Agent Causation: Introducing the Chief Arguments of the Book
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26806/fd.v13i1.327Abstract
The paper summarizes chief arguments in the authorʼs monograph Agent Causation: Introduction to the Analytic Debate on Free Will (Togga 2020). The book defends one particular theory, that of agent causation, as best suited to preserve our common intuitions regarding the meaning of free choice and its consequences in the sphere of moral responsibility. In the first part it introduces the terms of the debate and a key argument for incompatibilism. The main competitor, compatibilism of the so-called standard theory (D. Davidson), is rejected in the third part of the book. A central thesis underlying the view of agent causation defended in the book is that contingent (self-) determination is a kind of mean between deterministic and indeterministic causation. The second part of the book serves a subservient purpose defending dualism of some kind (either property dualism or substance dualism) against non-reductive physicalism via the so-called exclusion problem.
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