Persons and Causes The Metaphysics of Free Will

by O'Connor, Timothy

• ISBN13: 9780195153743
• ISBN10: 019515374X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-11-14
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This provocative book refurbishes the traditional account of freedom of will as reasons-guided "agent" causation, situating its account within a general metaphysics. O'Connor's discussion of the general concept of causation and of ontological reductionism v. emergence will specially interestmetaphysicians and philosophers of mind.

Table of Contents

Introduction	xi
Freedom and Determinism	3	(20)
An Ancient Argument	3	(2)
Some Modal Principles and the Argument for Incompatibilism	5	(10)
The Fixity of the Past and of Natural Laws	15	(3)
Freedom and Responsibility	18	(5)
Freedom and Indeterminism: Some Unsatisfactory Proposals	23	(20)
The Trouble with Incompatibilism	23	(1)
Simple Indeterminism: Carl Ginet on Choice and Control	24	(3)
Causal Indeterminism: The General Strategy and a Problem Posed	27	(16)
The Agent as Cause: Reid, Taylor, and Chisholm	43	(24)
The Agency Theory	43	(1)
Thomas Reid	43	(6)
Richard Taylor	49	(6)
Roderick Chisholm	55	(5)
Summary	60	(7)
Appendix: Chisholm's Later Writings on Agency	61	(6)
The Metaphysics of Free Will	67	(18)
Overview	67	(1)
Event Causation	68	(3)
Agent Causation	71	(3)
C. D. Broad's Objection to the Very Idea of Agent Causation	74	(2)
Remarks on a Contemporary Alternative Account of Agent Causation	76	(3)
Ersatz Agent Causation?	79	(2)
Alternative Possibilities, Responsibility, and Agent Causation	81	(4)
Reasons and Causes	85	(23)
Reasons Explanation and the Agency Theory	85	(1)
Objections to the Account	86	(5)
Reasons and Contrastive Explanation	91	(4)
Reasons and Tendencies to Act: A Residual Problem and a Speculative Proposal	95	(6)
When Is the Will Free?	101	(6)
Conclusion	107	(1)
Agency, Mind, and Reductionism	108	(19)
Introductory Polemics: `The Emerging Scientific Picture of the World'	108	(2)
Emergence	110	(5)
Emergence and Consciousness	115	(6)
The Emergence of Active Power	121	(2)
An Epistemological Objection to Agent Causation	123	(2)
Conclusion	125	(2)
References	127	(6)
Index	133