Abstract

I argue that the most pressing form of the problem of freedom comes from the application of event-causal explanation to human action. I then show why the traditional responses of the compatibilist and the libertarian are fundamentally ill-equipped to solve this problem. Their inadequacy suggests looking for a different approach. This leads me to examine two-standpoint style arguments, those which argue, roughly, that there is a difference in principle between the objective point of view which supports causal explanation, and the subjective point of view which supports interpretive explanation. They suggest that if these forms of explanation are kept to their proper domains, the problem of freedom can be neutralized. I look at Davidson's, Stoutland's, and Korsgaard's two-standpoint theories. Their shortcomings reveal that a successful two-standpoint view must be realist with regard to the properties apprehended from the subjective standpoint. I then argue that a realist two-standpoint theory something like Charles Taylor's has what is needed to fit the bill. Nevertheless, Taylor's positive account of our agency is not sufficiently full-blooded, and his account of interpretivism subverts his realism with regard to the properties of an agent's character or self. I argue that agency should be understood as the activity of self-reflection in the formation of one's self or character, and show how the interpretivist account of self-constitution can be made sufficiently realist. Just as there is a fact of the matter as to the genre of a story, so too is there a fact of the matter as to the orientation of a person's self or character