A passage (I.iii.354–56), previously glossed by the present writer, suggests a [End Page 332] parallel EN instance of the voluntary. 7 Aristotle defines the voluntary as “that of which the moving principle is in the agent himself “ (1111 a 23–24). In Troilus Nestor, recalling the agent’s responsibility for acts, explains:Limbes are in his instruments, In no lesse working, then are Swords and Bowes Directiue by the Limbes(I.iii.368–70).These lines occur in Troilus, Folio (1623), and are omitted, along with other relatively specialized lines, from Quarto (1609): 8 according to Aristotle, “the movement of the limbs instrumental to the action originates in the agent himself, and when this is so it is in a man’s own power to act or not to act.” 9 Where EN has “limbs... are the instruments,” F Troilus has “Limbes are in his instruments” (cf. Walker ed., I.iii.354).Limbs are instruments of the agent’s responsibility, as are the swords and bows employed by those limbs. Such a passage in Troilus on the responsibility and voluntariness of acts could have been recognizable to an academic (especially legal) audience and, as rehearsed by the ancient Nestor, might have drawn reminiscent response.The InvoluntaryIf Nestor (I.iii.354–56) had been voice of the voluntary, the combat-withdrawn Achilles is arbitrator of the involuntary. Responding to Thersites’ “I serve here voluntary,” Achilles adjudicates, “Your last service was sufferance, ‘twas not voluntary. No man is beaten voluntary. Ajax was here the voluntary, and you as under an impress” (II.i.94–97). Mocking Thersites’s “service,” including being beaten, Achilles argues this could not be “voluntary.” His “no man is beaten voluntary” echoes Aristotle’s own familiar terms, denying that a man can be wronged or injured voluntarily. In his commentary on EN John Case [End Page 333] gives the assurance that “No one voluntarily suffers injury..., no one voluntarily and maliciously harms himself: therefore no one willingly suffers injury.” 10In such instances as those above, Troilus (II.i.94–97) recalls basic legal procedure, including determination of the degree of responsibility for an action. What is the minimum requirement of the law before a man can be held accountable? “Those things... are thought involuntary,” says Aristotle, “which take place under compulsion... and that is compulsory of which the moving principle is outside, being a principle... (shrink)

Choice-based conceptions of substantive responsibility face a number of powerful counterexamples. In order to avoid some of these counterexamples, it is widely claimed that agents are substantively responsible for disadvantage arising from their choices only when the option set from which they chose satisfied a reasonability criterion. I examine three possible justifications for a reasonability criterion: an agent-responsibility-based motivation, a voluntariness-based motivation, and what I call a ‘denied-claim’-based motivation. In each case, I argue that the putative motivation cannot (...) in fact justify a reasonability condition. I end with some comments on what this result means for choice-based conceptions of substantive responsibility. (shrink)

Volition and Allied Causal Concepts is a work of aetiology and metapsychology. Aetiology is the branch of philosophy and logic devoted to the study of causality (the cause-effect relation) in all its forms; and metapsychology is the study of the basic concepts common to all psychological discourse, most of which are causal. Volition (or free will) is to be distinguished from causation and natural spontaneity. The latter categories, i.e. deterministic causality and its negation, have been treated in a separate (...) work, The Logic of Causation. Volition may be characterized as personal causality, a relation between an agent (the self or soul) and his actions (acts of will). Unlike causation, this relation cannot be entirely defined using conditional (if–then) propositions. Although we can say that the agent is a sine qua non of his actions, we cannot say that the agent is invariably (in all or specific circumstances) followed by his actions. It appears that both an act of will and its negation remain possible to a soul in any given set of circumstances. This defines freedom of the will, and implies the responsibility of the agent for his actions. Introspection provides knowledge of particular acts of will. The existence of freewill implies a distinction between necessary causation (determinism independent of volition) and inertial causation (determinism, except when some contrary will interferes). An act of will occurs on a spiritual plane. It may have natural (mental or physical) consequences; those that inevitably follow it may be regarded as directly willed, whereas those that vary according to circumstances must be considered indirectly willed. Volition presupposes some degree of consciousness. So-called involuntary acts of will involve a minimum of attention, whereas mindful acts are fully conscious. Even pure whim involves intention. Most volitions moreover involve valuation, some sort of projection of goals, deliberation on means, choice and decision. To judge responsibility, various distinctions are called for, like that between intentional, incidental and accidental consequences. Volitional action can be affected through the terms and conditions of the world surrounding its agent, but also more intimately through the influence of concrete or abstract aspects of that world that the subject has cognized. The causal concept of influence, and its implication of cognition (of inner or outer information, including emotions), are crucial to measuring the effort involved in volition. Influences make willing easier or harder, yet do not curtail its essential freedom. All the causal concepts used in psychological explanation – affections, appetites, instincts, habits, obsessions, compulsions, urges and impulses – can be elucidated thanks to this important finding. Much of human (and animal) behavior can thus be both acknowledged as volitional and as variously influenced. Volition and Allied Causal Concepts is a work of ambitious scope, intent on finally resolving philosophical and logical issues that have always impeded progress in psychology. It clarifies the structure and workings of the psyche, facilitating hygienic and therapeutic endeavors. The relation between volition and physical laws is discussed, as is the place of volition in biology. Concepts used in biology, analogous to that of purpose, are incidentally analyzed. Theological issues are also dealt with, as are some topics in ethics and law. (shrink)

This paper presents the case of a young man with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, who agreed to inpatient treatment primarily to avoid being formally detained. I draw on Peter Breggin's early critique of coercion of informal patients to supply an updated discussion of the ethical issues raised. Central questions are whether the admission was coercive, and if so, whether unethical. Whether or not involuntary admission would be justified, moral discomfort surrounds its appearance as a threat. This arises in part from (...) ambivalence about autonomy: although a ‘choice’ is made, the threat of detention impinges on the patient's choice. Recent legal developments provide some experience of safeguarding those whose consent is not obtained. This highlights the lack of safeguards in this ‘gap’ and suggests that we have the tools with which to begin to deal with the problem. (shrink)

Because sin is anything that turns our heart from God, sins are both voluntary and jnvoluntary. As a consequence, double effect can only be adequately understood in a Christian context in which it is recognized that, even when evil is not willed, our involvement in its causation can still mar our hearts. The acknowledgement of involuntary sins resituates double effect so that the traditional Christian concern with spiritual harm and healing can be maintained. In this way, one can overcome (...) the underdeveloped Western theological appreciation of double effect, which ignores the effect on the heart of causing evil. (shrink)

Stance voluntarism highlights the role of the will in epistemic agency, claiming that agents can control the epistemic stances they assume in forming beliefs. It claims that radical belief changes are not compelled by the evidence; they are rationally permitted choices about which epistemic stances to adopt. However, terms like “will”, “choice”, and “stance” play a crucial role while being left as vague notions. This paper investigates what kind of control rational agents can have over epistemic stances. I argue (...) that whether epistemic stances are voluntary depends on what kind of stance is being assessed. Sometimes epistemic stances are taken to be evaluative attitudes about how to produce knowledge. This kind of stance is not directly controllable, since it is essentially connected to beliefs, and believing is not voluntary. But sometimes epistemic stances are taken to be styles of reasoning and modes of engagement, expressing ways of approaching the world in order to produce knowledge, which can be voluntary. Overall, this supports a formulation of stance voluntarism as a dual-systems theory of epistemic agency, where epistemic rationality is compounded by a dynamic interplay between involuntary processes of belief formation and voluntary processes of cognitive guidance. (shrink)

The claims of those who are compelled to migrate are, in general, taken to be more urgent and pressing than the claims of those who were not forced to do so. This article does not defend the moral relevance of voluntarism to the morality of migration, but instead seeks to demonstrate two complexities that must be included in any plausible account of that moral relevance. The first is that the decision to start the migration journey is distinct from the decision (...) to stop that journey, through resettlement; the latter may involve voluntary choice, without that voluntarism impugning the involuntary nature of the former. The second is that the migration decision of the individual might be voluntary, even while that individual's family or social network might be compelled to insist upon some particular individual member's migration. That is, the fact that any particular person might be free to refuse migration does not contradict the fact that the group in question does not have the effective freedom to avoid the migration of some group members. Once these two complexities are understood, I argue, the moral relevance of voluntarism in the ethics of migration becomes more complex and nuanced than is generally understood. (shrink)

Phenomenology has primarily been concerned with questions about knowledge and ontology. However, in recent years the rise of interest and research in phenomenology and embodiment, the emotions and cognitive science has seen the concept of agency move to a central place in the study of phenomenology generally. The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology of Agency is an outstanding reference source to this topic and the first volume of its kind. It comprises twenty-seven chapters written by leading international contributors. Organised into two (...) parts, the following key topics are covered: * major figures * the metaphysics of agency * rationality * voluntary and involuntary action * moral experience * deliberation and choice * phenomenology of agency and the cognitive sciences * phenomenology of freedom * embodied agency Essential reading for students and researchers in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, metaphysics and philosophy of cognitive science The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology of Agency will also be of interest to those in closely related subjects such as sociology and psychology. (shrink)

Many philosophers are persuaded by familiar arguments that free will is incompatible with causal determinism. Yet, notoriously, past attempts to articulate how the right type of indeterminism might secure the capacity for autonomous action have generally been regarded as either demonstrably inadequate or irremediably obscure. This volume gathers together the most significant recent discussions concerning the prospects for devising a satisfactory indeterministic account of freedom of action. These essays give greater precision to traditional formulations of the problems associated with indeterministic (...) accounts and to the range of theoretical avenues for pursuing resolutions. The first four essays set out different challenges (from both compatibilists and those skeptical of the possibility of free will) to the adequacy of standard indeterministic theories. The next seven essays meet one or more of these challenges. Each of the fundamental types of approach--simple indeterminism, causal indeterminism, and agent causation--is represented in these novel and sophisticated proposals. The collection finishes with two essays that debate whether compatibilism entails that freedom of choice is a comparatively rare phenomenon within an individual's life. Eloquently presenting some of the most compelling and accessible arguments surrounding this central philosophical issue, Agents, Causes, and Events makes a valuable contribution to courses in free will/action theory and metaphysics. (shrink)

Plato’s Timaeus contains an argument that vice is involuntary. Here I present an interpretation of that argument and, upon doing so, relate the underlying conception of voluntariness to that found in Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics. I argue that in the Timaeus, for something to be voluntary it must be caused by the agent’s intellect in a certain way. This idea, in turn, relies on an identification of the agent with her intellect: the reason that what is voluntary must be (...) caused by the agent’s intellect is that what is voluntary is what the agent herself is responsible for. The conception of the voluntary in the Eudemian Ethics differs less radically than one might think. There too Aristotle wishes to respect the idea that there is an important connection between what is voluntary and what is caused by our rational capacities, but he differs in how he fills out the relevant rational capacities. (shrink)

Feminists have argued that oppressive socialization undermines the liberal model of autonomy. We contend that this argument can also be employed effectively as a challenge to the standard bioethical model of informed consent. We claim that the standard model is inadequate because it relies on presumptions of procedural autonomy and rational choice that overlook the problem of how agents are often socialized so that they adopt and internalize oppressive norms as part of their motivational structure. The argument that oppressive (...) socialization undermines liberalism’s view of autonomy is most relevant to what Beauchamp and Childress call the threshold elements of informed consent—competence and voluntariness. We show how these elements fail to account for morally relevant factors such as oppressive socialization. (shrink)

This is a reissue, with new introduction, of Susan Sauvé Meyer's 1993 book, in which she presents a comprehensive examination of Aristotle's accounts of voluntariness in the Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics. She makes the case that these constitute a theory of moral responsibility--albeit one with important differences from modern theories. Highlights of the discussion include a reconstruction of the dialectical argument in the Eudemian Ethics II 6-9, and a demonstration that the definitions of 'voluntary' and 'involuntary' in Nicomachean Ethics III (...) 1 are the culmination of that argument. By identifying the paradigms of voluntariness and involuntariness that Aristotle begins with and the opponents (most notably Plato) he addresses, Meyer explains notoriously puzzling features of the Nicomachean account--such as Aristotle's requirement that involuntary agents experience pain or regret. Other familiar features of Aristotle's account are cast in a new light. That we are responsible for the characters we develop turns out not to be a necessary condition of responsible agency. That voluntary action has its "origin" in the agent and that our actions are "up to us to do and not to do"--often interpreted as implying a libertarian conception of agency--turn out to be perfectly compatible with causal determinism, a point Meyer makes by locating these locutions in the context of Aristotle's general understanding of causality. While Aristotle does not himself face or address worries that determinism is incompatible with responsibility, his causal repertoire provides the resources for a powerful response to incompatibilist arguments. On this and other fronts Aristotle's is a view to be taken seriously by theorists of moral responsibility. (shrink)

This paper reports a preliminary sketch of a framework for integrating perspectives on economics, ethics, strategy, and stakeholders (Jones, 1995). It may notbe desirable in management practice to separate such considerations (Harris & Freeman, 2008). There are three general types of collective choice institutions: governments, markets, and voluntary associations. There are four general types of moral theory: moral rules (Kantianism), consequentialism (utilitarianism), virtuousness (bundling virtue theory, religion, and moral intuitionism), and social contract. There are three general positions concerning social (...) responsibilities of individuals and corporations (i.e., a licensed group of individuals). One position asserts zero social responsibility beyond compliance with laws. The polar-opposite position asserts significant social responsibilities by moral obligation. An intermediate position asserts social responsibility by agent cost-benefit analysis. The framework seeks to map these types of institutions, moral theories, and social responsibility conceptions relative to one another. The purpose is to see whether insight can be obtained concerning certain key developing debates. The paper explores implications of the work of Ostrom and Williamson (winners of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences) for this framework. That work addresses choice institutions—to which moral theories and social responsibility theories can be added. (shrink)

Many philosophers think there is a luck problem confronting libertarian models of free will. If free actions are undetermined, then it seems to be a matter of chance or luck that they occur—so the objection goes. Agent-causal libertarians have responded to this objection by asserting that free actions, in their essence, involve a direct causal relation between agents and the events they cause. So, free actions are not lucky after all. Not everyone, however, is convinced by this response. Al (...) Mele and Peter van Inwagen, for instance, argue that luckiness remains even if agent-causation exists. One way to answer their arguments, I suggest, is by appealing to considerations in metaphysical grounding and the associated idea of explanatory priority. Mele’s argument loses force if facts about which possible world is actual are partly grounded in facts about free choices themselves. And van Inwagen’s challenge can be met if facts about free actions are explanatorily prior to any objective probabilities associated with those actions. (shrink)

Some remarks in the Eudemian Ethics and the Nichomachean Ethics indicate that the voluntariness of actions is significantly related to compulsion and ignorance. According to a plausible interpretation, these remarks suggest that if an agent performs an action under compulsion or due to ignorance of some relevant facts, then she does so involuntarily. An objection to this interpretation with regard to compulsion is that an agent can voluntarily do what she is compelled to do. With regard to ignorance, (...) one might object that it is necessary to clarify the proper range of relevant facts when considering whether an action performed out of ignorance is involuntary. In this paper, I develop two principles that align with the view that compulsion and ignorance are sufficient conditions for involuntary actions, while accommodating potential counterexamples and complications. (shrink)

The indeterminist theory of free will presented in Chs. 8 and 9 is further developed in this chapter by responding to a series of objections. The issues raised by these objections involve indeterminacy and possible worlds, explanation and probability, non‐deterministic causation, rational explanation of actions, character building and the historical dimension of responsibility, strength and weakness of will, choice, responsibility and indeterminism, action and indeterminism, control and responsibility, agent causation, and self‐determination.

I argue that the two criteria traditionally identified as jointly sufficient for voluntary behavior according to Aristotle require qualification. Without such qualification, they admit troubling exceptions. Through minding these difficult examples, I conclude that a third condition mentioned by Aristotle – the eph' hēmin – is key to qualifying the original two criteria. What is eph' hēmin is that which is efficiently caused by appetite and teleologically caused by reason such that the agent could have, in theory, acted differently. (...) I propose that praise and blame are justified only when 1: the behavior is voluntary and 2: the agent is susceptible to the positive influences of appropriate praise and blame to help form, improve, or strengthen a good character. Through concentrating on the agent's affectability in morally salient situations, we may better understand the qualified criteria's role in voluntary human behavior in general. (shrink)

An attempt is made in this chapter and the following two to give an incompatibilist or indeterminist account of free will that is consistent with current scientific knowledge without assuming any obscure or mysterious notions of agency or causation. A number of topics are discussed in the process of constructing this theory: self‐forming actions or willings, moral and prudential choice, divided will, indeterminate efforts, chaos theory, non‐equilibrium thermodynamics, quantum physics, neural networks, weakness of will, mind and body, plural (...) voluntary control, choosing for reasons, consciousness and purpose, self‐networks, chance, folk psychology and the brain, value experiments, and others. (shrink)

The causal theory of action is thought to be plagued by the problem of the disappearing agent. However, philosophers have reached no consensus on the nature of this problem, let alone on whether it is solvable. In this article, I interpret the problem as a phenomenological challenge: the causal theory of action employs an event-causal framework, with which certain aspects of the phenomenology of agency seem incompatible. I examine two areas in which the phenomenology appears to speak against an (...) event-causal framework: (1) the phenomenology of acting and (2) the phenomenology of making choices. Specifically, some philosophers have asserted that the phenomenology of acting involves content that action is caused by the agent themselves rather than by their mental states. Some philosophers have argued that the phenomenology of making choices involves content that the agent stands apart from their mental states in a way that allows them to reflect on, evaluate, or even manipulate their mental states. I argue that in neither case does the phenomenology pose a real challenge to the causal theory of action. (shrink)

In Eth. Nic. V 8, Aristotle provides a classification of damages an agent may do, establishing degrees of culpability. In doing so, Aristotle recalls what he said about voluntary and involuntary actions in the preceding books about voluntary and involuntary actions. In this paper, I defend the thesis according to which the Eudemian account on voluntariness is consistent with the classification of damages Aristotle provides in Eth. Nic. V 8, arguing that one of Aristotle’s concerns in dealing with voluntariness (...) is the legal practices of his time, which we can regard as strongly linked to his discussion on moral responsibility. Thereby, I challenge David Charles’ view that the account of voluntariness featured in the book on justice differs both from the Nicomachean account and the Eudemian one. (shrink)

Professor Chisholm’s lively “Reflections on Human Agency” develop themes which have appeared in at least nine earlier papers of his on action and the kindred topic of events. His latest variations on the Incompatibility thesis will be my sole concern here. This is the doctrine that fully voluntary deeds of a free agent, for which we may justifiably hold him accountable, cannot result from earlier or contemporaneous events. Chisholm’s general Incompatibility formula reads.

Critics often charge that agent-causal libertarianism is unintelligible due to the uniqueness of agent-causation—the sui generis causal relationship said to be involved when agents make free choices. This paper presents five objections, which are taken to be the only good objections, to agent-causal libertarianism and argues they all fail to show agent-causal libertarianism is unintelligible. The first four objections fail outright. The fifth objection fails in a special way. Naturalistic agent-causal libertarian theories succumb to (...) this fifth objection; theistic agent-causal libertarian theories do not. This entails that if agent-causal libertarianism is intelligible, then it is only so within theism. (shrink)

Francesco Berto proposed a logic for imaginative episodes. The logic establishes certain (in)validities concerning episodic imagination. They are not all equally plausible as principles of episodic imagination. The logic also does not model that the initial input of an imaginative episode is deliberately chosen.Stit-imagination logic models the imagining agent’s deliberate choice of the content of their imagining. However, the logic does not model the episodic nature of imagination. The present paper combines the two logics, thereby modelling imaginative episodes (...) with deliberately chosen initial input. We use a combination ofstit-imagination logic and a content-sensitive variably strict conditional à la Berto, for which we give a Chellas–Segerberg semantics. The proposed semantics has the following advantages over Berto’s: (i) we model thedeliberate choiceof initial input of imaginative episodes (in a multi-agent setting), (ii) we showframe correspondencesfor axiomatic analogues of Berto’s validities, which (iii) allows thepossibility to disregard axiomsthat might be considered not plausible as principles concerning imaginative episodes. We do not take a definite stance on whether theseshouldbe disregarded but give reasons for why one might want to disregard them. Finally, we compare our semantics briefly with recent work, which aims to model voluntary imagination, and argue that our semantics models different aspects. (shrink)

Chisholm's theory of agent causation is criticised. An alternative theory of agent causation is proposed.

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)

Sophisticated ‘tickle’-style defences of Evidential Decision Theory take your motivational state to screen off your act from any state that is causally independent of it, thus ensuring that EDT and CDT converge. That leads to unacceptable instability in cases in which the correct action is obvious. We need a more liberal conception of what the agent controls. It follows that an ordinary deliberator should sometimes consider the past and not only the future to be subject to her present (...) class='Hi'>choice. (shrink)

Involuntary autobiographical memories are conscious memories of personal events that come to mind with no preceding attempts at retrieval. It is often assumed that such memories are closely related to current concerns – i.e., uncompleted personal goals. Here we examined involuntary versus voluntary autobiographical memories in relation to earlier registered current concerns measured by the Personal Concern Inventory . We found no differences between involuntary and voluntary memories with regard to frequency or characteristics of current concern-related contents. However, memories related (...) to current concerns were rated as more central to the person’s identity, life story and expectations for the future than non-concern-related memories, irrespective of mode of recall. Depression and PTSD symptoms correlated positively with the proportion of current concern-related involuntary and voluntary memories. The findings support the view that involuntary and voluntary remembering is subject to similar motivational constraints. (shrink)

In the libertarian ``agent causation'' view of free will, free choices are attributable only to the choosing agent, as opposed to a specific cause or causes outside the agent. An often-repeated claim in the philosophical literature on free will is that agent causation necessarily implies lawlessness, and is therefore ``antiscientific." That claim is critiqued and it is argued, on the contrary, that the volitional powers of a free agent need not be viewed as (...) anomic, specifically with regard to the quantum statistical law. Assumptions about the role and nature of causation, taken as bearing on volitional agency, are examined and found inadequate to the task. Finally, it is suggested that quantum theory may constitute precisely the sort of theory required for a nomic grounding of libertarian free will. (shrink)

The concept of causation is essential to ascribing moral and legal responsibility since the only way an agent can make a difference in the world is through her acts causing things to happen. Yet the extent and manner in which the complex features of causation bear on responsibility ascriptions remain unclear. I present an analysis of four aspects of causation which yields new insights into different properties of responsibility and offers increased plausibility to certain moral views. (...) Chapter I examines the realist assumption that causation is an objective and mind-independent relation between space-time located relata – a postulate meant to provide moral assessment with a naturalistic basis and make moral properties continuous with a scientific view of the world. I argue that such a realist stance is problematic, and by extension so are the views seeking to tie responsibility attributions to an objective relation. Chapter II combines the context sensitivity of causal claims with the plausible idea that responsibility ascriptions rest on the assessment of causal sequences relating agents and consequences. I argue that taking context sensitivity seriously compels us to face a choice between moral contrastivism and a mild version of scepticism, viz. responsibility is not impossible, but ultimately difficult to identify with confidence. I show why the latter view is preferable. Chapter III explores the concern that group agents would causally overdetermine the effects already caused by their constituent individuals. I argue that non-reductive views of agency and responsibility lack a coherent causal story about how group agents impact the world as relatively independent entities. I explain the practical importance of higher-order entities and suggest a fictionalist stance towards group agency talk. Chapter IV analyses the puzzle of effect selection – if causes have infinitely many effects, but only one or a few are mentioned in causal claims, what determines their selection from the complete set of consequents? I argue that the criteria governing the difference between effects and by-products lack clarity and stability. I use the concerns about appropriate effect selection to formulate an epistemic argument against consequentialism. (shrink)

While William Hasker and I for the most part broadly agree in our opposition to much of the contemporary philosophical community concerning issues in the philosophy of mind that he discusses in his book, there are nevertheless seemingly some domestic disputes between him and me about certain matters concerning the nature of events involving the self. In this paper, I will focus on two of these disagreements. The first disagreement concerns Hasker’s treatment of what is widely known today as the (...) argument from reason and whether the events involved in our reasoning are essentially causal or teleological in nature. The second disagreement is about Hasker’s account of libertarian freedom, and whether agent causation is required to explain our free choices. (shrink)

Agent causation, roughly stated, is the view that an agentcan stand in direct causal relation to (at least some subsetof) her actions. Although agent causation has had a patchy reputation throughout much of contemporary analytic philosophy, it is now considered by many to be a viable theoretical option in various domains in action theory. That said, agent‐causalists continue to grapple with a number of important issues. This paper focuses on one such issue—namely, how to integrate (...) motivating reasons into a picture of agent causation. More specifically, I canvass anumber of options for the agent‐causalist, focusing inparticular on various causalist accounts, and flaggingvarious problems along the way. I conclude with some brief considerations about how to move forward. (shrink)

Recently, a number of philosophers have begun to question the commonly held view that choice or voluntary control is a precondition of moral responsibility. According to these philosophers, what really matters in determining a person’s responsibility for some thing is whether that thing can be seen as indicative or expressive of her judgments, values, or normative commitments. Such accounts might therefore be understood as updated versions of what Susan Wolf has called “real self views,” insofar as they attempt to (...) ground an agent’s responsibility for her actions and attitudes in the fact (when it is a fact) that they express who she is as a moral agent. As such, they seem to be open to some of the same objections Wolf originally raised to such accounts, and in particular to the objection that they cannot license the sorts of robust moral assessments involved in our current practices of moral responsibility. My aim in this paper is to try to respond to this challenge, by clarifying the kind of robust moral assessments I take to be licensed by (at least some) non-volitional accounts of responsibility and by explaining why these assessments do not in general require the agent to have voluntary control over everything for which she is held responsible. I also argue that the limited applicability of the distinction between “bad agents” and “blameworthy agents” on these accounts is in fact a mark in their favor. (shrink)

While various items closely associated with belief, such as speech?acts of assertion, or what have recently been termed acts of ?acceptance?, can clearly be voluntary, it is commonly supposed that belief itself, being intrinsically truth?directed, is essentially passive. I argue that while this may be true of belief proper, understood as a kind of disposition, it is not true of acts of assent or ?judgment?. Judgments, I contend, must be deemed voluntary precisely because of their truth?aimedness, for in their case (...) this feature entails that they can always be regarded as the subjects of a kind of implicit practical reasoning. By emphasizing the familiar point that voluntariness need not involve anything more than this, and by invoking the soft determinist option of holding causation to be compatible with choice, I seek to deflect some anticipated objections to this argument. (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).

In this paper, I argue that we have obligations not only to perform certain actions, but also to have certain attitudes (such as desires, beliefs, and intentions), and this despite the fact that we rarely, if ever, have direct voluntary control over our attitudes. Moreover, I argue that whatever obligations we have with respect to actions derive from our obligations with respect to attitudes. More specifically, I argue that an agent is obligated to perform an action if and only (...) if it’s the action that she would perform if she were to have the attitudes that she ought to have. This view, which I call attitudism, has three important implications. First, it implies that an adequate practical theory must not be exclusively act-orientated. That is, it must require more of us than just the performance of certain voluntary acts. Second, it implies that an adequate practical theory must be attitude-dependent. That is, it must hold that what we ought to do depends on what attitudes we ought to have. Third, it implies that no adequate practical theory can require us to perform acts that we would not perform even if we were to have the attitudes that we ought to have. I then show how these implications can help us both to address certain puzzling cases of rational choice and to understand why most typical practical theories (utilitarianism, rational egoism, virtue ethics, Rossian deontology, etc.) are mistaken. (shrink)

© Mind Association 2017In Causation and Free Will Carolina Sartorio offers an intricate argument for the claim ‘that actual sequences are sufficient grounds for freedom: they ground freedom, and nothing is required to ground it other than themselves, or their own grounds’. On this view, free will with respect to a choice or action is not explained in terms of the agent’s having alternative possibilities. Like Harry Frankfurt, Sartorio rejects the Principle of Alternate Possibilities : Principle of (...) Alternate Possibilities : a person does something freely only if he could have done otherwise. As is well known, Frankfurt opposes PAP on the grounds that it is vulnerable to counter-examples. One of Sartorio’s variants of these examples is as follows: Frankfurt’s case: Frank has reasons to harm Furt and makes the choice on... (shrink)

The central argument of this paper is that compatibilist theories that understand human agent causation as self-determination are consistent with, and can accommodate, important insights from evolutionary and developmental psychology. Agent causation is nothing more than the non-mysterious self-determining capability of persons, understood as embodied, emergent ontological entities whose nature is not fixed due to their uniquely evolved and developed capabilities of language use, cultural construction, self-consciousness and self-understanding, and moral concern. Relevant arguments of Dennett and (...) Searle are adapted to fit within the author's own emergentist, developmental theorizing that treats the self-determining capability of persons as arising within relevant biophysical and sociocultural contexts without being reducible to these contexts. Persons are self-determining in ways that require explanation not only in terms of materialistic efficient causal explanations appropriate to our evolved biophysical nature, but also in terms of final purposive explanations appropriate to our emergence as culture- capable, self-reflective agents, and formal explanations consistent with our evolved and developed nature as particular bio-cultural hybrids. (shrink)

In Physics 2.4–6, Aristotle offers an account of things that happen “by luck” and “spontaneously”. Many of these things are what we might think of as “lucky breaks”: cases where things go well for us, even though we don’t expect them to. In Physics 2.5, Aristotle illustrates this idea with the case of a man who goes to the market for some reason unrelated to collecting a debt he is owed. While he is there, this man just so happens to (...) run into his debtor and get his money back—which is what he “wanted” all along. This case has a number of features that have proved puzzling. Most notably, Aristotle seems to think that while “it happened accidentally to him to come and to do this for the sake of getting the money”, nevertheless the man “did not come for the sake of this”—though he “would have”. What must such a proceeding be like to be described in these ways? Physics 2.4–6 makes several important moves towards answering this question. One of them—among the earliest and seemingly a foundational one—is the claim that “for the sake of something are as many things as could be done by thought and by nature”. The aim of this paper is to identify the role that this claim plays in Aristotle’s account of spontaneous proceedings. It defends two main claims. First, Aristotle’s suggestion that spontaneous proceedings could be done by nature and by thought is the product of a more general strategy. His approach is to sketch an intuitive pattern of explanation for proceedings that happen for the sake of something in the ordinary—non-spontaneous—way, and then to try to extend that model to the case of things that do so spontaneously, preserving as much of it as possible. Applying this strategy reveals that whereas nature and thought in fact function as efficient causes of ordinary proceedings that are for the sake of something, this cannot be the case in spontaneous ones. Instead, nature and thought could function as their causes. Second, I argue that Aristotle’s implementation of this strategy is rooted in his account of causation and especially Physics 2.3’s list of “modes” of causes. When he claims that spontaneous proceedings “could” be done by nature and by thought, he is saying that nature and thought are their efficient causes in capacity. In the practical case, spontaneous proceedings are caused by agents who have certain capacities, connected with their desires and abilities. In the right circumstances, these agents would actively exercise those capacities in acting for the sake of a given end. (shrink)

Agent causation presupposes that actions are behaviors under the causal control of the agent’s mental states, its beliefs and desires. Here the idea of conscious causation in causal explanations of actions is examined, specifically, actions said to be the result of conscious efforts. Causal–functionalist theories of consciousness purport to be naturalistic accounts of the causal efficacy of consciousness. Flanagan argues that his causal–functionalist theory of consciousness satisfies naturalistic constraints on causation and that his causal efficacy (...) thesis is compatible with results of Libet’s experiments on conscious causation. First, the notions of conscious effort and conscious causation are analyzed with respect to the project of naturalizing the mind, that is, the attempt to assimilate folk-psychological explanation to the causal model of explanation in the natural sciences. It is argued that a serious obstacle for any naturalist program is that mental states are individuated by their semantic content, not the mechanistic, physical properties of their neural state instantiations. In particular, it is argued that explanation by reference to mental state content yields not a causal but an interpretive or rationalizing account of action in which the question of causal efficacy is irrelevant. Then, Flanagan’s causal–functionalist theory of consciousness is critically assessed; specifically his interpretations of Libet’s negative experimental results on the causal efficacy of consciousness are diagnosed and disputed. It is contended that Flanagan misinterprets the results of Libet’s consciousness experiments and that his functionalist concept of consciousness fails to yield an adequate explanation of the alleged causal efficacy of consciousness. Finally, his thesis is countered with other experimental results that appear to favor an epiphenomenalist view over the causal efficacy account of consciousness. (shrink)

Participants were asked to carry out a series of simple tasks while following mental control instructions. In advance of each task, they either suppressed thoughts of their intention to perform the task, concentrated on such thoughts, or monitored their thoughts without trying to change them. Suppression resulted in reduced reports of intentionality as compared to monitoring, and as compared to concentration. There was a weak trend for suppression to enhance reported intentionality for a repetition of the action carried out after (...) suppression instructions had been discontinued. (shrink)

According to what I call the reductive standard-causal theory of agency, the exercise of an agent's power to act can be reduced to the causal efficacy of agent-involving mental states and events. According to a non-reductive agent-causal theory, an agent's power to act is irreducible and primitive. Agent-causal theories have been dismissed on the ground that they presuppose a very contentious notion of causation, namely substance-causation. In this paper I will assume, with the (...) proponents of the agent-causal approach, that substance-causation is possible, as I will argue against that theory on the ground that it fails as a theory of agency. I will argue that the non-reductive agent-causal theory fails to account for agency, because it fails to account for agential control: it cannot explain why the stipulated irreducible relation between the agent and an action constitutes the agent's exercise of control over the action. This objection, I will argue, applies to the agent-causal theory in particular, and to the non-reductive approach in general. (shrink)