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Freedom and determinism 69

latest example. The reason for this is that, according to Pure Chance, you

are not responsible for your undetermined volition to throw the ice cream;

and given that you are not responsible for that volition, it follows from The

Transfer Principle for Non-responsibility that you are also not responsible

for the resulting action.

3.9 Libertarian Agent Causation

Views that combine Incompatibilism with the claim that we (sometimes)

do in fact act freely are often referred to in the literature on freedom

and determinism as libertarian views. (But this kind of “libertarian-

ism” should not be confused with the political variety.) one kind of lib-

ertarian view is represented by Simple Indeterminism and Volitional

Indeterminism. The view that we will call Libertarian Agent Causation, and

which is the main topic of this section, represents an alternative type of

libertarian view.

First, a word about the motivation for this new type of libertarian

view. once we focus on Pure Chance and The Transfer Principle for Non-

responsibility, we can see that there is going to be a challenge for any

libertarian view of responsibility. For it appears that, wherever you put

the indeterminism that is required for freedom on a libertarian view,

you will have the same problem that arises in our second ice-cream

case, on account of the combination of Pure Chance and The Transfer

Principle for Non-responsibility. Thus we have what might be called The

Libertarian’s Dilemma: the problem of trying to ﬁnd a way to accommodate

the Incompatibilist intuition (according to which we cannot be free if

our actions are determined by conditions outside of us) while at the same

time avoiding the element of luck and concomitant lack of responsibility

that seem to come with positing some indeterminism in the history of an

action. In response to this problem, some philosophers have resorted to

views that appeal to the notion of “agent causation.”

Here is the basic idea behind libertarian Agent Causation. In many

philosophical discussions of the concept of causation, it is presupposed

that the causal relata (the things that get caused and the things that do the

causing) are always events.

This tradition is sufﬁciently well established

or states of affairs. In this chapter, as in Chapter 2, we will (somewhat misleadingly,

but for the sake of simplicity) write as if the view that the causal relata are events

An Introduction to Metaphysics70

that it’s fair to say that any departure from it counts as a radical way of

thinking.

Nevertheless, ever since Aristotle there have been some phil-

osophers who are willing to be radical in this way. According to such phi-

losophers, events may be the only things that can be caused, but they are

not the only things that can be causes. For agents, too, according to this line

of thought, can also be causes. The idea is that when you move your hand,

for example, an event in your brain sends a signal to your muscles telling

them to move in the relevant way; and this brain event is not caused by

any other events; but the brain event nevertheless is caused; for it is caused

by something that is not an event – namely, you. Because the relevant

brain event is not caused by any other events, proponents of this view feel

that they are safe from the traditional Incompatibilist arguments against

freedom. And because the brain event in question is caused by you, propo-

nents of the view feel that they have an easy answer to the question of why

you should be responsible for the action that ensues.

There are two important presuppositions of libertarian Agent

Causation. First, the view presupposes that some events are like the brain

event described in the previous paragraph: they occur in the brains of

human agents; they are not caused by any previous events (and, hence,

they are not made physically necessary by previous events); and they result

in actions performed by the agents in whom they occur. (Note that this

ﬁrst presupposition is one that libertarian Agent Causation shares with

the previous libertarian view we considered, Volitional Indeterminism.)

The second important presupposition of libertarian Agent Causation is

that agents are in a special category among things, insofar as they have

genuine causal powers.

In particular, the view presupposes that it is

and the view that the causal relata are states of affairs amount to the same thing. For

more on the question of what are the causal relata, see Chapter 2.

Not that we don’t have ways of talking that make it appear as if things other than

events can be causes and effects. (“The rock caused the window to break.” “Sarah

caused a commotion.” “The hurricane caused this mess.”) According to the trad-

itional way of thinking about causation, however, all such talk, when properly ana-

lyzed, turns out to be talk about causation between events. (“The rock hitting the

window caused the window to break.” “Sarah’s entrance caused a commotion.” “The

hurricane caused all of these things to come to be arranged in this messy way.”)

Here is the sense in which the causal powers of agents are said to be genuine. A rock

can “cause” a window to break by being caught up in an event – the throwing of

the rock through the window – that causes the window to break; and an agent can

do that, too. But in such cases, neither the rock nor the agent is really causing the

Freedom and determinism 71

possible for an agent to cause an event that is not caused by any other

events. Here is an example from Aristotle (by way of roderick Chisholm)

to illustrate the assumption behind the view.

Suppose a man is hold-

ing a wooden staff, which he uses to move a stone on the ground. Then,

according to the proponent of libertarian Agent Causation, the situation

can be illustrated by the diagram below, in which the arrows represent

causation.

agent

↓

brain event → muscles contract → hand moves → staff moves → stone moves

In the example, we are to suppose, the brain event is not made physically

necessary (and moreover is not caused) by any previous events. (This fea-

ture of the case is represented in the diagram by the fact that there is no

arrow going from any other event to the brain event.) But the brain event

is nevertheless caused; for it is caused by the agent (as indicated by the

arrow pointing from the agent to the brain event). The situation is often

characterized by proponents of the idea of agent causation as one in which

the agent initiates a causal chain. Sometimes the agent is said to be a

“prime mover unmoved,” meaning one who causes without being caused

to do so.

Here, then, are a deﬁnition and an ofﬁcial statement of the view.

Action A is externally caused =df A is caused by some event(s) outside of A’s

agent.

Libertarian Agent Causation

(i) There are some actions that are not externally caused but that are

caused by their agents. (ii) An action is free if and only if (a) it is not

externally caused and (b) it is caused by its own agent. (iii) Agents are in

general morally responsible for their actions when those actions are (a)

not externally caused and (b) caused by their agents.

window to break (for it is the relevant event that is doing the causing). Meanwhile,

an agent can also do something that a rock cannot do, and that is to be a real cause

of the breaking of a window (as, for example, when the agent throws him or herself

through the window).

See Aristotle, Physics, Book II, chapter 4; and Chisholm, “Human Freedom and the

Self.”

See, for example, Aristotle, Physics, Book II, chapter 4; and Chisholm, “Human

Freedom and the Self.”

An Introduction to Metaphysics72

In the example captured by the above diagram, the movement of the agent’s

hand satisﬁes both conditions for freedom in tenet (ii) of libertarian Agent

Causation. For it is not externally caused, despite the fact that it is caused

by some other events (namely, the relevant brain event and the sending of

the signal from the brain to the muscles). In other words, there is no event

outside of the agent that causes the movement of the hand. And the move-

ment of the hand is caused, indirectly, by its agent, since the agent causes

the brain event, which causes the movement of the hand.

Note that the view gets the intuitive result in this case: the agent is

acting freely and is morally responsible. More generally, note that if we

grant the two presuppositions of libertarian Agent Causation – (i) that

there are action-causing events in human brains that are not themselves

caused by any other events, and (ii) that these non-event-caused but action-

causing events are caused by the relevant agents – then libertarian Agent

Causation is no doubt a very attractive theory. If there really were an event

in your brain, for example, that was not caused by any other events, that

was somehow directly caused by you, and that caused you to act in a cer-

tain way, then it would certainly be plausible to say that you were acting

freely and were morally responsible for your action.

But those are all big ifs, which raise important questions about the

theory, beginning with the questions raised by the ﬁrst presupposition

of the view. Not surprisingly, then, the ﬁrst objection that is likely to be

raised against libertarian Agent Causation is that it is based on false pre-

suppositions. Whether there are any events in human brains that are not

caused by other events and, if so, whether such brain events are them-

selves the causes of actions by their agents are empirical questions that we

will not attempt to answer. Instead, we will merely note for the record that

one possible line of objection to libertarian Agent Causation would be to

attack the empirical presuppositions behind the theory.

A second objection that has been raised against libertarian Agent

Causation is what we will call The Mystery objection. even if it turns

out that the answers to the relevant empirical questions are favorable to

libertarian Agent Causation, there is still a further, more purely meta-

physical, and potentially more difﬁcult problem facing the view: many

people think that the whole idea of agent causation is incoherent. That

is, many people believe, on philosophical grounds, that it does not make

sense to say that an agent can be the cause of an event. one way to put the

Freedom and determinism 73

objection is in the form of a question: we know what it means to say that

one event causes another event, but what could it possibly mean to say that

an agent causes an event?

It turns out that at least some proponents of libertarian Agent Causation

think that they have an excellent answer to this question, which goes

roughly as follows. It’s true that the idea of agent causation is a little bit

mysterious, and also that we are unable to give a satisfactory analysis of

the notion of agent causation. But that is because the idea of causation in

general, including the idea of event causation, is something of a mystery.

As we noted in Chapter 2, ﬁnding the correct analysis of the concept of

causation is currently an unsolved problem in philosophy. So our inability

to give a satisfactory analysis of agent causation is not a difﬁculty pecu-

liar to libertarian Agent Causation. It is, instead, a more general problem

facing everyone who believes in causation in general (and that includes

virtually everyone).

In fact, some proponents of this reply to the objection think that they

also have an even stronger reply available. It goes like this. It is not merely

that our concept of agent causation is no more mysterious than our concept

of event causation. It is actually less mysterious. For the concept of agent

causation is the basis for our idea of causation in general. Here’s why. Very

young infants have no fancy concepts like the idea of causation. But early

on (we can suppose) they do notice with some interest that there are these

little hand-shaped things that sometimes wave around in their ﬁeld of

vision. And a little bit later they notice with even greater interest that they

themselves are able to control the movements of these hands. That is, they

notice that they are able to make them move this way or that way. And so

they come to have the idea that they can cause certain things to happen.

In other words, they come to have the idea of agent causation.

later on, they observe patterns in the events outside of their crib. For

example, they notice that when one rolling ball hits another ball, the sec-

ond ball rolls away. And they then apply the idea of causation that they

themselves got from observing to the events involving the balls. And in

this way they come to have the idea of event causation. Thus (according

This response to The Mystery objection (or something very close to it) is offered by

Thomas reid and roderick Chisholm. See reid, Essays on the Active Powers of Man, essay

IV, chapter 4; and Chisholm, “Human Freedom and the Self.”

An Introduction to Metaphysics74

to the proponent of libertarian Agent Causation who takes this line) we

actually have a ﬁrmer grasp on the notion of agent causation than we do

on the notion of event causation, and this is precisely because we, being

agents and not events, experience the phenomenon of agent causation

ﬁrsthand.

There is a third likely objection to libertarian Agent Causation. Suppose

we grant the empirical presuppositions of libertarian Agent Causation,

and suppose we also grant that there is no problem in principle with the

notion of an event being caused by an agent. Then there is still an import-

ant objection that can be raised against libertarian Agent Causation: it is

not that the idea of agent causation is incoherent, but, rather, that there

simply is no such thing as agent causation. This objection may or may not

be combined with a speciﬁc analysis of the general concept of causation. If

it is so combined, the claim would be both that that analysis of causation

is the correct one, and also that it follows from that analysis that there

is no causation by agents. But either way, the objection is based on the

assertion that there simply is no such thing as agent causation, together

with some justiﬁcation for this assertion. Many philosophers will no doubt

want to offer as the requisite justiﬁcation an argument that appeals to

some principle of theoretical parsimony. event causation (according to this

argument) is sufﬁcient to do all the causal work that is needed in our

theorizing about the natural world; so there is simply no need to posit the

existence of any further kind of causation.

For most of its career, the critics of libertarian Agent Causation have

been content to raise one or several of the above objections to the view.

But recently a new objection has been raised.

Suppose we are perfectly

willing to make the radical supposition that there is such a thing as agent

causation. Now consider what appears to be a paradigm case of a free

action involving agent causation: Yasmine asks Imran to pass her the salt,

and Imran politely does so. If there is such a phenomenon as agent caus-

ation, then this will surely be an example in which the agent – Imran –

causes his own action. (Provided the details of the story are ﬁlled out in

the natural way: no strange wires hooked up to Imran’s brain; no weird

For something like this reply on behalf of libertarian Agent Causation, see (again)

reid, Essays on the Active Powers of Man, essay IV, chapter 4; and Chisholm, “Human

Freedom and the Self.”

See Markosian, “A Compatibilist Version of the Theory of Agent Causation.”

Freedom and determinism 75

forces operating on him; Imran hears Yasmine’s request, considers it for a

moment or two, and then voluntarily decides to comply; and so on.) But it

also seems clear that in this case there is an event outside of the agent –

namely, Yasmine’s asking Imran to pass the salt – that also causes the

relevant action. After all, Imran never would have thought to pass the

salt to Yasmine at that moment if Yasmine had not asked. And, in general,

whatever theory of causation between events one accepts, one is going to

want to say that in this case the request to pass the salt causes the passing

of the salt.

This suggests that there is a problem with the crucial second tenet of

libertarian Agent Causation: (ii) an action is free if and only if (a) it is not

externally caused and (b) it is caused by its own agent. And the problem

is that the ﬁrst condition that libertarian Agent Causation places on an

action being free – that it not be externally caused – is too strict. For we do

not want to say that many ordinary actions that are caused by their agents

and that seem perfectly free (like Imran passing the salt when asked in

our example) are in fact not free.

Notice, by the way, that this will be a general problem for any libertarian

theory according to which an action is free only if it is not caused by any

event outside of its agent. For the libertarian (assuming he or she is not a

Simple Indeterminist) is going to specify some condition – in addition to

being not externally caused – that must be satisﬁed in order for any action

to be free. This condition will be designed to get around the difﬁculty with

Simple Indeterminism. But then, if the extra condition is at all plausible, it

is going to make the requirement that the action not be externally caused

seem like a mistake, because of cases like the “pass the salt” example.

3.10 Compatibilist Agent Causation

In response to this problem, there are various ways that one could relax

that ﬁrst condition placed by libertarian Agent Causation on an action

being free, and we do not have the space here to consider more than the

most extreme example of such a way.

But maybe the most sensible move

For a more thorough discussion of ways to relax the condition that libertarian Agent

Causation places on an action being free, see Markosian, “A Compatibilist Version of

the Theory of Agent Causation.”

An Introduction to Metaphysics76

in response to this issue for someone who believes in agent causation is

to remove the ﬁrst condition (requiring that the action not be externally

caused) altogether, and simply say that any action that is caused by its

agent is free, regardless of whether that action is also caused (or made

physically necessary or whatever) by events outside of that agent.

doing so will result in the following view of freedom and

responsibility:

Compatibilist Agent Causation

(i) There are some agent-caused actions. (ii) An action is free if and only if

it is an agent-caused action. (iii) Agents are in general morally responsible

for their own agent-caused actions.

This view will admittedly be unusual among agent causation theories,

insofar as it is a version of Compatibilism. For according to Compatibilist

Agent Causation, an agent can act freely even in a completely determin-

istic world. (Provided that there can be agent causation in such a world,

that is.) Thus, according to Compatibilist Agent Causation, The Free Will

Principle and determinism could both be true. And so Compatibilist

Agent Causation, unlike other views that posit agent causation, is a wholly

Compatibilist theory. But for precisely that reason, many proponents of

traditional agent causation theories (like libertarian Agent Causation) will

ﬁnd Compatibilist Agent Causation to be unacceptable.

Here is the kind of case that critics of Compatibilist Agent Causation

would take to pose a serious problem for the view. Suppose Martians kid-

nap a man and reconﬁgure his brain to make it physically necessary that

the next day he will cause himself to commit a certain crime (one that he

would not ordinarily have committed), and suppose that the man then

goes on to cause himself to commit the crime in question. According to

Compatibilist Agent Causation, this man is acting freely (and is morally

responsible for his action), since his action is caused by him (in addition to

being caused by the Martians, of course). But many people ﬁnd this result

to be counterintuitive.

Meanwhile, Compatibilist Agent Causation is also subject to the sec-

ond objection to libertarian Agent Causation considered above (that the

For more discussion of this kind of objection to Compatibilist Agent Causation, see

Markosian, “A Compatibilist Version of the Theory of Agent Causation.”

Freedom and determinism 77

idea of agent causation is mysterious), as well as the third objection (that,

mysterious or not, agent causation is simply not a phenomenon that really

occurs).

on the plus side, however, it should be noted that Compatibilist

Agent Causation has several potential advantages over libertarian Agent

Causation. one such advantage is that it is not susceptible to the “pass

the salt” objection discussed above. Compatibilist Agent Causation is

consistent with the intuitive claim that an agent who caused his or her

own action would be acting freely, even if his/her action were also caused

by a polite request from someone else. A second potential advantage of

Compatibilist Agent Causation over its libertarian rival is that it does not

share libertarian Agent Causation’s empirical presupposition that there

are events in human brains that are not caused by other events but that

are themselves the causes of actions by their agents.

3.11 No easy answers

It is tempting to think of The Problem of Freedom and determinism as

beginning with the observation that our acting freely is inconsistent with

the truth of determinism, and ultimately ending either with the discov-

ery that determinism is true (so that we are not free) or else the discov-

ery that determinism is false (so that we are free after all). But if you

take away only one thing from this chapter it should be that this temp-

tation must be resisted. For (as we have tried to show) even if you reject

determinism, it is still hard to give a plausible and satisfying account of

freedom and responsibility. Moreover (as we have also tried to show), the

fundamental issue to be addressed by anyone confronting The Problem

of Freedom and determinism is the debate between Compatibilists and

Incompatibilists. And here it is important to recognize that Compatibilists

and Incompatibilists alike have interesting arguments that must be

answered regardless of whether or not it turns out that determinism is

true.

The good news for students of The Problem of Freedom and determinism

is that you do not have to attempt to settle the question of whether

determinism is true. So you don’t need to rush out and get advanced

degrees in both theoretical and experimental physics. (But feel free.) The

bad news for students of The Problem of Freedom and determinism is that

An Introduction to Metaphysics78

you do need to answer some questions that are more purely philosoph-

ical, and in some ways even harder, than any empirical questions about

the truth of determinism. We have in mind questions such as the follow-

ing. Is freedom compatible with determinism? If the answer is Yes, then

what is wrong with the various arguments for Incompatibilism? Also,

if freedom is compatible with determinism, then what are the correct

accounts of freedom and responsibility? In particular, how is it possible

for an action to be free if it is made physically necessary by conditions

that obtained long before the birth of its agent? And how can an agent be

morally responsible for such an action? If, on the other hand, freedom is

not compatible with determinism, then what is wrong with the various

arguments for Compatibilism? Also, given that freedom is not compatible

with determinism, what are the correct accounts of freedom and respon-

sibility? In particular, how is it possible for an agent to be morally respon-

sible for an action that is the result of some indeterministic event? or is it

instead that freedom is incompatible with determinism and also true that

we are never free (and hence never morally responsible)? Finally, if the lat-

ter is the case, then what are we to make of our everyday talk about agents

(sometimes) acting freely and being morally responsible for their actions?