Timothy O'Connor, Persons amp; Causes: The Metaphysics of Free Will. Oxford amp; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. Xv and 135. $35.00 (original) (raw)

Free Will, Determinism, and Moral Responsibility: An Analysis of Event-Causal Incompatibilism

Free Will, Determinism, and Moral Responsibility: An Analysis of Event-Causal Incompatibilism, 2017

In this project, I will analyze, summarize, and critique the incompatibilist theory known as source incompatibilism, which argues that a moral agent is morally responsible for an action only if they are the proper source of that action. More specifically, I will analyze the source incompatibilist views of event-causal incompatibilism, which argues that an agent has free will only if there exists indeterminacy in her decision-making process, either before the formation of a decision itself of during the formation of a decision. I will argue that event-causal incompatibilist views suffer from problems of control and moral chanciness. Thus I will argue that event-causal incompatibilism is no more philosophically tenable than its compatibilist counterparts. If this is true, the event-causal incompatibilist ought to abandon it due to considerations of parsimony. After I have successfully refuted event-causal incompatibilism, I will introduce a novel theory of moral responsibility compatibilism of my own, which I will argue is the only tenable philosophical theory left for the proponent of event-causal incompatibilism. I will attempt to reconcile moral responsibility with causal determinism, utilizing an argument from the philosophy of David Enoch in his book Taking Morality Seriously. When this is complete, I will defend my compatibilist theory from various objections by philosophers Saul Smilansky and Ishtiyaque Haji. I will end the discussion with a brief introduction to other non-libertarian views of moral responsibility and determinism, which do not require libertarian notions of free will and thus do not require indeterminacy for freedom. These include Saul Smilansky’s illusionism and Derk Pereboom’s hard incompatibilism. I will analyze these views, but ultimately I will critique them. I will argue that these theories also are lacking, and so they are not viable alternatives to the proponent of moral responsibility.

Free Will, Agent-Causation, and Compatibilism2

2024

In this paper, I argue that the solution to the free will problem is that we have free will and determinism is true. Compatibilism has always been viewed as a weak version of free will, therefore I argue for a stronger version which I call Compatibilism2. Those who insist it is impossible for humans to have free will when determinism is true are mistaken about what goes on when we exercise our free will, and those who argue that our free will depends on indeterminism are trying in vain to prove the impossible. I hope to show that Compatibilism2 is not only a better solution to the free will problem than Libertarianism, but that it is what the Libertarians are really striving for anyway.

‘On the Inevitability of Freedom from the Compatibilist Point of View’

This paper argues that ability to do otherwise (in the compatibilist sense) at the moment of initiation of action is a necessary condition of being able to act at all. If the argument is correct, it shows that Harry Frankfurt never provided a genuine counterexample to the 'principle of alternate possibilities' (PAP) in his 1969 paper ‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility’. The paper (my first philosophy publication) was written without knowledge of Frankfurt's paper.

Agent Causation as the Solution to All the Compatibilist's Problems

In a recent paper I argued that agent causation theorists should be compatibilists. In this paper, I argue that compatibilists should be agent causation theorists. I consider six of the main problems facing compatibilism: (i) the powerful intuition that one can‟t be responsible for actions that were somehow determined before one was born; (ii) Peter van Inwagen‟s modal argument, involving the inference rule Beta; (iii) the objection to compatibilism that is based on claiming that the ability to do otherwise is a necessary condition for freedom; (iv) “manipulation arguments,” involving cases in which an agent is manipulated by some powerful being into doing something that he or she would not normally do, but in such a way that the compatibilist‟s favorite conditions for a free action are satisfied; (v) the problem of constitutive luck; and (vi) the claim that it is not fair to blame someone for an action if that person was determined by forces outside of his or her control to perform that action. And in the case of each of these problems, I argue that the compatibilist has a much more plausible response to that problem if she endorses the theory of agent causation than she does otherwise. Keywords: agent causation, compatibilism, freedom and determinism.

O'Connor, Timothy. Persons and Causes: The Metaphysics of Free Will

Review of Metaphysics, 2003

excellent book contributes to the debate about freedom in analytic philosophy. While O'Connor does not make matters easy for the reader, often sacrificing clarity for conciseness, he presents an ingenious defense of agent causation. On O'Connor's model, free actions are caused by intentions, which are themselves produced not by other states or events but instead by the agent herself. The agent stands at the beginning of this causal chain in the sense that she is not caused to cause her intentions.

Flanagan and Cartesian free will: a defense of agent causation

Disputatio

In a recent book, The Problem of the Soul, Owen Flanagan discusses the Cartesian, or agent causation, view of free will. According to this view, when a person acts of his own free will his action is not caused by antecedent events but is caused by the agent himself, and in acting the agent acts as an uncaused cause. Flanagan argues at length that this view is false. In this article, I defend the agent causation view against Flanagan’s criticisms and I go on to critically address his own ‘neo-compatibilist’ alternative to the agent causation view. In doing so, I hope to exhibit some common misconceptions about the nature of the agent causation view and to show that this is a view that deserves more serious consideration.