Persons and Causes

Abstract PERSONS AND CAUSES investigates the nature of freedom of action, or ‘metaphysical’ freedom, which is generally supposed to be a necessary condition on moral responsibility. The author develops a version of the Consequence Argument for the incompatibility of freedom with causal determinism. The bulk of the work is then devoted to giving a philosophical analysis of what must be true for human agents to act freely. He defends the coherence of the notion of agent causation, a metaphysically primitive form of causality uniquely exercised by persons, alternately drawing upon and criticizing earlier versions of the agent‐causationist account (particularly, Reid, Taylor, and Chisholm). He then provides an original account of the way reasons can explain agent‐causal activity—an account that gives a prominent place to intentions‐in‐action whose contents refer to the reason that explains the action. Finally, the author considers the objection that his account conflicts with the requirements of metaphysical Naturalism. He argues that insofar as this thesis can be made clear and is well motivated, it is consistent with the present account, given the possibility that metaphysically primitive causal capacities might emerge from fundamental physical capacities organized within certain complex systems.