Agent Causation

1
Agent Causation

• Daniel von Wachter
• http//daniel.von-wachter.de

2
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?

3
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

4
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?

5
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.

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Tryings (cont)

• Reid, Thomas. 1788. 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. 1966. Action and Purpose.
  Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
• Chisholm, Roderick. 1976. The Agent as Cause. In
  Action Theory, edited by M. Brand and D. Walton.
  Dordrecht Reidel.
• Swinburne, Richard. 1997. The Evolution of the
  Soul (Revised Edition). Oxford Clarendon Press,
  ch. 7.
• O'Connor, Timothy. 2000. Persons and Causes
  Oxford UP.

7
Tryings (cont)

• Action can be defined in terms of tryings.
• The dilemma of free will can perhaps be tackled
  with tryings.

8
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.)

9
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!

10
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.

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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.

12
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?

13
Chisholms theory of agent causation

• Undertakings
• When Ludwig successfully raises his arm he is the
  cause of the arms 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!

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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.

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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!

16
Chisholms linguistic turn

• The philosophical question is not - or at least
  it shouldnt 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?

17
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.

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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.

19
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.

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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 Gods choice events.