Imagine Ludwig has a cup of tea for breakfast. He\ud
pours it; he eats his egg until it seems to him that the tea\ud
should have the right temperature; he moves his hand to\ud
the cup, puts his fingers at the handle, and then, careful\ud
not to spill anything, he does something with his arm;\ud
namely, he raises it, and if all goes well he then drinks the\ud
tea without burning his lips.\ud
The rising of Ludwig"s arm surely has a cause. But\ud
what is the cause? Defenders of agent causation, such as\ud
Thomas Reid (1788), Richard Taylor (1966), Roderick\ud
Chisholm (1976a), and many more recent authors (see\ud
Swinburne 1997, ch. 5; Thorp 1980; Meixner 1999; Clarke\ud
1996; O'Connor 2000) have argued that the rising of\ud
Ludwig"s arm is caused by Ludwig himself. Some events\ud
are caused, not by other events, but by concrete things, by\ud
substances, more specifically by intentional agents

Kanzian, C.

Quitterer, J.

Runggaldier, E.

Wachter, Daniel von

English

von Wachter, Daniel

Name not available

  276 Agent Causation:  Before and After the Ontological Turn  Daniel von Wachter, Oxford   1. Section: Persons as Agents Imagine Ludwig has a cup of tea for breakfast. He pours it; he eats his egg until it seems to him that the tea should have the right temperature; he moves his hand to the cup, puts his fingers at the handle, and then, careful not to spill anything, he does something with his arm; namely, he raises it, and if all goes well he then drinks the tea without burning his lips.  The rising of Ludwig’s arm surely has a cause. But what is the cause? Defenders of agent causation, such as Thomas Reid (1788), Richard Taylor (1966), Roderick Chisholm (1976a), and many more recent authors (see Swinburne 1997, ch. 5; Thorp 1980; Meixner 1999; Clarke 1996; O'Connor 2000) have argued that the rising of Ludwig’s arm is caused by Ludwig himself. Some events are caused, not by other events, but by concrete things, by substances, more specifically by intentional agents.  Agent causation is usually advocated by believers in libertarian free will. One might think that it is postulated in order to allow for agents originating causal processes. The opponents of agents causation believe that it is metaphysically extravagant to postulate agent causation as another kind of causation besides event causation, and that it is impossible that agents originate causal processes (Honderich 1993, ch. 3). However, I shall argue that the usual theory of agent causation, as Chisholm has campaigned for it, does justice neither to free action nor to non-free action. I shall then sketch an alternative account of causation in free actions, which many will find even more extravagant than Chisholm’s.   2. The Chisholmian theory of agent causation Chisholm holds that actions involve what he calls ‘undertakings’. An undertaking is a mental event as it occurs, for example, in Ludwig’s mind when he raises his arm, or as it occurs in somebody’s mind who tries to raise his arm even if the arm does not move because it is paralysed. (Others have used ‘trying’, ‘purposing’, or ‘volition’ instead.) An undertaking is an intentional event whose intentional object is the desired effect, for example the movement of one’s arm. When Ludwig successfully undertakes to raise his arm, then Ludwig is the cause of the arm’s rising. A free action, for Chisholm (1976a, 202; 1976b, 62), is an action which involves an undertaking for which there is no preceding ‘sufficient causal condition’. That is, Ludwig raised his arm at t freely if, and only if, there was in a period which includes, but begins before, t ‘no sufficient causal condition’ either for Ludwig raising his arm or for Ludwig not raising his arm.  A quick, and I believe valid, objection against this view is that it fails to require that the agent has control over what he does. The mere fact that there was no ‘sufficient causal condition’ for a certain undertaking does not entail that it was up to the agent that he undertook this rather than something else. It could have been just a matter of indeterministic processes, that is, just a matter of chance, that one undertaking rather than another one occurred.  Chisholm (like Swinburne 1997, ch. 13) clearly allows for the possibility of an undertaking being caused by preceding events. For him, a non-free action is exactly that, an action which involves an undertaking for which there was before a ‘sufficient causal condition’. So in non-free actions too the agent is cause of his action and its results.  Now, at this point we should wonder what agent causation really is supposed to be. Surely, if Ludwig, when he raises his arm, is fully determined to do so, then there is no other causation involved than ordinary event causation. Some events, such as brain events or desires, cause Ludwig’s undertaking, the undertaking causes events in the nervous system, which cause events in the muscles, which cause the rising of the arm. There is no reason to postulate a kind of causation other than event causation.   3. The linguistic turn So why do Chisholm & Co. claim that there is agent causation even in non-free action and that it is irreducible to event causation (Chisholm 1976a, 199)? The reason is that they do not mean by this claim what one should think they mean. They do not mean that when Ludwig raises his arm the arm’s rising being caused is dissimilar to a billiard ball’s rolling being caused. Instead, they mean that statements of the form ‘Ludwig did so-and-so’ cannot be transformed ‘without loss of meaning’ into statements of another form (Chisholm 1976a, 199; 1978, 622f). The Chisholmian claim that there is irreducible agent causation really is not a claim about action but about certain statements describing actions. It is a child of the linguistic turn.  I suggest we should not make a linguistic turn, or if we have made one already, we should make an ontological turn and look, not at statements describing actions but, at the things they describe and which make them true. The adherent of the linguistic turn might want to hold that investigating statements describing actions is one way, or the best way, or the only way, to investigate causation in actions. I reply that we can see that the linguistic approach here not only does not reveal anything about action, it even leads to false results. The linguistic turn leads us to say that there is agent causation also in non-free actions because statements like ‘Ludwig raised his arm’ can in no case be transformed into statements of another form. But in fact in a non-free action the undertaking as well as all events involved in the action are solely and deterministically caused by preceding events; there is only one kind of causation involved, namely event causation. So what the linguistic turn leads us to say is false if it is taken to imply anything about action or causation, rather than just about statements.   Agent Causation: Before and After the Ontological Turn - Daniel von Wachter    2774. Turning away from the linguistic turn So let me try to describe the causation involved in free actions. If the rising of Ludwig’s arm, including Ludwig’s reasoning and undertaking, was the result of ongoing causal processes; if it was—like the movements of the planets on Easter 2000—solely and deterministically caused by preceding events, then, I suggest, we should not say that he raised his arm freely, whatever else was the case. That is, I am using ‘free’ in the libertarian sense.  I use ‘event’ and ‘state of affairs’ here interchangeably in order to refer to a thing’s (or things’) having a certain property (or properties) at a certain time. One refers to an event by specifying which property is instantiated where, or by what, when, i.e. during which period of time. If an instant of time is specified, instead of a period of time, it is implied that there is a period which includes the instant and during which the property is instantiated. For example, in order to refer to a physical event taking place between t1 and t2 one has to specify, at least vaguely, which quality is instantiated where at each time between t1 and t2. One event may be constituted by different properties being instatiated at different places at different times. Further, I am assuming that there are causal processes. A causal process is a continuous series of states of affairs each of which can truly be said to have caused any later state of affairs in the process.  What, then, happened when Ludwig raised his arm freely? The rising of the arm was the result of a causal process, which I call the ‘action process’. It comprised events in Ludwig’s muscles, in his nervous system, in his brain, etc. That is, for each phase of the rising of the arm there were preceding events in the muscles, in the nervous system, in the brain, etc., which caused this phase of the arm’s rising.  Now, if the action was free, then some phase of this process is not just the result of preceding events. The process must somehow have a beginning, and it’s occurrence—that is, the origination of the action process—must somehow be due to the agent. I call this first phase of the action process the initial event, or ‘initial state of affairs’.  But not the whole initial event has to be due to the agent. Consider a match being lighted at t1 so that an explosion at t2 is caused. The lighting of the match is only a part of the cause at t1 of the explosion at t2. The complete cause includes much more, e.g. the presence of certain gas, etc. Similarly, in a free action only a part of the initial event has to be due to the agent. This event which is a part of the initial event has no preceding cause, that is, it is not caused by an event. So why does it occur? The answer must be: because of Ludwig. Ludwig just brought about this event; he made it pop up. If you investigate the action process going backwards from the action result you come to a stage which has a part for which you cannot find a preceding cause, but you find that it’s occurrence is due to Ludwig. The event is Ludwig’s choice. I call it therefore ‘choice event’. I say interchangeably about a choice event that ‘it is Ludwig’s choice’, that ‘it is the result of Ludwig’s choice’, that ‘Ludwig brought it about by choice’, or that ‘Ludwig chose it’. So, on the account I am proposing, free agents are able to bring about certain events just by choosing, and such an event has no event cause.  What are choice events in the case of free human agents? I shall only indicate here what answers to this question are available. The answer depends on one’s solution of the mind-body problem. A materialist will say that human choice events are physical, presumably brain events. A non-materialist may, but need not, say that they involve non-material stuff. If choice events are not mental then we are not aware of them when we act, as we are not aware of the brain events involved in our actions. One candidate for being choice events are undertakings, i.e. certain mental events. On a non-materialist view they may, but don’t have to, be taken to be distinct from any physical events; on a materialist view they are identical to certain brain events. In any case, a man’s freely moving his body in a certain way involves a choice event which in conjunction with other events, presumably physical events, causes subsequent physical events in the body. I implied this above by saying that the choice event is part of the initial event of the action process.  Further, one may hold that the occurrence of a choice event, sometimes or always, is an intervention into an ongoing causal process. That is, there may or may not have been a causal process (deterministic or indeterministic) that, had nothing intervened, would have led to an event instead of which the choice event occurred. Moreover, one may or may not hold that, preceding a choice event, there are causal processes leading to events involving the same things or stuff as the choice event, but different properties. That is, if a’s being C at t is a choice event, there may be causal processes (deterministic or indeterministic) leading to a’s being D, E, F, etc., at t.  5. Freedom and chance Many authors have tried to do justice to the intuition that if an action was free the agent ‘could have done otherwise’, by postulating that certain causal processes which are involved in the action are ‘indeterministic’. By an ‘indeterministic’ process a process is meant which leads with a certain probability to one event or to certain other events instead. It is ‘chancy’, like (presumably) processes on the quantum level. Some authors hold that in a free action the process of deliberation, before the decision, is indeterministic (Dennett 1978; Fischer & Ravizza 1992; Mele 1999); others hold that the decision itself is the result of an indeterministic process (Clarke 2000). Similarly, Chisholm (1976a, 202; 1976b, 62) and Swinburne (1994, 25; 1997, ch. 13) hold that an action is free if the undertaking involved is not ‘fully’, i.e. deterministically, caused by earlier events. The trouble with all these accounts is that they fail to take into account the control a free agent has over what he does. They postulate a possibility that the action could have failed to occur, but they do not entail what people usually imply when they say ‘he could have done otherwise’, namely that it was up to the agent what he did. If somebody’s action was preceded by an indeterministic process of deliberation, or if the decision or the undertaking was the result of an indeterministic process, that makes the occurrence of the action a matter of chance and not a free action. This becomes clear also through the fact that it would not make the agent any more responsible for the action than he would be if the action was determined. An agent is responsible for an action not through the mere possibility that the action could have failed to occur but through it having been up to him what he did. An action which occurs as a matter of randomness is no more free than an action which is determined.  Perhaps these accounts are based on the mistaken assumption that if event A at t2 was the result of a deterministic process between t1 and t2 then after t1 nothing could prevent the occurrence of A. But there are no processes like this. Even a maximally deterministic process, such as the movement of billiard balls as Agent Causation: Before and After the Ontological Turn - Daniel von Wachter    278 described by Newtonian mechanics, can be interrupted. It only requires a sufficiently strong intervention. A cat, for example, can interrupt the deterministic process of a rolling billiard ball.  If there is at t1 an indeterministic process running towards Ludwig raising his arm at t2, then Ludwig, if he is to raise his arm freely, has to interrupt this process (as he would have to if it were a deterministic process) and raise his arm via a choice event. This choice event is then the result of Ludwig’s choice and not a result of the process. It is hence false what some authors (Clarke 1996, 27) say that the presence of chance in the process leading to an action ‘leaves room’, and is required, for control and for the possibility of alternative actions.  I have not yet answered the question whether agents are causes of what they bring about freely. Non-free actions involve only event causation. It may still be convenient to say that Ludwig is the cause of the rising of his arm even it he raised his arm non-freely; but no special kind of causation is involved. For free actions the question arises whether the agent is cause of the choice event, which has no event cause. The relation between the agent and the choice event is certainly different from the relation between, say, the lighting of a match and the subsequent explosion. But as an agent, like an event cause, is that to which it is due that one thing rather than another occurs—namely one choice event rather than none or another one—I suggest that it is adequate to call the agent ‘cause’, or more specifically ‘agent cause’, of the choice event, as well as of the events later in the action process.     References Chisholm, R. 1976a "The Agent as Cause", in M. Brand and D. Walton (eds.), Action Theory, Dordrecht: Reidel, 199-211. Chisholm, R. 1976b Person and Object, La Salle (Illinois): Open Court. Chisholm, R. 1978 "Replies", Philosophia, 8, 620-636. Clarke, R. 1996 "Agent Causation and Event Causation in the Production of Free Action", Philosophical Topics, 24, 19-48. Clarke, R. 2000 "Modest Libertarianism", in J. E. Tomberlin (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives, 14: Action and Freedom, Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 21-46. Dennett, D.C. 1978 "On Giving Libertarians What They Say They Want", in, Brainstorms, Brighton: Harvester Press, 1981. Fischer, J.M. and Ravizza, M. 1992 "When The Will is Free", in J. E. Tomberlin (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives, 6: Ethics, Atascadero: Ridgeview. Honderich, T. 1993 How Free Are You?, Oxford UP. Meixner, U. 1999 "Kausalität der Ereignisse oder Kausalität der Personen", Metaphysica, 0, 105-120. Mele, A.R. 1999 "Ultimate Responsibility and Dumb Luck", Social Philosophy and Policy, 16 (2), 274-293. O'Connor, T. 2000 Persons and Causes, Oxford UP. Reid, T. 1788 "Essays on the Active Power of the Human Mind", in R. E. Beanblossom and K. Lehrer (eds.), Inquiry and Essays, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983, 297-368. Swinburne, R. 1994 The Christian God, Oxford: Clarendon. Swinburne, R. 1997 The Evolution of the Soul (Revised Edition), Oxford: Clarendon Press. Taylor, R. 1966 Action and Purpose, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Thorp, J. 1980 Free Will: A Defence Against Neurophysiological Determinism, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.   

Agent Causation:\ud
Before and After the Ontological Turn

Open Access LMU

1788 &quot;Essays on the Active Power of the Human Mind&quot;,

1976a &quot;The Agent as Cause&quot;,

Action and Purpose,

Agent Causation and Event Causation in the Production of Free Action&quot;,

Free Will: A Defence Against Neurophysiological Determinism,

How Free Are You?,

Kausalität der Ereignisse oder Kausalität der Personen&quot;,

Modest Libertarianism&quot;,

On Giving Libertarians What They Say They Want&quot;,

Person and Object,

Persons and Causes,

The Christian God,

The Evolution of the Soul (Revised Edition),

Ultimate Responsibility and Dumb Luck&quot;,

When The Will is Free&quot;,

Agent Causation: Before and After the Ontological Turn

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Elektronisch archivierte Theorie - Sammelpunkt

  276 
Agent Causation:  
Before and After the Ontological Turn 
 
Daniel von Wachter, Oxford 
 
 
1. Section: Persons as Agents 
Imagine Ludwig has a cup of tea for breakfast. He 
pours it; he eats his egg until it seems to him that the tea 
should have the right temperature; he moves his hand to 
the cup, puts his fingers at the handle, and then, careful 
not to spill anything, he does something with his arm; 
namely, he raises it, and if all goes well he then drinks the 
tea without burning his lips.  
The rising of Ludwig’s arm surely has a cause. But 
what is the cause? Defenders of agent causation, such as 
Thomas Reid (1788), Richard Taylor (1966), Roderick 
Chisholm (1976a), and many more recent authors (see 
Swinburne 1997, ch. 5; Thorp 1980; Meixner 1999; Clarke 
1996; O'Connor 2000) have argued that the rising of 
Ludwig’s arm is caused by Ludwig himself. Some events 
are caused, not by other events, but by concrete things, by 
substances, more specifically by intentional agents.  
Agent causation is usually advocated by believers 
in libertarian free will. One might think that it is postulated 
in order to allow for agents originating causal processes. 
The opponents of agents causation believe that it is 
metaphysically extravagant to postulate agent causation 
as another kind of causation besides event causation, and 
that it is impossible that agents originate causal processes 
(Honderich 1993, ch. 3). However, I shall argue that the 
usual theory of agent causation, as Chisholm has 
campaigned for it, does justice neither to free action nor to 
non-free action. I shall then sketch an alternative account 
of causation in free actions, which many will find even 
more extravagant than Chisholm’s. 
  
2. The Chisholmian theory of agent 
causation 
Chisholm holds that actions involve what he calls 
‘undertakings’. An undertaking is a mental event as it 
occurs, for example, in Ludwig’s mind when he raises his 
arm, or as it occurs in somebody’s mind who tries to raise 
his arm even if the arm does not move because it is 
paralysed. (Others have used ‘trying’, ‘purposing’, or 
‘volition’ instead.) An undertaking is an intentional event 
whose intentional object is the desired effect, for example 
the movement of one’s arm. When Ludwig successfully 
undertakes to raise his arm, then Ludwig is the cause of 
the arm’s rising. 
A free action, for Chisholm (1976a, 202; 1976b, 
62), is an action which involves an undertaking for which 
there is no preceding ‘sufficient causal condition’. That is, 
Ludwig raised his arm at t freely if, and only if, there was in 
a period which includes, but begins before, t ‘no sufficient 
causal condition’ either for Ludwig raising his arm or for 
Ludwig not raising his arm.  
A quick, and I believe valid, objection against this 
view is that it fails to require that the agent has control over 
what he does. The mere fact that there was no ‘sufficient 
causal condition’ for a certain undertaking does not entail 
that it was up to the agent that he undertook this rather 
than something else. It could have been just a matter of 
indeterministic processes, that is, just a matter of chance, 
that one undertaking rather than another one occurred.  
Chisholm (like Swinburne 1997, ch. 13) clearly 
allows for the possibility of an undertaking being caused by 
preceding events. For him, a non-free action is exactly 
that, an action which involves an undertaking for which 
there was before a ‘sufficient causal condition’. So in non-
free actions too the agent is cause of his action and its 
results.  
Now, at this point we should wonder what agent 
causation really is supposed to be. Surely, if Ludwig, when 
he raises his arm, is fully determined to do so, then there is 
no other causation involved than ordinary event causation. 
Some events, such as brain events or desires, cause 
Ludwig’s undertaking, the undertaking causes events in 
the nervous system, which cause events in the muscles, 
which cause the rising of the arm. There is no reason to 
postulate a kind of causation other than event causation.  
 
3. The linguistic turn 
So why do Chisholm & Co. claim that there is 
agent causation even in non-free action and that it is 
irreducible to event causation (Chisholm 1976a, 199)? The 
reason is that they do not mean by this claim what one 
should think they mean. They do not mean that when 
Ludwig raises his arm the arm’s rising being caused is 
dissimilar to a billiard ball’s rolling being caused. Instead, 
they mean that statements of the form ‘Ludwig did so-and-
so’ cannot be transformed ‘without loss of meaning’ into 
statements of another form (Chisholm 1976a, 199; 1978, 
622f). The Chisholmian claim that there is irreducible agent 
causation really is not a claim about action but about 
certain statements describing actions. It is a child of the 
linguistic turn.  
I suggest we should not make a linguistic turn, or if 
we have made one already, we should make an 
ontological turn and look, not at statements describing 
actions but, at the things they describe and which make 
them true. The adherent of the linguistic turn might want to 
hold that investigating statements describing actions is one 
way, or the best way, or the only way, to investigate 
causation in actions. I reply that we can see that the 
linguistic approach here not only does not reveal anything 
about action, it even leads to false results. The linguistic 
turn leads us to say that there is agent causation also in 
non-free actions because statements like ‘Ludwig raised 
his arm’ can in no case be transformed into statements of 
another form. But in fact in a non-free action the 
undertaking as well as all events involved in the action are 
solely and deterministically caused by preceding events; 
there is only one kind of causation involved, namely event 
causation. So what the linguistic turn leads us to say is 
false if it is taken to imply anything about action or 
causation, rather than just about statements.  
 
Agent Causation: Before and After the Ontological Turn - Daniel von Wachter 
 
 
 277
4. Turning away from the linguistic turn 
So let me try to describe the causation involved in 
free actions. If the rising of Ludwig’s arm, including 
Ludwig’s reasoning and undertaking, was the result of 
ongoing causal processes; if it was—like the movements 
of the planets on Easter 2000—solely and deterministically 
caused by preceding events, then, I suggest, we should 
not say that he raised his arm freely, whatever else was 
the case. That is, I am using ‘free’ in the libertarian sense.  
I use ‘event’ and ‘state of affairs’ here 
interchangeably in order to refer to a thing’s (or things’) 
having a certain property (or properties) at a certain time. 
One refers to an event by specifying which property is 
instantiated where, or by what, when, i.e. during which 
period of time. If an instant of time is specified, instead of a 
period of time, it is implied that there is a period which 
includes the instant and during which the property is 
instantiated. For example, in order to refer to a physical 
event taking place between t1 and t2 one has to specify, at 
least vaguely, which quality is instantiated where at each 
time between t1 and t2. One event may be constituted by 
different properties being instatiated at different places at 
different times. Further, I am assuming that there are 
causal processes. A causal process is a continuous series 
of states of affairs each of which can truly be said to have 
caused any later state of affairs in the process.  
What, then, happened when Ludwig raised his arm 
freely? The rising of the arm was the result of a causal 
process, which I call the ‘action process’. It comprised 
events in Ludwig’s muscles, in his nervous system, in his 
brain, etc. That is, for each phase of the rising of the arm 
there were preceding events in the muscles, in the nervous 
system, in the brain, etc., which caused this phase of the 
arm’s rising.  
Now, if the action was free, then some phase of 
this process is not just the result of preceding events. The 
process must somehow have a beginning, and it’s 
occurrence—that is, the origination of the action process—
must somehow be due to the agent. I call this first phase of 
the action process the initial event, or ‘initial state of 
affairs’.  
But not the whole initial event has to be due to the 
agent. Consider a match being lighted at t1 so that an 
explosion at t2 is caused. The lighting of the match is only 
a part of the cause at t1 of the explosion at t2. The 
complete cause includes much more, e.g. the presence of 
certain gas, etc. Similarly, in a free action only a part of the 
initial event has to be due to the agent. This event which is 
a part of the initial event has no preceding cause, that is, it 
is not caused by an event. So why does it occur? The 
answer must be: because of Ludwig. Ludwig just brought 
about this event; he made it pop up. If you investigate the 
action process going backwards from the action result you 
come to a stage which has a part for which you cannot find 
a preceding cause, but you find that it’s occurrence is due 
to Ludwig. The event is Ludwig’s choice. I call it therefore 
‘choice event’. I say interchangeably about a choice event 
that ‘it is Ludwig’s choice’, that ‘it is the result of Ludwig’s 
choice’, that ‘Ludwig brought it about by choice’, or that 
‘Ludwig chose it’. So, on the account I am proposing, free 
agents are able to bring about certain events just by 
choosing, and such an event has no event cause.  
What are choice events in the case of free human 
agents? I shall only indicate here what answers to this 
question are available. The answer depends on one’s 
solution of the mind-body problem. A materialist will say 
that human choice events are physical, presumably brain 
events. A non-materialist may, but need not, say that they 
involve non-material stuff. If choice events are not mental 
then we are not aware of them when we act, as we are not 
aware of the brain events involved in our actions. One 
candidate for being choice events are undertakings, i.e. 
certain mental events. On a non-materialist view they may, 
but don’t have to, be taken to be distinct from any physical 
events; on a materialist view they are identical to certain 
brain events. In any case, a man’s freely moving his body 
in a certain way involves a choice event which in 
conjunction with other events, presumably physical events, 
causes subsequent physical events in the body. I implied 
this above by saying that the choice event is part of the 
initial event of the action process.  
Further, one may hold that the occurrence of a 
choice event, sometimes or always, is an intervention into 
an ongoing causal process. That is, there may or may not 
have been a causal process (deterministic or 
indeterministic) that, had nothing intervened, would have 
led to an event instead of which the choice event occurred. 
Moreover, one may or may not hold that, preceding a 
choice event, there are causal processes leading to events 
involving the same things or stuff as the choice event, but 
different properties. That is, if a’s being C at t is a choice 
event, there may be causal processes (deterministic or 
indeterministic) leading to a’s being D, E, F, etc., at t. 
 
5. Freedom and chance 
Many authors have tried to do justice to the 
intuition that if an action was free the agent ‘could have 
done otherwise’, by postulating that certain causal 
processes which are involved in the action are 
‘indeterministic’. By an ‘indeterministic’ process a process 
is meant which leads with a certain probability to one event 
or to certain other events instead. It is ‘chancy’, like 
(presumably) processes on the quantum level. Some 
authors hold that in a free action the process of 
deliberation, before the decision, is indeterministic 
(Dennett 1978; Fischer & Ravizza 1992; Mele 1999); 
others hold that the decision itself is the result of an 
indeterministic process (Clarke 2000). Similarly, Chisholm 
(1976a, 202; 1976b, 62) and Swinburne (1994, 25; 1997, 
ch. 13) hold that an action is free if the undertaking 
involved is not ‘fully’, i.e. deterministically, caused by 
earlier events. 
The trouble with all these accounts is that they fail 
to take into account the control a free agent has over what 
he does. They postulate a possibility that the action could 
have failed to occur, but they do not entail what people 
usually imply when they say ‘he could have done 
otherwise’, namely that it was up to the agent what he did. 
If somebody’s action was preceded by an indeterministic 
process of deliberation, or if the decision or the 
undertaking was the result of an indeterministic process, 
that makes the occurrence of the action a matter of chance 
and not a free action. This becomes clear also through the 
fact that it would not make the agent any more responsible 
for the action than he would be if the action was 
determined. An agent is responsible for an action not 
through the mere possibility that the action could have 
failed to occur but through it having been up to him what 
he did. An action which occurs as a matter of randomness 
is no more free than an action which is determined.  
Perhaps these accounts are based on the 
mistaken assumption that if event A at t2 was the result of 
a deterministic process between t1 and t2 then after t1 
nothing could prevent the occurrence of A. But there are 
no processes like this. Even a maximally deterministic 
process, such as the movement of billiard balls as 
Agent Causation: Before and After the Ontological Turn - Daniel von Wachter 
 
 
 278 
described by Newtonian mechanics, can be interrupted. It 
only requires a sufficiently strong intervention. A cat, for 
example, can interrupt the deterministic process of a rolling 
billiard ball.  
If there is at t1 an indeterministic process running 
towards Ludwig raising his arm at t2, then Ludwig, if he is 
to raise his arm freely, has to interrupt this process (as he 
would have to if it were a deterministic process) and raise 
his arm via a choice event. This choice event is then the 
result of Ludwig’s choice and not a result of the process. It 
is hence false what some authors (Clarke 1996, 27) say 
that the presence of chance in the process leading to an 
action ‘leaves room’, and is required, for control and for the 
possibility of alternative actions.  
I have not yet answered the question whether 
agents are causes of what they bring about freely. Non-
free actions involve only event causation. It may still be 
convenient to say that Ludwig is the cause of the rising of 
his arm even it he raised his arm non-freely; but no special 
kind of causation is involved. For free actions the question 
arises whether the agent is cause of the choice event, 
which has no event cause. The relation between the agent 
and the choice event is certainly different from the relation 
between, say, the lighting of a match and the subsequent 
explosion. But as an agent, like an event cause, is that to 
which it is due that one thing rather than another occurs—
namely one choice event rather than none or another 
one—I suggest that it is adequate to call the agent ‘cause’, 
or more specifically ‘agent cause’, of the choice event, as 
well as of the events later in the action process.  
 
 
 
References 
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Personen", Metaphysica, 0, 105-120. 
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Philosophy and Policy, 16 (2), 274-293. 
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Agent Causation: Before and After the Ontological Turn

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