# The cause of a person's actions



## cih1355 (Mar 1, 2008)

Those who advocate libertarian freewill say that if a person's desires cause him to perform certain actions, then he is not the cause of his own actions. People are self-caused; Their desires do not cause them to perform certain actions. There is a distinction between desires and persons. If my desire to kick a football causes me to kick a football, then I am not the cause of that action. My desire was the cause of that action. How would you respond to this? This is something I have heard, but I'm not sure how to respond to it.


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## Presbyterian Deacon (Mar 1, 2008)

Jonathan Edwards in his masterfull work The Freedom of the Will  answered this question very simply with one sentence. 

He explains it thusly,

"There is no high degree of refinement and abstruse speculation, in determining, that a thing is not before it is, and so cannot be the cause of itself; or that the first act of free choice, has not another act of free choice going before that, to excite or direct it; or in determining, that no choice is made, while the mind remains in a state of absolute indifference; that preference and equilibrium never coexist; and that therefore no choice is made in a state of liberty, consisting in indifference: and so far as the will is determined by motives, exhibiting and operating previous to the act of the will, so far it is not determined by the act of the will itself; that nothing can begin to be, which was not, without a cause, or some antecedent ground of reason, why it then begins to be; that effects depend on their causes, and are connected with them; that virtue is not the worse, nor sin the better, for the strength of inclination with which it is practised, and the difficulty which thence arises of doing otherwise; that when it is already infallibly known that the thing will be, it is not contingent whether it will ever be or no; or that it can be truly said, notwithstanding, that it is not necessary it should be, but it either may be, or may not be. And the like might be observed of many other things which belong to the foregoing reasoning."

That was his answer, and as soon as I figure out what he said, I'll explain it to you.


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## Jim Johnston (Mar 2, 2008)

Hi Curt,



cih1355 said:


> Those who advocate libertarian freewill say that if a person's desires cause him to perform certain actions, then he is not the cause of his own actions. People are self-caused; Their desires do not cause them to perform certain actions. There is a distinction between desires and persons. If my desire to kick a football causes me to kick a football, then I am not the cause of that action. My desire was the cause of that action. How would you respond to this? This is something I have heard, but I'm not sure how to respond to it.



You can directly argue against their agent-causation position. The whole 'my desires cause my actions,' while partly the true, is nevertheless not the whole story and is also a simplistic, underveloped way to construe things. (I list some books below, see Fischer's explication in 'Four Views' for a more robust and sophisticated way to express simi-compatibilism. Also see his _Metaphysics of Free Will_ for a more detailed account.)

This is relevant:



> I want to close by explaining why van Inwagen thinks one important group of incompatibilists, those who appeal to what is called agent-causation, do not appreciate the depth and difficulty of the problem of free will. Many philosophers would agree with this judgment for the simple reason that they think that the concept of agent-causation is incoherent, or think that agent-causation is metaphysically impossible. Van Inwagen is inclined to agree with them (although he has no firm opinion on this question), but he has lately stressed a different point. It is this: suppose there is nothing conceptually or metaphysically impossible about agent-causation; suppose in fact that agent-causation is a real phenomenon and that an episode of agent-causation figures among the antecedents of every voluntary movement of a human hand or limb or vocal apparatus. Van Inwagen’s position is that even if this is so, and even if (as some have argued) we understand the concept of agent-causation at least as well as we understand the concept of event-causation, all this does nothing to diminish the mystery of free will. I will try to explain why van Inwagen thinks this by considering a particular human action. Suppose Marie wants to vote in favor of the proposal before the meeting, and that, for this reason, she raises her right hand when the chair says, “All in favor. . .?” Suppose that one of the causal antecedents of her hand’s rising was a certain event in her brain that was undetermined by past events, that the state of her body and her immediate environment at the moment this brain-event occurred was causally sufficient for her hand’s rising, that if this event had not occurred, her hand would not have risen, and that she, Marie, a particular member of the metaphysical category “substance” or “continuant,” was the cause—that is to say, the agent-cause—of that crucial brain-event. The friends of agent-causation, if van Inwagen understands them, believe that these suppositions are sufficient for her having freely raised her hand. If that is so, these suppositions must entail the following proposition: at some moment shortly before Marie raised her hand, she was able to raise her hand and she was able not to raise her hand. But van Inwagen doesn’t see why this entailment should be supposed to hold. In fact, he thinks he sees a good argument for the conclusion that it was not up to her whether her hand rose. Suppose God were miraculously to return the world to precisely the state it was in, say, one minute before Marie raised her hand, and that he then allowed affairs once more to proceed, without any further miracles. What would happen? What would Marie do? Well, if her raising her hand was a free act, and if free will is incompatible with determinism, then we can’t say. We can say only that she might have raised her hand and might not have raised her hand. If God were to cause this episode to be thus “replayed” a very large number of times, it might turn out that she raised her hand in thirty percent of the replays and refrained from raising it in seventy percent of the replays. This much is a simple consequence of incompatibilism, and it brings one of the main reason philosophers become compatibilists into stark relief. It seems to lead us inescapably to the conclusion that on each particular replay, what Marie does on that occasion is a mere matter of chance. And if there are no replays, if there is only one occasion on which Marie is in this situation, it seems to lead us just as inescapably to the conclusion that on that one occasion what Marie does is a mere matter of chance. And if it is a mere matter of chance whether Marie raised her hand, then it cannot have been true beforehand that Marie was both able to raise her hand and able to refrain from raising her hand, for to have both these abilities would be to be able to determine the outcome of a process whose outcome is due to chance. It is true that we have, by stipulation, inserted into this process, this process whose outcome is due to chance, an episode of agent-causation. But, if I may so express myself, so what? That doesn’t change the fact that the outcome of that process was due to chance. If God caused Marie’s decision to be replayed a very large number of times, sometimes (in thirty percent of the replays, let us say) Marie would have agent-caused the crucial brain event and sometimes (in seventy percent of the replays, let us say) she would not have. Surely, then, whether she agent-caused the brain-event was a mere matter of chance? Whether her deliberations were followed by her agent-causing the brain event was, it would seem, a matter of chance; Marie, therefore, cannot have been both able to agent-cause the brain-event and able to refrain from agent-causing the brain-event, for to have both these abilities would be to be able to determine the outcome of a process whose outcome was due to chance—an impossible ability. I conclude that even if an episode of agent-causation is among the causal antecedents of every voluntary human action, these episodes do nothing to undermine the prima facie impossibility of an undetermined free act. Postulating agent-causation, therefore, does nothing to diminish the mystery of free will. Van Inwagen’s conclusion is that incompatibilists had better abandon the concept of agent-causation, and seek a resolution of the mystery of free will elsewhere—if, indeed, there is an “elsewhere.”"
> 
> dfwvanInwagen2



And,




> Kane's requirement that the causation of a choice that is an SFW [pm: self-forming wills] be nondeterministic has drawn the objection that indeterminism located here would diminish the agent's control over the making of the choice. The objection is often couched in terms of luck. (It is so developed by Almeida and Bernstein [2003], Ekstrom [2000: 105], Haji [1999a, 1999b, 2000a, 2000b, 2000c, and 2001], Mele [1998, 1999a, 1999b, and forthcoming], and Strawson [1994].) If the agent's effort of will nondeterministically causes her choice, then, whichever choice the agent makes, there was, until the occurrence of that choice, a chance that it would not occur. If the agent's effort to chose in accord with her moral judgment happens to succeed, the objection goes, then her choice is at least partly due to good luck. In another possible world with exactly the same laws of nature and exactly the same history up until the occurrence of the choice, the agent's (or her counterpart's) effort fails; there, but for good luck, goes she. And analogously, if, in the actual world, the agent's effort fails, then her choice is at least partly due to bad luck. Either way, the choice is to some degree due to luck. And to that degree, the objection concludes, the control that the agent exercises in making the choice is diminished.
> 
> Kane's claim that indeterminacy precludes exact sameness has been contested (see Clarke [1999 and 2003b: 86-87] and O'Connor [1996]). And Haji (1999a) and Mele (1999a and 1999b) contend that the argument from luck is just as effective if we consider an agent and her counterpart who are as similar as can be, given the indeterminacy of their efforts. Indeed, the argument might be advanced without any appeal to other worlds or counterparts: given that there is a chance that the effort will fail, the agent is lucky, it may be said, if it succeeds.
> 
> ...




Basically, control of action is required for moral responsibility and free will. If the action is due to luck, i.e., nothing determines wether an agent will A or B, and if he A'ed then he is worthy of prase but if he had B'ed he'd be worthy of blame, then it seems the control required for freedom and moral responsibility is only to be found in determinism and a compatibilism.




> His philosophical task, then, is to show that a choice may be free, in the sense that it is something for which its agent is morally responsible, even though it was not guaranteed by antecedent mental processes. He must explain how the taking of a decision can be free while not the necessary outcome of the reasoning from which it issues. One might think, however, that I am responsible for choosing, e.g., to support a certain cause only if that mental act is secured by the exercise of my reasoning ability. Moreover, having weighed the cause’s pros and cons as I did, unless I was rationally bound to decide in its favor the outcome of this reasoning process seems inexplicable and, thus, not something for which I should be held accountable: praised or blamed. My decision must be rational if praiseworthy or blameworthy, but (unless I am in a situation like that of Buridan’s ass) how could it be rational if the reasons motivating it are consistent with the opposite choice? A mechanism that could take a set of reasons as the basis for more than one course of action appears erratic. Its exercise, thus, would fail to insure a rational result redounding to my credit or discredit.3 Kane, therefore, faces a dilemma: either some actions are undetermined, in which cases the control and rationality requirements of free agency are not satisfied, or a free agent’s conduct is always determined and explicable in terms of reasons that render irrational all but one course of action, in which case the alternative rational possibilities requirement of libertarian free agency can not be met.4 Alternatively, Kane must respond to the following chain argument:
> 
> 1. If an act is free, then its agent has control over its performance
> 
> ...




Also, you may want to look into [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Free-Will-Luck-Alfred-Mele/dp/0195305043/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204520250&sr=8-1"]this book[/ame] by Mele.

As well as the relevant articles in [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Responsibility-Alternative-Possibilities-Importance/dp/0754656985/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204520322&sr=1-1"]this book[/ame] by Fischer et al.

Fischer also discusses agent-causation for his part in the [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Four-Views-Great-Debates-Philosophy/dp/1405134860/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204524860&sr=8-1"]_Four Views on Free Will_[/ame] book.

I've also been referred (by a guy who did his Ph.D. dissertation on the metaphysica of free will at UC Santa Barbara) [ame="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/019927228X/ref=pd_cp_b_0?pf_rd_p=317711001&pf_rd_s=center-41&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0199272271&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1YHYTH2GTHQ5XC9V5S53"]this book[/ame] as a good, but technical, approach to agent-causation. I haven't read it myself, though.

Hope that helps.


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## Pergamum (Mar 3, 2008)

Persons are entities that possess desires, desires do not possess them. It is a person that desires something, not desires in the abstract that desires something. Therefore, to say that a desire exists to do something, what is meant is that a persons desires to do something. Therefore a person causes his own actions, according to his own desires, according to his own will, which is bound in sin.


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