About this topic
Summary Agent causation distincts from Event causation, as the Agent itself is the cause for the event to take place and start another chain of events. In an event causion we tend to regard causal relations as paradigmatic - billiard balls striking one another, say - is an event; the event of one ball hitting another. The first relatum of an agent caused action is an agent herself. An Agent Causation theory of freedom was first introduced by the scottish philosopher Thomas Reid and was adopted by contemporary philosophers such as Roderick Chisholm, Richard Taylor and Timothy O'Connor. Agent causation is Incompatibilist view of Free Will and was adopted by Libertarians: they hope that agent causation gives to the agent a kind or degree of control over their actions that would be missing were actions event-caused (deterministically or indeterministically). A very few compatibilist theorists have also advanced agent-causal theories. The existence and the conceptual coherence of agent causation is subject to dispute.
Key works Agent causal theories date back to Reid 1863. An important defence of theories of this sort was offered by Roderick Chisholm, in Chisholm 1976 (among other works). In the contemporary debate, the most important defender of agent causation is Timothy O'Connor; O'Connor 2000 is his most important work on the topic. Clarke 2003 contains an important sympathetic but ultimately skeptical discussion. Mele 2005 argues that agent-causation does not solve the problem of reduced control that it was introducing to address; Clarke 2005 replies. Markosian 1999 is a defence of compatibilist agent-causation.
Introductions O'Connor 1995
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  1. Freedom in a physical world – a partial taxonomy.Jude Arnout Durieux - manuscript
    If I take a free decision, how does this express itself physically? If God acts in this world, how does he do so? The answers to those two questions may be different or the same. Here we sketch a typology of possible answers, including Transcendent Compatibility. It turns out that in an open universe, freedom is the timewise mirror image of causality.
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  2. Sublating the Free Will Problematic: Powers, Agency and Causal Determination.Ruth Groff - manuscript
    I argue that a powers-based metaphysics radically reconfigures the existing free will problematic. This is different from claiming that such an approach solves the ill-conceived problems that emerge from Humean-Kantian default commitments.
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  3. Freedom to do Otherwise and the Contingency of the Laws of Nature.Jeff Mitchell - manuscript
    This article argues that the freedom of voluntary action can be grounded in the contingency of the laws of nature. That is, the possibility of doing otherwise is equivalent to the possibility of the laws being otherwise. This equivalence can be understood in terms of an agent drawing a boundary between self and not-self in the domains of both matter and laws, defining the extent of the body and of voluntary behaviour. In particular, the article proposes that we can think (...)
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  4. Free Will of an Ontologically Open Mind.Jan Scheffel - manuscript
    The problem of free will has persistently resisted a solution throughout centuries. There is reason to believe that new elements need to be introduced into the analysis in order to make progress. In the present physicalist approach, these elements are emergence and information theory in relation to universal limits set by quantum physics. Furthermore the common, but vague, characterization of free will as "being able to act differently" is, in the spirit of Carnap, rephrased into an explicatum more suitable for (...)
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  5. Agent causation and ultimate responsibility.Robert F. Allen - manuscript
    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. 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 (...)
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  6. Thing Causation.Nathaniel Baron-Schmitt - forthcoming - Noûs.
  7. Non-symmetric awe: why it matters even if we don't.Daniel Coren - forthcoming - Philosophia: Philosophical Quarterly of Israel.
    The universe is enormous, perhaps unimaginably so. In comparison, we are very small. Does this suggest that humanity has little if any cosmic significance? And if we don’t matter, should that matter to us? Blaise Pascal, Frank Ramsey, Bertrand Russell, Susan Wolf, Harry Frankfurt, Stephen Hawking, and others have offered insightful answers to those questions. For example, Pascal and Ramsey emphasize that whereas the stars (in all their enormity) cannot think, human beings can. Through an exploration of some features of (...)
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  8. The Disappearing Agent as an Exclusion Problem.Johannes Himmelreich - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    The disappearing agent problem is an argument in the metaphysics of agency. Proponents of the agent-causal approach argue that the rival event-causal approach fails to account for the fact that an agent is active. This paper examines an analogy between this disappearing agent problem and the exclusion problem in the metaphysics of mind. I develop the analogy between these two problems and survey existing solutions. I suggest that some solutions that have received significant attention in response to the exclusion problem (...)
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  9. Freedom as a Kind of Causality.Toni Kannisto - forthcoming - In Violetta L. Waibel & Margit Ruffing (eds.), Natur und Freiheit: Akten des XII. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses.
    Kant’s view that freedom is a “kind of causality” seems to conflict with his claim that the categories of the understanding – including causality – can only be applied objectively to sensible phaenomena, never to supersensible noumena, as freedom is only possible for the latter. I argue that only Kant’s theory of symbolic presentation, according to which the category of cause is applied merely analogically to freedom, can dispel this threatening inconsistency. Unlike it is commonly thought, one cannot here use (...)
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  10. Agent Causation.Leigh Vicens - forthcoming - In Joseph Keim Campbell (ed.), A Companion to Free Will.
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  11. Kevin J. Mitchell: Free Agents – How Evolution Gave Us Free Will. Gebunden, 333 Seiten. Princeton University Press, Princeton & Oxford 2023. Literaturhinweis. [REVIEW]Christoph Leumann - 2024 - Aphin 31 (2024/1):21-23.
    In seinem Buch "Free Agents" stellt der Neurowissenschaftler und Evolutionsgenetiker Kevin Mitchell ein evolutionäres Erklärungsmodell für den freien Willen vor. Aus philosophischer Sicht relevant ist das Buch vor allem, weil es ein zentrales Credo der aktuellen Freiheits-Debatte in Frage stellt, nämlich die Auffassung, ein naturwissenschaftlich vertretbares Freiheitsverständnis müsse mit dem Determinismus im Einklang stehen. Mitchell geht auf Distanz zum Kompatibilismus und nimmt mit naturwissenschaftlicher Argumentation für die libertarische Gegenposition Partei (auch wenn er selbst diesen Ausdruck nicht verwendet). Sein Buch ist (...)
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  12. Agentially Controlled Action: Causal, not Counterfactual.Malte Hendrickx - 2023 - Philosophical Studies 180 (10-11):3121-3139.
    Mere capacity views hold that agents who can intervene in an unfolding movement are performing an agentially controlled action, regardless of whether they do intervene. I introduce a simple argument to show that the noncausal explanation offered by mere capacity views fails to explain both control and action. In cases where bodily subsystems, rather than the agent, generate control over a movement, agents can often intervene to override non-agential control. Yet, contrary to what capacity views suggest, in these cases, this (...)
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  13. On Three Arguments Against Metaphysical Libertarianism.Ken M. Levy - 2023 - Review of Metaphysics 76 (4):725-748.
    I argue that the three strongest arguments against metaphysical libertarianism—the randomness objection, the constitutive luck objection, and the physicalist objection—are actually unsuccessful and therefore that metaphysical libertarianism is more plausible than the common philosophical wisdom allows. My more positive thesis, what I will refer to as “Agent Exceptionalism,” is that, when making decisions and performing actions, human beings can indeed satisfy the four conditions of metaphysical libertarianism: the control condition, the rationality condition, the ultimacy condition, and the physicalism condition.
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  14. Causal pluralism: agent causation without the panicky metaphysics.Joseph Martinez - 2023 - Synthese 202 (1):1-21.
    An important divide in the free will literature—one that is arguably almost as common as the distinction between compatibilism and incompatibilism—concerns the distinction between event and substance causation. As the story typically goes, event-causalists maintain that an action is free only if it is caused by appropriate mental events, and agent-causalists maintain that an action is free only if it is caused directly by a substance (the agent). This paper argues that this dichotomy is a false one. It does this (...)
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  15. Emergent Agent Causation.Juan Morales - 2023 - Synthese 201:138.
    In this paper I argue that many scholars involved in the contemporary free will debates have underappreciated the philosophical appeal of agent causation because the resources of contemporary emergentism have not been adequately introduced into the discussion. Whereas I agree that agent causation’s main problem has to do with its intelligibility, particularly with respect to the issue of how substances can be causally relevant, I argue that the notion of substance causation can be clearly articulated from an emergentist framework. According (...)
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  16. Substance Causation.Michele Paolini Paoletti - 2023 - Philosophia 51 (1):287-308.
    I defend the thesis that, if there are substances, substance causation (i.e., causation by substances) is the only sort of causation in the universe – or the only fundamental sort. Subsequently, I develop an account of substance causation that is partly grounded on a peculiar interpretation of absolute change (i.e., of entities' coming and ceasing to be) and qualitative change, on some ontological assumptions about modes (i.e., individual properties that ontologically depend on their bearers) and powers. Finally, I reply to (...)
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  17. Conceptos budistas fundamentales - En el lenguaje actual (3rd edition).Roberto Thomas Arruda - 2023 - São Paulo: Terra à Vista - edición gratuita.
    Buda no construyó una religión; Estudió filosofía y ciencias. Fue el precursor del realismo científico, el psicoanálisis, la filosofía analítica, el existencialismo, el feminismo, la epistemología, la teoría y crítica del conocimiento, la psicología social, la psicología positiva, el conservacionismo ecológico y conceptos relacionados con la materia y la energía que sólo muy recientemente la física cuántica pudo demostrar. . Conocer adecuadamente qué es el budismo es fundamental para la formación y la cultura de cualquier persona que no quiera ser (...)
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  18. Agency: Let's Mind What's Fundamental.Robert H. Wallace - 2023 - Philosophical Issues 33 (1):285–298.
    The standard event-causal theory of action says that an intentional action is caused in the right way by the right mental states. This view requires reductionism about agency. The causal role of the agent must be nothing over and above the causal contribution of the relevant mental event-causal processes. But commonsense finds this reductive solution to the “agent-mind problem”, the problem of explaining the relationship between agents and the mind, incredible. Where did the agent go? This paper suggests that this (...)
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  19. Agency and causation.Jesús Aguilar & Andrei A. Buckareff - 2022 - In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Agency. New York: Routledge. pp. 27-36.
    In this chapter, we examine some foundational issues at the intersection of the metaphysics of agency and the metaphysics of causation. We explore three broad issues concerning the metaphysics of causation and intentional agency. We first consider the best way to think about the relationship between exercising agency and causation. Specifically, is intentional agency best identified with a causal process or should we take intentional agency to be either the causal initiation of some outcome or the effect of a cause? (...)
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  20. A Companion to Free Will.Joseph Keim Campbell, Kristin M. Mickelson & V. Alan White (eds.) - 2022 - Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley-Blackwell.
    The concept of free will is fraught with controversy, as readers of this volume likely know. Philosophers disagree about what free will is, whether we have it, what mitigates or destroys it, and what it's good for. Indeed, philosophers even disagree about how to fix the referent of the term 'free will' for purposes of describing and exploring these disagreements. What one person considers a reasonably neutral working definition of 'free will' is often considered question-begging or otherwise misguided by another. (...)
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  21. Moral Responsibility Reconsidered.Gregg D. Caruso & Derk Pereboom - 2022 - Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
    This Element examines the concept of moral responsibility as it is used in contemporary philosophical debates and explores the justifiability of the moral practices associated with it, including moral praise/blame, retributive punishment, and the reactive attitudes of resentment and indignation. After identifying and discussing several different varieties of responsibility-including causal responsibility, take-charge responsibility, role responsibility, liability responsibility, and the kinds of responsibility associated with attributability, answerability, and accountability-it distinguishes between basic and non-basic desert conceptions of moral responsibility and considers a (...)
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  22. Molinism: Explaining our Freedom Away.Nevin Climenhaga & Daniel Rubio - 2022 - Mind 131 (522):459-485.
    Molinists hold that there are contingently true counterfactuals about what agents would do if put in specific circumstances, that God knows these prior to creation, and that God uses this knowledge in choosing how to create. In this essay we critique Molinism, arguing that if these theses were true, agents would not be free. Consider Eve’s sinning upon being tempted by a serpent. We argue that if Molinism is true, then there is some set of facts that fully explains both (...)
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  23. Is Agent Causation Possible?Noah McKay - 2022 - Dialogue 6 (1):41-45.
    To meet the luck objection to incompatibilism, philosophers such as Timothy O’Connor, Randolph Clark, and William Rowe resurrected the Reidian notion of agent causation, which implies the “Substance-Causal Thesis” (SCT): some causes are fundamentally substances, not events. I examine an objection to SCT by C. D. Broad, developed by Carl Ginet, that substances cannot cause events because substances cannot explain why events happen when they do. The objection fails as it rests on a demand for contrastive explanations of free actions. (...)
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  24. Causation without the causal theory of action.Elena Popa - 2022 - Human Affairs 32 (4):389-393.
    This paper takes a critical stance on Tallis’s separation of causation and agency. While his critique of the causal theory of action and the assumptions about causation underlying different versions of determinism, including the one based on neuroscience is right, his rejection of causation has implausible consequences. Denying the link between action and causation amounts to overlooking the role action plays in causal inference and in the origin of causal concepts. I suggest that a weaker version of Tallis’ claim, compatible (...)
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  25. Causality, determination and free will: towards an anscombean account of free action.Niels van Miltenburg - 2022 - Synthese 200 (4):1-20.
    Anscombe’s “Causality and Determination” is often cited in the contemporary free will debate, but rarely discussed in much detail. It’s main contribution, it is thought, is the defense of an alternative to deterministic causation, thus clearing the way for an incompatibilist analysis of free actions in terms of probabilistic causation. However, in this paper I will show that the contemporary probabilistic analysis of free action actually stands in direct conflict with Anscombe’s lecture. Instead, I will argue, its true value for (...)
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  26. Du Châtelet’s Libertarianism.Aaron Wells - 2022 - History of Philosophy Quarterly 38 (3):219-241.
    There is a growing consensus that Emilie Du Châtelet’s challenging essay “On Freedom” defends compatibilism. I offer an alternative, libertarian reading of the essay. I lay out the prima facie textual evidence for such a reading. I also explain how apparently compatibilist remarks in “On Freedom” can be read as aspects of a sophisticated type of libertarianism that rejects blind or arbitrary choice. To this end, I consider the historical context of Du Châtelet’s essay, and especially the dialectic between various (...)
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  27. Pluralistic Attitude-Explanation and the Mechanisms of Intentional Action.Daniel Burnston - 2021 - In David Shoemaker (ed.), Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility, Vol 7. Oxford, UK: pp. 130-153.
    According to the Causal Theory of Action (CTA), genuine actions are individuated by their causal history. Actions are bodily movements that are causally explained by citing the agent’s reasons. Reasons are then explained as some combination of propositional attitudes – beliefs, desires, and/or intentions. The CTA is thus committed to realism about the attitudes. This paper explores current models of decision-making from the mind sciences, and argues that it is far from obvious how to locate the propositional attitudes in the (...)
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  28. Book Review: The Shape of Agency: Control, Action, Skill, Knowledge (By Joshua Shepherd). [REVIEW]Theptawee Chokvasin - 2021 - Suranaree Journal of Social Science 15:147-149.
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  29. Moral Necessity, Agent Causation, and the Determination of Free Actions in Clarke and Leibniz.Julia Jorati - 2021 - In Marco Haussman & Jorg Nöller (eds.), Free Will: Historical and Analytic Perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 165-202.
    On the standard interpretation, Samuel Clarke and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz endorse fundamentally different theories of free will. Clarke is typically interpreted as a libertarian who holds that freedom requires indeterminism. Leibniz, in contrast, is typically interpreted as a compatibilist who holds that free actions can be determined. This chapter challenges the standard interpretation and argues that Clarke and Leibniz agree almost completely about free will. Both require free actions to be instances of agent causation, and both view freedom as compatible (...)
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  30. The Question of Iterated Causation.David Mark Kovacs - 2021 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 104 (2):454-473.
    This paper is about what I call the Question of Iterated Causation (QIC): for any instance of causation in which c1…ck cause effect e, what are the causes of c1…ck’s causing of e? In short: what causes instances of causation or, as I will refer to these instances, the “causal goings‐on”? A natural response (which I call “dismissivism”) is that this is a bad question because causal goings‐on aren’t apt to be caused. After rebutting several versions of dismissivism, I consider (...)
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  31. Agent Causation, Realist Metaphysics of Powers, and the Reducibility Objection.Davis Kuykendall - 2021 - Philosophia 49 (4):1563-1581.
    To address what I call the “Uniformity”, “Capriciousness”, and “Reducibility” objections, recent agent-causation theories hold that agent-causation is a type of substance causation. Substance causation consists in substances producing effects by exercising or manifesting their powers. Importantly, these versions of agent-causation assume a realist metaphysics of powers, where powers are properties of substances that can exist unmanifested. However, the realist theories of powers that agent-causal theories have relied upon explicitly hold that powers—rather than their substances—are causes. Substances are merely derivative (...)
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  32. Agent Causation Is Not Prior to Event Causation.Soo Lam Wong - 2021 - Disputatio 13 (61):143-158.
    My aim in this paper is to argue against the claim that agent causation is more fundamental than event causation. To accomplish this aim, I shall first briefly discuss the motivation behind agent causation. Second, I shall highlight the differences between agent causation and event causation. Third, I shall begin briefly with the weaker claim held by Timothy O’Connor and Randolph Clarke that there is no good reason to believe that event causation is more fundamental than agent causation. Fourth, I (...)
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  33. Rolling back the Rollback Argument.László Bernáth & János Tőzsér - 2020 - Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 2 (39):43-61.
    By means of the Rollback Argument, this paper argues that metaphysically robust probabilities are incompatible with a kind of control which can ensure that free actions are not a matter of chance. Our main objection to those (typically agent-causal) theories which both attribute a kind of control to agents that eliminates the role of chance concerning free actions and ascribe probabilities to options of decisions is that metaphysically robust probabilities should be posited only if they can have a metaphysical explanatory (...)
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  34. The Cartesian Doxastic Argument For Free Will.Andrew Kissel - 2020 - Journal of Philosophical Research 45:217-229.
    This paper raises objections to what I call the Cartesian Doxastic Argument for free will: the argument that it is probably true that we are free on the grounds that there is already widespread intuitive belief in that claim. Richard Swinburne provides the best extant defense of the argument, using his principle of credulity, which holds that beliefs are probably true merely on the believer’s evidence that they believe it. I argue that the PoC is either too liberal, justifying intuitively (...)
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  35. Agency as a Two-Way Power: A Defence.Helen Steward - 2020 - The Monist 103 (3):342-355.
    This paper presents a dilemma which it has been alleged by Kim Frost must be faced by any defender of the notion of a two-way power and offers a solution to the dilemma which is distinct from Frost’s own. The dilemma is as follows: assuming that powers are to be individuated by what they are powers to do or undergo, then either there is a unified description of the manifestation-type which individuates the power, or there is not. If there is, (...)
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  36. Free Will and Mental Powers.Niels van Miltenburg & Dawa Ometto - 2020 - Topoi 39 (5):1155-1165.
    In this paper, we investigate how contemporary metaphysics of powers can further an understanding of agent-causal theories of free will. The recent upsurge of such ontologies of powers and the understanding of causation it affords promises to demystify the notion of an agent-causal power. However, as we argue pace, the very ubiquity of powers also poses a challenge to understanding in what sense exercises of an agent’s power to act could still be free—neither determined by external circumstances, nor random, but (...)
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  37. Agent Causation and the Phenomenology of Agency.Randolph Clarke - 2019 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 100 (3):747-764.
    Several philosophers claim that the phenomenology of one’s own agency conflicts with standard causal theories of action, couched in terms of causation by mental events or states. Others say that the phenomenology is prima facie incompatible with such a theory, even if in the end a reconciliation can be worked out. Here it is argued that the type of action theory in question is consistent with what can plausibly be said to be presented to us in our experience of our (...)
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  38. The Metaphysics of Free Will and Moral Freedom in Thomas Reid.María Elton - 2019 - Review of Metaphysics 73 (1):55-76.
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  39. The libertarian predicament: a plea for action theory.Niels van Miltenburg & Dawa Ometto - 2019 - Synthese 196 (1):161-178.
    Libertarians in the contemporary free will debate find themselves under attack from two angles. They face the challenge of defending the necessity of indeterminism for freedom against the philosophical mainstream position of compatibilism. And second, they are increasingly forced to argue for the very possibility of indeterministic free will, in the face of the so-called luck objection. Many contemporary libertarians try to overcome the second problem by adopting the causal theory of action. We argue that this move at the same (...)
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  40. Moving Stories: Agency, Emotion and Practical Rationality.Dave Ward - 2019 - In Laura Candiotto (ed.), The Value of Emotions for Knowledge. Springer Verlag. pp. 145-176.
    What is it to be an agent? One influential line of thought, endorsed by G. E. M. Anscombe and David Velleman, among others, holds that agency depends on practical rationality—the ability to act for reasons, rather than being merely moved by causes. Over the past 25 years, Velleman has argued compellingly for a distinctive view of agency and the practical rationality with which he associates it. On Velleman’s conception, being an agent consists in having the capacity to be motivated by (...)
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  41. Agent Causation and Free Will: a Case for Libertarianism.Thad Botham - 2018 - In Lenny Clapp (ed.), Philosophy for Us. Cognella. pp. 49-58.
    Some people endorse a view called incompatibilism, which states that free will is incompatible with determinism. No free action could possibly be determined, they think. More informatively, incompatibilists think it is impossible that someone’s freely acting be causally guaranteed to happen by things that occur before she freely acts. Some people hold a view called libertarianism, which states both that incompatibilism is true and that someone actually performs a free action. Other people reject incompatibilism. They hold to compatibilism, which is (...)
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  42. Review of A Minimal Libertarianism: Free Will and the Promise of Reduction, by Christopher Franklin. [REVIEW]Randolph Clarke - 2018 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2018.
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  43. Problems from Reid. [REVIEW]Rebecca Copenhaver - 2018 - Philosophical Review 127 (1):117-121.
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  44. Foreword.Christian Coseru - 2018 - In Rick Repetti (ed.), Buddhism, Meditation, and Free Will : A Theory of Mental Freedom. New York, USA: Routledge.
    The question of whether freedom is incompatible with determinism frames much of the contemporary conversation on agency and moral responsibility. Those who look to science for answers reason that it is just a matter of time before science settles the question of free will once and for all (and settles it against deeply entrenched beliefs about libertarian freedom). Even incompatibilists, who think freedom is incompatible with determinism, are weary that concepts such as intention, deliberation, decision, and the weighing of reasons, (...)
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  45. A Critique of Alfred R Mele’s Work on Autonomous Agents: From Self-Control to Autonomy: Oxford University Press, New York, 1995. [REVIEW]Pujarini Das - 2018 - Journal of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research 35 (3):603-617.
  46. Explaining Free Will.Michael Elstob - 2018 - Chesham, UK: C. M. Elstob. Printed and distributed by Amazon.
    A new approach using independence indeterminism, a novel naturalistic metaphysics for an open creative universe. -/- The problem of free will - what exactly it is, whether it is required for us to be morally responsible for our actions, and whether any natural being can possibly possess it - has remained unresolved for over 2000 years. -/- Now, starting from the very widely held belief that most change takes place in a way that is independent of how most other change (...)
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  47. A Minimal Libertarianism: Free Will and the Promise of Reduction.Christopher Evan Franklin - 2018 - New York, USA: Oxford University Press.
    In this book, Christopher Evan Franklin develops and defends a novel version of event-causal libertarianism. This view is a combination of libertarianism--the view that humans sometimes act freely and that those actions are the causal upshots of nondeterministic processes--and agency reductionism--the view that the causal role of the agent in exercises of free will is exhausted by the causal role of mental states and events (e.g., desires and beliefs) involving the agent. Franklin boldly counteracts a dominant theory that has similar (...)
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  48. One-particularism in the theory of action.David-Hillel Ruben - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (11):2677-2694.
    In this paper, I intend to introduce what I think is a novel proposal in the metaphysics of action: one-particularism. In order to do so, I must first explain two ideas: a concept in the semantics of English that many philosophers of action take to be of great importance in action theory, causative alternation; and the idea of an intrinsic event. By attempting to understand the role that intrinsic events are meant to play in action theory, I then introduce my (...)
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  49. Exceptionalist naturalism: human agency and the causal order.John Turri - 2018 - Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 71 (2):396-410.
    This paper addresses a fundamental question in folk metaphysics: how do we ordinarily view human agency? According to the transcendence account, we view human agency as standing outside of the causal order and imbued with exceptional powers. According to a naturalistic account, we view human agency as subject to the same physical laws as other objects and completely open to scientific investigation. According to exceptionalist naturalism, the truth lies somewhere in between: we view human agency as fitting broadly within the (...)
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  50. Rejecting Pereboom’s empirical objection to agent-causation.Jordan Baker - 2017 - Synthese 194 (8):3085-3100.
    In this paper I argue that Pereboom’s empirical objection to agent causation fails to undermine the most plausible version of agent-causal libertarianism. This is significant because Pereboom concedes that such libertarianism is conceptually coherent and only falls to empirical considerations. To substantiate these claims I outline Pereboom’s taxonomy of agent-causal views, develop the strongest version of his empirical objections, and then show that this objection fails to undermine what I consider the most plausible view of agent-causal libertarianism, namely, reconciliatory integrationist (...)
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