Agent Causation Daniel von Wachter

Causation in actions When people do something they are often said to be the cause of the result of the action. E.g. Jones caused the braking of the window. In which sense can agents be causes? Are there any events that come about other than through event causation (i.e. via tendencies)? Does it make any difference whether the action was free?

Plan What is a free action? Terminology: tryings, etc. Freedom and determinism The free will dilemma The dilemma and agent causation Chisholm; critique of Chisholm The right solution

Free action What is an action? What makes an action a free action? Intuition: if S did A freely he could have done otherwise. If the action - everything involved in it - was just the result of ongoing causal processes, then it was not a free action. Is free action compatible with determinism, i.e. the view that every event has a sufficient cause?

Tryings Imagine Ludwig has a cup of tea for breakfast... He tries to lift it, but due to an injury of his arm the arm does not rise. He tries again, then the arm obeys. A trying is a mental event of the type that occurs when we try to do something regardless of whether we succeed. Alternative terms: undertakings, purposings. Thomas Reid (1788), Richard Taylor (1966), Roderick Chisholm (1976), Richard Swinburne.

Tryings (cont) Reid, Thomas Essays on the Active Power of the Human Mind. In Inquiry and Essays, edited by R. E. Beanblossom and K. Lehrer. Indianapolis: Hackett. Taylor, Richard Action and Purpose. Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Chisholm, Roderick The Agent as Cause. In Action Theory, edited by M. Brand and D. Walton. Dordrecht: Reidel. Swinburne, Richard The Evolution of the Soul (Revised Edition). Oxford: Clarendon Press, ch. 7. O'Connor, Timothy Persons and Causes: Oxford UP.

Tryings (cont) Action can be defined in terms of tryings. The dilemma of free will can perhaps be tackled with tryings.

Terminology An action leads to the intended result via a causal process, the action process. An action is governed by an intention to bring a certain thing about. (This is to be distinguished from a definite plan, also often called intention.)

Compatibilist free will Compatibilism is the view that the existence of free actions is compatible with determinism. S did A freely iff he did what he wanted to do. Attempts to preserve “he could have done otherwise” by assuming chance in: –how the decision is made (Clarke) –the process of deliberation (Dennett, Mele) –chance diminishes control!

Incompatibilism “Libertarian free will”. A free action is not fully caused by preceding events. The question is not whether free will is compatible with determinism but which kind of free will is compatible with determinism.

The dilemma of free will If determinism is true, then the action is just the result of ongoing causal processes and the agent could not have acted otherwise, and hence it is not true. If determinism is false, then the action occurs as a matter of chance, and hence it is not a free action because the agent lacks control.

The Dilemma and agent c Agent causation (AC): some causes are not events but substances, namely agents. AC is usually put forward by defenders of libertarian free will. Does AC help to solve the Dilemma? Does AC help to make sense of libertarian free action?

Chisholm’s theory of agent causation Undertakings When Ludwig successfully raises his arm he is the cause of the arm’s rising (and of the undertaking). Agent causation is not reducible to event causation. A free action is one involves an undertaking for which there is no preceding “sufficient causal condition”. So there is agent causation in free as well as non- free actions!

Chisholm (cont) S contributes causally at t to p =Df. Either (a) S does something at t that contributes causally to p, or (b) there is a q such that S undertakes q at t and S-undertaking-q is p, or (c) there is an r such that S does something at t that contributes causally to r, and p is that state of affairs which is S doing something that contributes causally to r.

Objection against Chisholm A free action is one involves an undertaking for which there is no preceding “sufficient causal condition”. Does it follow that the action was up to the agent? that the agent had control? What if the undertaking occurred as a matter of chance? In non-free action there is, contra C, no other causation involved besides event causation!

Chisholm’s linguistic turn “The philosophical question is not - or at least it shouldn’t be - the question whether or not there is ‘agent causation’. The philosophical question should be, rather, the question whether ‘agent causation’ is reducible to ‘event causation’. Thus, for example, if we have good reason for believing that Jones did kill his uncle, then the ph question about Jones as cause would be: Can we express the statement ‘Jones killed his uncle’ without loss of meaning into a set of statement in which only events are said to be causes and in which Jones himself is not said to be the source of any activity? And can we do this without being left with any residue of agent causation - that is, without being left with some such statement as ‘Jones raised his arm” wherein Jones once again plays the role of cause or partial cause of a certain event?”

Turn back: Causation in free action Describe the causation involved in free actions Consider the action process, leading to the action result If you can trace it back well before the action then the action was not free. The process must have started somewhere. Call a first stage initial event.

Causation in free action (cont) How did the initial event occur? –It was not entirely the result of ongoing causal processes –It did not occur by chance The occurrence of a part of the initial event must be due to the agent. Choice event. Trace back the causes of the action result; you end up at an event a part of which has no preceding cause and whose occurrence is due to the agent. Free agents can make certain events pop up, just by (or as) choice. You can say that the agent is cause of the choice event.

All dilemmas solved Actions are neither fully caused by earlier events nor do they occur randomly. Agents have control over what they do. They can initiate (and sustain) certain causal processes.

Mysterious? It is not more mysterious that an event should occur because someone chooses so than that an event should occur because a certain other event occurred earlier. Al-Ghazali: All events are God’s choice events.