Abstract
The question I raise is whether Mark Balaguer’s event-causal libertarianism can withstand the disappearing agent objection. The concern is that with the causal role of the events antecedent to a decision already given, nothing settles whether the decision occurs, and so the agent does not settle whether the decision occurs. Thus it would seem that in this view the agent will not have the control in making decisions required for moral responsibility. I examine whether Balaguer’s position has the resources to answer this objection.
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Notes
Randolph Clarke (2003) points out that on event-causal libertarianism, in addition to agent’s involvement in the antecedent events or states, there is a further respect in which the agent might be thought to contribute to a decision, and that is in the causing of the decision by the antecedent agent-involving states and events (2003, p. 74). The DA objection also challenges the supposition that this agent-involving causing of a decision provides for the agent’s moral responsibility. On the event-causal libertarian picture, the causal conditions antecedent to the causing of the decision will leave it open whether the causing of Ralph’s deciding to move to New York, or else the causing of Ralph’s deciding to stay in Mayberry, will occur. With the role of the antecedent conditions already given, nothing settles which causing will occur, and thus Ralph as agent does not settle which causing will occur.
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Pereboom, D. The disappearing agent objection to event-causal libertarianism. Philos Stud 169, 59–69 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9899-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9899-2