A Compatibilist Account of Agent Causation

This chapter addresses the metaphysics of free and responsible agency. Most theorists today presuppose a theory of causation according to which causes and effects are events of one kind or other (“event causation”), and human action is no different. A smaller group, almost exclusively composed of incompatibilists — those who deny that freedom and determinism are compatible — adopt a theory according to which the causes of human action are agents (“agent causation”), and not simply events involving them. This chapter presents a theory of responsibility that is compatible with either sort of theory of causation, and argues that there are distinct advantages to the latter, especially when we adopt a version that does not single out a kind of causation for human action that differs from the kind of causation found elsewhere in the world. The view set out provides a new way of looking at the long-running debate about agent causation and the metaphysics of freedom more generally.