Aspects of Agency: Decisions, Abilities, Explanations, and Free Will

264 Pages·2017·14.33 MB·English

by  Alfred R. Mele

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Aspects of Agency
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Aspects of Agency
Decisions, Abilities,
Explanations, and Free Will
ALFRED R. MELE
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mele, Alfred R., 1951– author.
Title: Aspects of agency : decisions, abilities, explanations, and free will / Alfred R. Mele.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2017. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016038292 (print) | LCCN 2016039591 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190659974 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780190660000 (online course) |
ISBN 9780190659981 (pdf) | ISBN 9780190659998 ( ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Agent (Philosophy) | Act (Philosophy) | Free will and determinism. |
Ethics. Classification: LCC B105.A35 M438 2017 (print) | LCC B105.A35 (ebook) |
DDC 128/.4—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016038292
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Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
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To my nieces and nephews
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Contents
Preface  ix
1. Introduction  1
2. Deciding to Act  7
3. Actions, Explanations, and Causes  27
4. Agents’ Abilities  63
5. Free Will and Moral Responsibility: Does Either
Require the Other?  91
6. Is What You Decide Ever up to You?  109
7. Arbitrary Decisions and the Problem of Present Luck  135
8. Complete Control and Disappearing Agents  153
9. Libertarianism and Human Agency  181
10. Two Libertarian Theories: Or Why Event- Causal Libertarians
Should Prefer My Daring Libertarian View to Robert Kane’s View  197
11. Living without Agent Causation  221
References  237
Index  245
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Preface
the original plan for this book was to focus on a small collection of
important topics in the philosophy of action, basing the chapters on published
articles of mine. My original list of topics had seven items on it, the last being
free will. My claim was that a good understanding of my six topics would help
us grapple with issues that receive much more attention— for example, free
will. I thought it would be a good idea to support that claim by including a
chapter based on an article of mine on free will that makes use of my work on
some of the less- discussed topics. But things quickly got out of hand! After
preparing a version of “Is What You Decide Ever up to You?” (Mele 2013b) as
a chapter, I thought I should say more about libertarianism (based on Mele
2013c). Once I drafted that chapter, it seemed appropriate to include a version
of an article of mine (Mele n.d.c) on a certain argument against a libertarian
view that I find more attractive than competing libertarian views. And so on.
In the end, I whittled my original list of seven topics down to four: decisions
to act (or what I call practical decisions), agents’ abilities, commitments of a
causal theory of action explanation, and free will. Seven of this book’s eleven
chapters are on free will. Much of this book is based on published articles of
mine. References to the article or articles on which a chapter is based appear
in a note at the end of the chapter.
This book could easily have grown much longer. An unusual feature of my
stand on free will is agnosticism about compatibilism (Mele 1995a, 2006).
I have developed a libertarian position on free will for incompatibilists and a
compatibilist position for compatibilists while remaining neutral on whether
compatibilism or incompatibilism is true. Largely in response to critics, I have
published quite a bit on both positions since they were advanced in my Free
Will and Luck (Mele 2006). Here, to keep this book relatively short, I have
decided to focus the discussion of free will on libertarianism. A separate book