Agent Causation and Dualism

Agent Causation & Dualism

The discussion of free will and its compatibility with determinism comes down to one’s conception of actions. Most philosophers and physicists would agree that events have specific causes, especially events in nature. The question becomes more controversial when philosophers discuss the interaction between human beings, or agents, and the world. If one holds the belief that all actions and events are caused by prior events, it would seem as though he would be accepting determinism. For if an event has a particular cause, the event which follows must be predetermined, even if this cause relates to a decision by a human being. Agent causation becomes important for many philosophers who, like me, refuse to accept the absence of free will in the universe.

If we are to say that an event is not caused by another event but by something else, we are left to decipher what the cause could be. This cause, given free will, could only come from the agent himself. “If there is an event that is caused, not by other events, but by the man, then there are some events involved in the act that are not caused by other events” (Chisholm 28). I would agree with Chisholm’s assessment here, and would add that this is not only a material conditional, but is, in fact, true. There is something special about an agent, a particular property which he possesses, that allows him to cause certain events deliberately without the influence of a prior event. His decision-making processes, the neuron firings in his brain, and his own deliberative power serve as the cause for numerous actions which cannot be attributed to other events.

Derk Pereboom, a proponent of hard determinism, argues against the possibility of agent causati...

... middle of paper ...

...mergent property of which is liquidity, neurons in the brain come together to form the brain, an emergent property of which is deliberative processes. The difference between water and the brain, however, is that the brain has downward causal powers, i.e. the ability to affect other parts of the body by making decisions and choices, and by causing events. In this sense, accepting that agent-caused actions are not inconsistent with basic physical laws does not require that we accept dualism. The emergent physical properties within the brain are deliberative processes which cause events through an agent. Without accepting dualism, we have agent causation as a consistent aspect of physical law.

Works Cited

Nous Volume 29:1 by Pereboom, Derk. Copyright 1995 by Blackwell Pubs (J).

Free Will by Chisolm, Roderick. Copyright 1982 by Oxford University Press (UK).