论行动者因果性理论的不连贯性

行动者因果性理论是目前三种占据主导地位的不相容论的自由意志理论之一。TimothyO’Connor等人近来已经论证说,其他两种不相容论的理论(CarlGinet的简单的非决定论)和RobertKane的因果的非决定论)存在着严重的困难,因此试图发展一种行动者因果性理论作为对不相容论的自由意志问题的一个解决。在这篇文章中,我试图表明O’Connor自己提出的理论是不连贯的:它要么无法解决行动的控制和运气问题,要么在它解决这个问题的试图中不得不退化为一种事件因果关系理论,因此就直接威胁到这个理论本身的连贯性。     

Free Will, Moral Responsibility, and the Problem of “OOMPH”

Thomas Reid developed an important theory of freedom and moral responsibility resting on the concept of agent-causation, by which he meant the power of a rational agent to cause or not cause a volition resulting in an action. He held that this power is limited in that occasions occur when one's emotions or other forces may preclude its exercise. John Martin Fischer has raised an objection – the not enough ‘Oomph’ objection – against any incompatibilist account of freedom and moral responsibility. In this essay I argue that Fischer's not enough ‘Oomph’ objection fails to provide any reasons for rejecting Reid's incompatibilist, agent-causation account of freedom and moral responsibility.     

Causation in a New Old Key

I argue (1) that it is not philosophically significant whether causation is linguistically represented by a predicate or by a sentence connective; (2) that there is no philosophically significant distinction between event- and states-of-affairs-causation; (3) that there is indeed a philosophically significant distinction between agent- and event-causation, and that event-causation must be regarded as an analog of agent-causation. Developing this point, I argue that event-causation's being in the image of agent-causation requires, mainly, (a) that the cause is temporally prior to the effect, (b) that the cause necessitates (is sufficient with necessity) for the effect. Causal necessity is explained as a derivative of nomological necessity, and finally, via a definition of the causal sentence connective, the logic of event-causation is shown to be a part of temporal modal logic.     

Freedom, Responsibility, and Agency

This paper first distinguishes three alternative views that adherents to both incompatibilism and PAP may take as to what constitutes an agent's determining or controlling her action (if it's not the action's being deterministically caused by antecedent events): the indeterministic-causation view, the agent-causation view, and "simple indeterminism." The bulk of the paper focusses on the dispute between simple indeterminism - the view that the occurrence of a simple mental event is determined by its subject if it possesses the "actish" phenomenal quality and is undetermined by antecedent events - and Timothy O'Connor's agent-causation view. It defends simple indeterminism against O'Connor's objections to it and offers objections to O'Connor's view.     

Agent-causation and agential control

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.