Freedom, responsibility, and agency

Journal of Ethics

Volumn 1, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 85-98

  Ginet, Carl ^a  

^a Cornell University ^*  (United States)

Author keywords

Agency; Agent causation; Control; Determinism; Free will; Incompatibilism; Indeterministic causation; Principle of alternative possibilities; Responsibility

Indexed keywords

EID: 33749438427     PISSN: 13824554     EISSN: 15728609     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1009764120516     Document Type: Article

References (25)

1. I have argued for this thesis in Ginet, On Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), Chap. 5.
2. I defend this thesis in Ginet, "In Defense of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities: Why I Don't Find Frankfurt's Argument Convincing," forthcoming in J. Tomberlin (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives 10: Metaphysics (Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview, 1996).
3. See T. O'Connor's instructive paper, "Indeterminism and Free Agency: Three Recent Views," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (1993), pp. 499-526.
4. T. Reid, Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1969), Essay I.
5. R.M. Chisholm, "Freedom and Action," in K. Lehrer(ed.), Freedom and Determinism (New York: Random House, 1966), pp. 11-44.
6. R. Taylor, Action and Purpose (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966), Chap. 9.
7. See O'Connor, "Indeterminism and Agency: Three Recent Views," and O'Connor, "Agent Causation," in T O'Connor (ed), Agents, Causes, and Events (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 171-200.
8. R. Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981).
9. R. Kane, Free Will and Values (Buffalo: State University of New York Press, 1985).
10. O'Connor, "Indeterminism and Free Agency: Three Recent Views", p. 505.
11. Ibid., pp. 505-506.
12. O'Connor, "Agent Causation."
13. Ibid., p. 182.
14. Ibid., p. 198, note 15. He quotes Chisholm's remark, "If we say this [that the agent's causing e was not caused by anything], then we cannot hold him responsible for his causing e to happen." (Chisholm, "Reflections on Human Agency," Idealistic Studies 1 (1970), p. 40.)
15. O'Connor, "Agent Causation," p. 185.
16. Ibid., p. 187.
17. Ibid., p. 186.
18. CD. Broad, Ethics and the History of Philosophy (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952), p. 215.
19. O'Connor, "Agent Causation," p. 184.
20. See Reid, Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind, pp. 285-286.
21. What about indeterministic causation? Might it be causation without explanation? I think not. Let us look at an example. Suppose we have set up the famous two-slit experiment with photon detectors at each slit. A photon detected at slit A causes a green light to go on, and one detected at slit B causes a red light to go on. A photon is fired toward the screen containing the slits. This event, let us suppose, causes the red light to go on
22. but it does so indeteiministically, since, according to quantum theory, it is compatible with the laws of nature that exactly the same event in exactly the same circumstances should have caused the green light to go on. So, one might be tempted to conclude, the photon's firing caused the red light to go on but does not explain its going on. But this would be wrong. What the firing of the photon caused, but also explains, is (a) the red light's going on rather than neither light's going on. What it does not explain is (b) the red light's going on rather than the green light's going on. But neither does it cause this. If one asks, "What caused it to be the case that the red light rather than the green light went on?," it would not be correct to answer, "the firing of the photon." Indeed, the correct answer seems to be that nothing is causally responsible for its being the red rather than the green light that goes on (because nothing is causally responsible for its being slit B rather than slit A that the photon goes through). So we do not have here any state of affairs for which there is a cause of its obtaining that fails to explain its obtaining.
23. O'Connor, "Agent Causation," p. 195.
24. Ibid., p. 195.
25. Ibid., p. 193.