Abstract
Event-causal libertarians maintain that an agent’s freely bringing about a choice is reducible to states and events involving him bringing about the choice. Agent-causal libertarians demur, arguing that free will requires that the agent be irreducibly causally involved. Derk Pereboom and Meghan Griffith have defended agent-causal libertarianism on this score, arguing that since on event-causal libertarianism an agent’s contribution to his choice is exhausted by the causal role of states and events involving him, and since these states and events leave it open which decision he will make, he does not settle which decision occurs, and thus “disappears.” My aim is to explain why this argument fails. In particular, I demonstrate that event-causal libertarians can dismantle the argument by enriching the reductive base in their analysis of free will to include a state that plays the functional role of the self-determining agent and with which the agent is identified.
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Notes
I use ‘action’ here as an umbrella term: all agential activity falls under the rubric ‘action.’ Choices, thus, count as actions. In other contexts I will use ‘action’ more narrowly, referring only to agential activity subsequent to choice, such as overt behavior. The context should make clear how to disambiguate my use of ‘action.’
Some might balk at the idea that an agent can determine an undetermined act. This is understandable, but mistaken. Traditionally, free will has been thought to require the power of self-determination (Watson 1987; Shoemaker 2003a). The main question is not whether free will requires this power, but what the power of self-determination amounts to. If self-determination is to be an undisputed condition of freedom, then the notion of ‘determination by the self’ cannot, by definition, exclude the possibility of self-determining an undetermined act. I here assume that there is a meaning of ‘determination’ (and its verb form ‘to determine’) that is conceptually distinct from determinism. I will consider these issues more thoroughly in Sect. 3 below.
O’Connor (2000) and Clarke (2003) also appear to endorse this, or a closely related, argument. “A prima facie problem for [event-causal libertarianism] is to explain how the agent directly controls the outcome in a given case. There are objective probabilities corresponding to each of the possibilities, but within those fixed parameters, which choice occurs on a given occasion seems, as far as the agent’s direct control goes, a matter of chance” (O’Connor 2000, p. xiii; cf. 2005, p. 215); “[Event-causal libertarianism]…fails to secure for the agent the exercise of any further positive powers to causally influence which actions she will perform” (Clarke 2003, p. 96; emphasis mine).
The qualification ‘appropriate manner’ is required to rule out cases of causal deviance. One respect in which the account I offer is only a schema is that I leave the content of this all-important clause unspecified. See Bishop (1989) for one of the most careful and detailed attempts to explain what exactly “appropriate manner” amounts to.
In recent years there has been a bit of disagreement concerning what the causal theory of action is a theory of. Velleman (2000b, pp. 7–10, 2000c) criticizes the causal theory of action for failing to provide an adequate account of autonomous action. Mele (2004, p. 249) however objects, asserting that the theory is only intended as a theory of intentional action. I believe Mele is mistaken about the aims of all advocates of the causal theory of action. For example, Bishop (1989), who offers one of the best contemporary discussions and defenses of the causal theory of action, does indeed offer it as a theory of autonomous action. My discussion will assume, however, that the causal theory of action is only intended as an analysis of intentional action, though none of these complications affect my overall argument.
Most libertarians allow for the possibility of free but determined actions so long as these actions are suitably connected to earlier free actions that are undetermined. In this way libertarians draw a distinction between directly free and indirectly free actions. For ease of exposition, I will focus on directly free actions.
To be clear, the event-casual libertarian account I am developing does not envision a single set of reasons having two possible outcomes (cf. Levy (2011, p. 45) who seems to saddle libertarians with this commitment). For example, it is not the case that the thief’s reasons for stealing might cause his choice to steal or might cause his choice to refrain. Rather, on this account, given the presence of indeterminism, different desires and beliefs might be causally efficacious. If the thief decides to refrain from stealing, then his reasons that favor this choice will be causally efficacious. Alternatively, if the thief decides to steal, then other reasons—namely those favoring stealing—will be causally efficacious. I am grateful to Neal Tognazzini for helping me see the need to make this point explicit.
I actually think Clarke’s criticism of Ekstrom and Kane misses the mark. While Clarke is correct that aspects of Ekstrom and Kane’s theories do not add anything of central importance, he is mistaken in thinking that everything they add amounts to mere bells and whistles. For example, Ekstrom is keenly aware of the problems I raise below for standard event-causal libertarianism. A central difference between Ekstrom’s theory and the account I defend concerns the states that we posit as playing the functional role of the agent. She claims that the agent’s role is played by authorized preferences (desires that have emerged through a distinctive evaluative process). I suggest, a la Velleman, that it is played by the desire to act in accordance with reasons.
Kane seems to have anticipated something like the disappearing agent argument rather early on (see Kane 1996, pp. 139–142). It seems plausible to interpret Kane’s “self-network” as an attempt to avoid worries raised by the disappearing agent argument. Kane, however, mistakenly focused too narrowly on how such a network would be realized in the brain, neglecting the prior question of how this self-network can play the role of the self-determining agent. There are two questions here: first, which features of the agent constitute his exercising the power of self-determination. This question should be answered in folk-psychological terms, such as I try to do in the manner I attempt below. A second question concerns how this power, as characterized in folk-psychological terms, supervenes on, or perhaps even is reducible to, states and events involving the brain. Kane seems to be fundamentally concerned with the second rather than the first question. A second potential difference between my account and Kane’s is that he may be trying not just to reduce the role of the agent in self-determination, but the agent himself (see O’Connor (2000, p. 40) for such an interpretation. However, see Kane (2011) for doubts about the accuracy of O’Connor’s interpretation). My account, however, only aims to offer a reduction of the role of the agent in self-determining action.
Compare Bratman’s description of self-determination: “The image of the agent directing and governing is, in the first instance, an image of the agent herself standing back from her attitudes, and doing the directing and governing” (2007b, pp. 195–196).
The assumptions are:
Supervenience. Mental properties strongly supervene on physical/biological properties. That is, if any system s instantiates a mental property M at t, there necessarily exists a physical property P such that s instantiates P at t, and necessarily anything instantiating P at any time instantiates M at that time. (Kim 2005, p. 33)
Closure. If a physical event has a cause that occurs at t, it has a physical cause that occurs at t. (Kim 2005, p. 43).
This is somewhat infelicitous. Property instantiations (i.e. events), and not properties, are causes. It is not P, but the instantiation of P that causes the effect.
Perhaps the identity reductionist need only show that the mental state is a member of the set of states that the agent is identical to.
I do not mean to suggest that the identity reductionist route is without merit. But given present constraints, we only have space to consider one of these routes in detail.
I am grateful to an anonymous referee for pressing me to make this point more explicit.
See Watson (1975), Stump (1988), Ekstrom (1993), and Korsgaard (2009) who all develop this intuition in rather different directions. Cf. “Insofar as we identify ourselves more closely with our Reason than with our nonreasoned desires, we may regard rational actions as more wholly ours than nonreasoned action would be” (Wolf 1990, p. 52).
The locution ‘but in fact’ is misleading. This might reasonably be interpreted to indicate that the agent does not in fact do certain things, such as calculate the relative strength of his reasons, throw his weight behind certain motives, etc. No reductionist should say this. Even on reductionist accounts agents do all these things, but just not irreducibly. It would be better (or at least more precise) to replace ‘but in fact’ with ‘and what this comes to is.’ The agent does weigh the relative strength of his reasons, and what this comes to is that these calculations are driven by his desire to act in accordance with reasons.
Much of Velleman’s later work is concerned with specifying the precise content of this desire. See especially Velleman (2000d, 2009). According to Velleman, the desire to act for reasons does not motivate us to act for reasons so described, but rather motivates us to act for considerations that allow us to “make sense” of ourselves. Velleman, being a reductionist about reasons, contends that what makes a consideration a reason is that the consideration enables us to make sense of ourselves, and “the relevant notion of ‘making sense’ is not normative” but is “the notion of what can be understood in terms of the character’s attributes and attitudes under the circumstances”, where the “understanding that must be possible, if an action is to make sense coming from the character, is a folk-psychological understanding that traces the action to its causes in the motives, traits, and other dispositions of the character (2009, p. 13). I intend my account of event-causal libertarianism to remain as neutral as possible concerning both the precise content of the desire to act in accordance with reasons and the nature of reasons. So at present, I take no stand on whether reference to reasons in ‘the desire to act in accordance with reasons’ is to be given a de dicto or a de re reading. I also take no stand on the nature of reasons. My account is consistent with externalism (Korsgaard 1986; Scanlon 1998; Dancy 2000) and internalism (Williams 1980) about reasons, and it is consistent with reductionism (Velleman 2009) and non-reductionism (Scanlon 1998; Dancy 2000) about reasons. I remain neutral on these important topics since they need not be settled prior to libertarians’ showing that the disappearing agent argument fails. Clearly a complete event-causal libertarianism of this stripe would require settling these issues. But our aim is to see how supplementing traditional event-causal libertarianism with a functional reduction of the power of self-determination enables them to dismantle the disappearing agent argument.
I will, for the most part, drop this qualification from now on.
As mentioned in footnote 18, I remain neutral both concerning the nature of reasons and whether the content of this desire is to be given a de dicto or de re reading. I should also note that my presentation of Velleman differs somewhat from his own. Where Velleman writes of ‘an agent’ I write of ‘a self-determining agent’. This is merely a verbal difference. By ‘an agent’ Velleman means ‘a self-determining agent’. Throughout his article Velleman uses ‘action’ and ‘agency’ to mean ‘action par excellence’ and ‘full blooded [i.e. self-determining] agency’ (cf. Velleman 2000c, p. 124).
Those less attracted to this rationalist picture may reject the Aristotle/Velleman claim that we are identified with reason and look to conative elements, such as our cares (Frankfurt 1999; Shoemaker 2003a; Jaworska 2007) or intentions (Bratman 2007a) to play the functional role of the self-determining agent.
I am grateful to an anonymous referee for raising this worry.
But again, event-causal libertarians are welcome to substitute their favored state for playing this role.
I assume that it cannot occur after he makes the decision.
Thanks to Ben Mitchell-Yellin for raising this response.
However, see Ekstrom (2000, p. 135, n. 48) who seems to endorse such a view.
Pereboom himself is sensitive to this (2004, pp. 278–279), suggesting that he does not take the mere presence of indeterminism to be the challenge posed by the disappearing agent argument.
It is unclear to me whether Griffith envisages the view under discussion as drawing a distinction between decisions and choices, or whether she simply uses these different terms to make clear that she thinks this view posits an earlier moment of action to the decision about what to do, namely the decision about what the best reasons are. Nothing I say depends on how we settle this interpretive issue.
I put aside the possibility of uncaused choices. One might think this is a false dilemma, for in addition to nondeterministic and deterministic causation, there is agent-causation. But this is a mistake. The contrast I am drawing between nondeterministic and deterministic causation simply concerns whether the effect must have occurred given the presence of the cause and laws of nature. If the effect must have occurred given the presence of the cause and laws of nature, then the cause deterministically caused the effect. If not, then the cause nondeterministically caused the effect. Agent-causation is not a distinct, third option here.
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Acknowledgments
An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the 2012 American Philosophical Association, Central Division Meeting. The author is grateful to the audience for their helpful feedback, especially Justin Capes and Molly Gardner. The author is also grateful to Mark Balaguer, John Fischer, Bob Kane, Ben Mitchell-Yellin, Derk Pereboom, Neal Tognazzini and an anonymous referee of this journal for their instructive conversations and comments.
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Franklin, C.E. Event-causal libertarianism, functional reduction, and the disappearing agent argument. Philos Stud 170, 413–432 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-013-0237-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-013-0237-0