## 1. Noncausal Theories



Noncausal theories of free will are those according to which free
actions need not be caused by anything and also need not have any
internal causal structure. Some theories of this sort hold that free
actions must be uncaused, while others allow that they may be
nondeterministically caused. Carl Ginet (1989, 1990, 1997, 2002, 2007,
2008, 2014, and 2016) and Hugh McCann (1998 and 2012) have set out the
most fully developed noncausal theories of free will. Other accounts
of this type are advanced by Stewart Goetz (1988, 1997, and 2000), E.
J. Lowe (2008: chs. 6-9 and 2013), Storrs McCall (1994: ch. 9),
David Palmer (2016, forthcoming), and Thomas Pink (2004: chs.
7-8).



Why might someone find a noncausal theory of free will appealing? An
historically important motivation for such views concerns the nature
of causation. Once upon a time, all causation was thought to be
deterministic. If that were right, then any nondeterministic theory of
free will would have to be noncausal. Not until the 20th century did
the idea of nondeterministic or probabilistic causation become
popular. Once it did, this motivation for noncausal theories of free
will was lost. Why, then, do some theorists still insist that free
actions must be uncaused?
  

  

One argument advanced for that conclusion is an argument from luck.
The idea, in brief, is that if an action is caused (even
nondeterministically) by prior events, then it cannot have been up to
the agent whether that action was performed. If the causation is
nondeterministic, it will simply be a matter of luck, a matter of
nature's "role of the dice" (Ginet 2014: 24) whether
the action occurs. Such an argument from luck poses a problem for
event-causal libertarian theories, and agent-causal libertarian
theories face a similar problem. We discuss responses available in
defense of these theories below, in sections 2.2, 2.3, and 3.2.



Noncausal theories of free will face two main objections. Both are
objections, in the first instance, to noncausal accounts of
intentional action. If the theories at issue can't give an
adequate noncausal account of action, then a fortiori they can't
give us an adequate account of free action. Noncausal theories that
require free actions to be entirely uncaused face a further objection,
in addition to the two just mentioned. We consider each of these
objections in turn.


### 1.1 Control



The first objection to noncausal theories of free will concerns
control. Performing an action--even acting unfreely--is
often thought to involve active control over what one does, and acting
freely is thought to involve an especially valuable variety of such
control. An account of free will ought to say what this latter variety
of control is or in what its exercise consists. A common objection is
that noncausal accounts fail to do that.



Accounts of active control often appeal to causation. Exercising such
control when one acts, it is said, consists in causing some event (the
action, or an event internal to that action). It is often further held
that causation by an agent consists entirely in causation by mental
events or states of certain kinds, such as the agent's desiring,
believing, or intending something in particular. Of course, noncausal
theories reject any such view, but what alternative have they to offer
us?



On Ginet's view, each basic action is characterized by an actish
phenomenal quality, its seeming to the agent as if she is directly
making happen the event that is her basic action. Ginet stresses the
"as if" nature of this appearance; it does not, he says,
literally represent to the agent that she is causing the event in
question. And in fact, he holds, it cannot be true that we really are
agent-causes of what we do, and it need not be the case that any
events involving us cause our actions.



Might the actish feel of some occurrence itself constitute that
event's activeness, the agent's exercise of active
control? Can an event's seeming to oneself to be one's
performing an action suffice for its being so? This seems doubtful. As
Ginet (1990: 9) allows, an event with the indicated intrinsic quality
might be brought about by direct stimulation of someone's brain,
in the absence of any relevant desire or intention on the part of that
person. An occurrence produced in this way and in these circumstances
would hardly seem to be an exercise of the subject's agency.



McCann (1998: 180) holds that an agent's exercise of active
control has two aspects: any basic action is a spontaneous, creative
undertaking on the part of the agent, and it is intrinsically
intentional. The intentionality of a basic action is said not to
require any internal causal structure or external causal relation, yet
it may be doubted that something's being done intentionally can
be altogether divorced in this way from causation. Further, supposing
that such intrinsic intentionality is possible, it would seem that
here too an event with this feature could be brought about by direct
stimulation of someone's brain, in the absence of any relevant
desire or prior intention on the part of that person. But, again, such
an occurrence, even if intrinsically something the agent means to be
an exercise of her agency, hardly seems to be that.



The other aspect of the control that McCann says is exercised in basic
action--the spontaneity or activeness of such an
occurrence--thus appears to be the crucial one. This aspect, too,
McCann holds, is intrinsic to basic actions, and he maintains that
"it has a certain sui generis character that renders it
incapable of being reduced to anything else" (1998: 185). Other
proponents of noncausal theories of action (e.g., Pink 2004: ch. 8;
Palmer forthcoming) likewise take the exercise of active control to be
an ontologically fundamental or irreducible thing. Whether it is
remains controversial.


### 1.2 Reason-Explanation



The second challenge facing non-causal theories of free will concerns
acting for a reason. Free actions can be (and commonly are) done for
reasons. An action performed for a reason is something for which there
is a true reason-explanation. It is often objected that noncausal
theories of free will cannot provide an adequate account of this
phenomenon.



Accounts of acting for a reason and of reason-explanation often appeal
to causation. An agent acts for a certain reason, it is said, only if
the agent's recognizing that reason causes, in an appropriate
way, the agent's behavior; and citing a reason contributes to a
(true) reason-explanation of an action only if the agent's
recognizing that reason caused the action in an appropriate way.
Proponents of noncausal theories generally go for one or another of
two alternative accounts, appealing either to the content of an
intention that the agent is said to have concurrently with performing
the action, or to the intentional content of the action itself.



To examine the first of these strategies, suppose that S wants her
glasses, which she has left in her friend T's room, where he is
now sleeping. S also wants to wake T, because she desires his company,
but she knows that T needs some sleep, and hence she desires, too, not
to wake him. S decides to enter T's room and does so, believing
as she does that her action will contribute to the satisfaction of
both the desire to get her glasses and the desire to wake T. (The
example is adapted from Ginet 1990: 145.) What further facts about the
situation could make it the case that, in entering the room, S acts on
her desire to get her glasses, and that citing that desire provides a
true reason-explanation of her action, while she does not act on her
desire to wake T, and citing this latter desire does not give us a
true reason-explanation of what she is doing?



Ginet's account of reason-explanations that cite antecedent
desires (1990: 143) implies that the following conditions suffice for
the truth of the explanation that cites S's desire to get her
glasses:



> 
> (a) prior to entering the room, *S* had a desire to get her
> glasses, and
> 
> 
> (b) concurrently with entering the room, *S* remembers that
> prior desire and intends of her entering the room that it satisfy (or
> contribute to satisfying) that desire.
> 
> 
> 



Given the indicated circumstances, citing S's desire to wake T
will fail to give us a true reason-explanation, Ginet holds, just in
case S does not intend of her action that it satisfy (or contribute to
satisfying) that desire.



Several objections can be raised against this account. Suppose that,
although conditions (a) and (b) are fulfilled as S enters the room,
her desire to get her glasses plays no role at all in bringing about
(causing) her entry, while her desire to wake T, of which she is fully
aware when she acts, does play such a role. Causalists (e.g., Mele
1992: ch. 13) will then deny that S really acts on her desire to get
her glasses and that citing it truly explains her action. Indeed, even
some noncausalists deny that having a concurrent intention of the sort
required by Ginet (together with awareness of the antecedent desire)
suffices for acting for the reason in question. As McCann (1998: 163)
suggests, one might have such an intention but fail to carry it out.
An account that requires a concurrent intention of this sort, then,
will need to provide for its implementation.



Two further problems attend the concurrent intention that is required.
First, the required intention is a second-order attitude, an attitude
about (among other things) another of the agent's own attitudes
(a certain desire of hers). But it seems that S might act on her
desire to get her glasses even if her only intention when she enters
the room is to retrieve her glasses. Second, intention-acquisitions
themselves can be explained by citing reasons. Since Ginet's
account of the reason-explanation of an action appeals to an
intention, the question arises what can be said about the
reason-explanation of the acquisition of that intention. Repeating the
same sort of account here would generate a regress.



McCann (1998: ch. 8 and 2012) takes a different approach. On his view,
an agent decides for a certain reason, and citing that reason explains
the decision, just in case, in cognizance of that reason, and in an
intrinsically intentional act of intention formation, the agent forms
an intention the content of which reflects the very goals presented in
that reason. When S decides to enter T's room, for example, she
decides for the reason of getting her glasses only if the intention
that she forms in making that decision is an intention to enter for
the sake of getting her glasses. (Ginet [2008] offers a similar
account of reasons-explanations of decisions.)



One question about this account is whether what it proposes suffices
for acting for a reason. Here again there will be a clash of
intuitions between causalists and noncausalists, with the former
maintaining that if S's desire to get her glasses plays no role
at all in bringing about her decision, then even if the content of her
decision is to enter for the sake of getting her glasses, she does not
really decide for that reason and citing it does not truly explain her
decision.



Another question about the account concerns whether the required
correspondence between the reasons for which one decides and the
content of one's decision is really necessary. Sometimes prior
to making a decision, an agent considers a large number and variety of
factors. Her decision might then be made for many different reasons.
It is implausible that each and every one of the reasons for which she
makes her decision must enter into the content of the intention that
she forms in making that decision. (For the same objection to a
similar account of reason-explanation, see Mele 2003:
42-43.)


### 1.3 Free Actions with Causes?



A third objection is directed at those noncausal theories of free will
according to which free actions must be entirely uncaused.
Incompatibilists often contend that determinism precludes the ability
and opportunity to do otherwise and/or the ultimate sourcehood that
(they allege) is required for free will. But an action's being
nondeterministically caused, it has been argued, is unlike determinism
in this respect, as it is consistent with these requirements being
satisfied (Capes 2017). If so, then free actions need not be
completely uncaused, even if they can be.


## 2. Event-Causal Theories



Compatibilist accounts of free action are typically event-causal
views, invoking event-causal accounts of action. The simplest
event-causal incompatibilist theory takes the requirements of a good
compatibilist account and adds that certain agent-involving events
that cause the action must nondeterministically cause it. When these
conditions are satisfied, it is held, the agent exercises in
performing her action a certain variety of active control (which is
said to consist in the action's being caused, in an appropriate
way, by those agent-involving events), the action is performed for a
reason, and there remains, until she acts, a chance of the
agent's not performing that action. (It might be required that
there remains, until the action is performed, a chance that the agent
will perform a different action instead right then.) It is thus said
to be open to the agent to do otherwise, even given that (it is
claimed) its being so open is incompatible with the truth of
determinism.



One purported problem for such a view is that the indeterminism that
it requires is destructive, that it would diminish the control with
which an agent acts to the extent that responsibility would be
undermined. The most common version of this worry is the problem of
luck, which holds that indeterminism reduces control by introducing
luck. A second common objection is the problem of enhanced control,
which holds that the required indeterminism is superfluous, that it
adds nothing of value that could not exist in a deterministic world.
We shall examine these objections below. First, let us consider a type
of event-causal incompatibilist account that is advocated by writers
who accept a qualified version of the first of these objections.


### 2.1 Deliberative Indeterminism



Some writers accept that indeterminism located in the immediate
causation of a decision or other action would diminish the
agent's control but hold that indeterminism confined to earlier
stages in the process leading to a decision need not do so. Laura
Ekstrom (2000: ch. 4 and 2003) and Alfred Mele (1995: ch. 12, 1996,
1999b, and 2006: 9-14) have advanced the most fully developed
accounts of this sort. Such views have also been sketched by Daniel
Dennett (1978) and John Martin Fischer (1995).



Overt action is sometimes preceded by a decision, and decision is
sometimes preceded by a deliberative process in which the agent
considers reasons for and against alternatives and makes an evaluative
judgment concerning which alternative is best (or better or good
enough). Focusing on decisions that follow such deliberation, Mele
advances a view that allows (but does not require) the deterministic
causation of the decision by the making of the judgment, and of the
overt action by the decision. Indeterminism is required only at an
earlier stage of the deliberative process. For example, the account is
satisfied when it is undetermined which of a certain subset of the
agent's nonoccurrent beliefs come to mind in the process of
deliberation, where their coming to mind combines with other events to
bring about the agent's evaluative judgment. (The subset in
question consists of "beliefs whose coming or not coming to mind
is not something that one would control even if determinism were
true" [1995: 216].)



Mele argues that indeterminism of the sort required here does not
diminish (at least not to any significant extent) what he calls
"proximal control," a variety of control constituted by
the relatively direct causation of behavior, and one that is
compatible with determinism. The required indeterminism nevertheless
suffices, he holds, to provide the agent with "ultimate
control" over her decision, which an agent has only if at no
time prior to the decision is there any causally sufficient condition
for the agent's making that decision that consists entirely of
events or states external to the agent.



Ekstrom (2019) has recently criticized her older account and defended
a centered view of the sort discussed in the next section. But her
previous account is worthy of consideration. Ekstrom's account
emphasized preference rather than evaluative judgment. A preference,
as she understands it, is a desire "formed by a process of
critical evaluation with respect to one's conception of the
good" (2000: 106). The formation of a preference, she
maintained, is an action. She required indeterminism only in the
production of these preferences. A decision or other action is free,
on her view, just in case it is brought about, in an appropriate way,
by an active formation of a preference (favoring that decision or
action), which preference-formation is in turn the result of an
uncoerced exercise of the agent's evaluative faculty, the inputs
to which nondeterministically cause that preference-formation.



Ekstrom held that an agent is her preferences and acceptances
(reflectively held beliefs), together with her faculty of forming
these by reflective evaluation. When the formation of a preference is
nondeterministically caused and it deterministically causes a decision
and subsequent action, then a preference that partly constitutes the
agent, one that is generated by an evaluative faculty that partly
constitutes the agent, and one that the agent could have prevented (by
not forming that preference) causally determines the decision and
subsequent action. What the agent does is then, Ekstrom claimed, up to
her.



Both Mele's and Ekstrom's deliberative theories allow that
a decision or other action can be free even if it is causally
determined by events none of which is a free action, and to none of
which has the agent contributed by performing any prior free action.
Indeed, given the basic features of these accounts, both of them must
(on pain of regress) allow this. Incompatibilists do not typically
allow for such a thing.



If an event is not itself a free action, and if no free action by the
agent in question contributed to that event, then, we may say, it is
not up to the agent whether that event occurs. Incompatibilists
generally hold that if one event determines another, then it is not up
to anybody whether if the first event occurs then the second event
occurs. And arguments for incompatibilism often employ a principle
like the following: if it is not up to a given agent whether a certain
event occurs, and it is not up to that agent whether if that event
occurs then the agent performs a certain action, then it is not up to
the agent whether she performs that action. Given this principle, it
will have to be said of certain decisions that deliberative theorists
count as free that it is not up to us whether we make those decisions.
Deliberative theorists, then, apparently reject this principle; but
the rejection raises the question whether their incompatibilism is
well motivated.


### 2.2 Centered Accounts



Event-causal accounts of a more typical sort require that at least
some free actions be nondeterministically caused by their immediate
causal antecedents. Since these views require indeterminism centered
on the production of free actions themselves, we may call them
"centered accounts." The most widely discussed such view
is that advanced by Robert Kane (1985, 1989, 1994, 1996a, 1996b,
1999a, 1999b, 2000a, 2000b, 2000c, 2002, 2004, 2005: chs. 11-12,
2007a, 2007b, 2011, 2014a, 2014b, 2016, and 2019). (It should
be noted that Kane now rejects the event-causal label, insisting the
there is no event-causal reduction of agency; however, it is not clear
that he denies that agency is always fully realized in causation by
events, and his view focuses on causation by events in exercises of
agency.) Other accounts of this type are proposed by Mark Balaguer
(1999 and 2004), Laura Ekstrom (2019), Christopher Franklin (2011a,
2011b, 2018), David Hodgson (2012), Alfred Mele (2006: ch. 5), Robert
Nozick (1981:294-316), Richard Sorabji (1980: chs. 2 and 14),
Peter van Inwagen (1983: 137-50), and David Wiggins (1973). John
Searle (2001: ch. 9) endorses a view of this sort as best capturing
our experience of acting.



Consider an illustration of a simple centered incompatibilist theory.
Suppose that Elena is considering whether to A or to B. She recognizes
what she regards as fairly strong reasons to A, and she recognizes
what she regards as somewhat weaker reasons to B. At a certain time,
t, she decides to A. The account requires that the prior deliberative
events (such as Elena's recognizing the reasons to A and judging
them to be stronger) that cause the decision to A nondeterministically
cause it, and that until Elena makes that decision, there remains a
chance that she not make that decision then. (We may imagine that
there remains a chance that, instead, she decides at t to B, in which
case prior deliberative events, such as her recognizing the reasons to
B, will have nondeterministically caused this alternative
decision).



Accounts of this sort are often thought to be vulnerable to the
problem of luck. There are a various formulations of the problem of
luck. (Versions of it are advanced by Almeida and Bernstein [2003],
Ekstrom [2000: 105], Haji [1999a, 1999b, 2000a, 2000b, 2000c, and
2001], Levy [2011: ch. 3], and Strawson [1994]. Mele [1998, 1999a,
1999b, 2005, and 2006: chs 1 and 5] discusses the argument but rejects
its conclusion.) Here is one version: suppose an agent decides to
steal. If there was a chance, right at the moment of choice, that the
agent will instead (at that moment) make a different decision, then
there is a possible world that is exactly the same as the actual world
up until the time of the decision, but in which the agent makes the
alternative decision then. There is, then, nothing about the agent
prior to the decision--indeed, there is nothing about the world
prior to that time--that accounts for the difference between her
making one decision and her making the other. This difference, then,
is just a matter of luck. And if the difference between the
agent's making one decision and her instead making another is
just a matter of luck, she cannot be responsible for the decision that
she makes.



One response to the problem of luck rejects the claim that there is
nothing about the agent prior to the decision that accounts for the
difference between her making one decision and her making the other.
After all, the agent acted for reasons (e.g., a desire for money). If
those reasons raised the probability of deciding to steal and
non-deterministically caused the decision, that is enough to account
for the decision (in a sense that makes it not just a matter of luck).
In the world where she decides not to steal, the reasons that increase
the probability of that choice (e.g., a desire to act rightly) would
then account for the alternative decision. No matter what the agent
chooses, we can give a contrastive explanation of her action (this
means we can explain why she chose that act rather than the
alternative.) Franklin (2018) develops (more complex) replies along
these lines.



Another response to the problem of luck is offered by Mele (2006:
117-33). Mele invokes an agent's influence, by way of her
past actions, on which options are currently open to her and what
their respective probabilities are. Given her responsibility for those
past actions, the agent might be responsible for the current
probabilities of her pursuing these alternatives. For example, Elena
might be responsible for the present chance that she will decide
contrary to her ranking of her reasons, because she is responsible for
past actions that led to her now having features--character
traits, desires, and so forth--that ground that chance. An agent
might, in this fashion, accumulate over the course of her lifetime
greater responsibility for what she does, by increasingly shaping the
probabilities of her acting in various ways.



Of course, the maneuver raises a question about how the agent could be
responsible for her earlier actions, given that the account in
question will require that some of these, too, were
nondeterministically caused. Ultimately, we must consider how an agent
can be responsible, on such a view, for her earliest free
decisions.



These earliest free decisions, Mele observes, will be those of a
relatively young child. Responsibility comes in degrees, and any
responsibility such a child has for what she does will be slight. The
argument from luck might seem threatening if we think that full
responsibility is in question, but it loses its bite, Mele suggests,
when we consider a case in which only a small degree of responsibility
is at issue. It is implausible, for example, to say that a young boy
who decides not to snatch away his sister's toy deserves no
credit at all for making the right decision, just because there
remained until he so decided a chance that he would instead decide to
take the toy. Kane (e.g., at 2007b: 174-75) makes a similar
appeal to the build-up of responsibility stemming from slight
responsibility for one's earliest free choices.



Centered accounts also face the problem of enhanced control. Note that
the simple centered account we are considering differs from typical
compatibilist accounts only by requiring that the agent's mental
states nondeterministically cause her decision. How does this
difference in the nature of the causal relationship do anything to
enhance the agent's control over her act?
  

  

A popular response to this question says that indeterminism enhances
control because it is necessary for the agent to possess the ability
or opportunity to do otherwise. And having the ability or opportunity
to do otherwise increases control. Franklin (2011a and 2018) and
Ekstrom (2019) offer responses along these lines. Kane makes a similar
point. On the indeterministic picture: an agent exercises dual
control, a control that can be exercised in either of two different
ways, whereas on the deterministic picture the agent's control
can be exercised in only one way (Kane 1996: 109-11).



Some proponents of centered incompatibilist theories have added to the
requirements of the rather simple view we have been considering, with
the aim of rebutting the problem of luck. We shall examine here the
account advanced by Robert Kane.


### 2.3 Efforts of Will



Kane holds that a free decision or other free action is one for which
the agent is "ultimately responsible" (1996b: 35).
Ultimate responsibility for an action requires either that the action
not be causally determined or, if the action is causally determined,
that any determining cause of it either be or result (at least in
part) from some action by that agent that was not causally determined
(and for which the agent was ultimately responsible). Thus, on
Kane's view, an agent can be ultimately responsible for a
decision that is causally determined by her possessing certain
character traits. But somewhere among the events that contributed
(however indirectly) to her having those traits, and thus to her
decision, there must have been some free actions by her that were not
causally determined. Kane calls such "regress-stopping"
actions "self-forming actions" (74). All self-forming
actions, he argues, are acts of will; they are mental actions. He thus
calls them "self-forming willings" (125), or SFWs.



Kane identifies six different types of SFW, giving the most detailed
treatment to what he calls moral choices or decisions and prudential
choices or decisions. We shall focus here on the former; the two are
sufficiently similar that the points made can be easily transferred to
the latter.



In a case of moral choice, there is a motivational conflict within the
agent. She believes that a certain type of thing morally ought to be
done (and she is motivated to do that), but she also has a
self-interested desire to perform an action of a type that is, in the
circumstances, incompatible with her doing what she believes she ought
to do. Given her commitment to her moral belief, she makes an effort
of will to resist temptation, an effort "to get [her] ends or
purposes sorted out" (1996b: 126). If the choice is to be an
SFW, then it is required that the strength of this effort be
indeterminate; Kane likens its indeterminacy to that of the position
or momentum of a microphysical particle. And the effort's
indeterminacy is held to be the source of the required indeterminism
in the causal production of the choice. Again an analogy is drawn with
an indeterministic understanding of microphysics. Just as whether a
particle will penetrate a barrier might be undetermined because the
particle does not have both a determinate position and a determinate
momentum, so "[t]he choice one way or the other is undetermined
because the process preceding and potentially terminating in it (i.e.,
the effort of will to overcome temptation) is indeterminate"
(128).



Kane further requires that any choice that is an SFW satisfy three
plurality conditions. These require that the choice be made for a
reason (which Kane takes to consist partly in the choice's being
caused by the agent's recognizing that reason) and that it not
be a result of coercion or compulsion. Each plurality condition also
requires that, when the agent makes the choice, she wants more to act
on the reason for which she makes that choice than she wants to act on
any competing reasons. An agent wants more to act on a certain reason,
he holds, when her desire to act on that reason has greater
motivational strength than have any desires she has to act on
competing reasons, and when it is settled in the agent's mind
that that reason, rather than her reasons for doing otherwise, is the
one that she will now and in the future act on. This wanting more to
act on a certain reason is, on Kane's view, brought about by the
choice in question. Finally, the plurality conditions require that,
whichever choice is made, there must have been at least one
alternative choice that the agent was able to make such that, had she
made it, it too would have satisfied the previously stated
conditions.



In a situation of moral conflict, Kane maintains, the requirements for
being an SFW can be satisfied by either choice that is made--the
choice to do what one believes one ought to do or the choice to do
what one is tempted to do. Where this is so, whichever choice the
agent makes, she has chosen for the reason that she wants more to act
on, free from coercion and compulsion. If she has chosen to do what
she believes she ought to do, then her choice is the result of her
effort. If she has chosen to do what she was tempted to do, then she
has not allowed her effort to succeed. Whichever choice she has made,
she could have made the other. She is then ultimately responsible for
the choice she has made.



What, then, of the argument from luck? Kane offers a complex response
to this problem. First (1996b: 171-72), he counters that with
indeterminate events, exact sameness is not defined. If an
agent's effort of will was indeterminate, then it cannot be that
in the actual world and in some other possible world she made exactly
the same effort. An objection that assumes that such exact sameness is
possible, he holds, does not apply to his view. Kane infers from this
point that free will requires a form of indeterminism in which there
is chance as well as indeterminacy, with the former stemming from the
latter. (He calls worlds with such indeterminism
"non-Epicurean.") The chance in an Epicurean world (an
indeterministic world without indeterminacy), he implies, would
constitute control-diminishing luck.



Kane's claim that indeterminacy precludes exact sameness has
been contested (see Clarke 1999, 2002, 2003a, and 2003b: 86-87,
and O'Connor 1996). Moreover, Ishtiyaque Haji (1999a) and Alfred
Mele (1999a and 1999b) contend that the argument from luck is just as
effective if we consider an agent in worlds that are as similar as can
be until the moment of choice, given the indeterminacy of efforts.
Indeed, the argument might be advanced without any appeal at all to
other worlds: given that nothing prior to the choice accounts for the
difference between the agent's choosing one way and her choosing
another, it may be said, this difference is just a matter of luck.



A further response by Kane to the argument from luck appeals to the
active nature of efforts of will. When an agent in a case of moral
conflict makes an effort to resist temptation, he says, she is trying
to make the choice to do what she believes she ought to do. If the
agent then makes that choice, she succeeds, despite the indeterminism,
at doing what she was actively trying to do. And Kane points out that
typically, when someone so succeeds, indeterminism of this sort will
not undermine responsibility (and hence it will not so diminish the
agent's control that there is not enough for responsibility). He
describes a case (1999b: 227) in which a man hits a glass tabletop
attempting to shatter it. Even if it is undetermined whether his
effort will succeed, Kane notes, if the man does succeed, he may well
be responsible for breaking the tabletop.



If left here, the reply would fail to address the problem of luck in a
case in which the agent chooses to do what she is tempted to do rather
than what she believes she ought to do. In response to this
shortcoming, Kane (1999a, 1999b, 2000b, 2000c, 2002, 2005: ch. 12,
2007, and 2011) has proposed a "doubling" of effort in
cases of moral conflict. In such a case, he holds, the agent makes
two, simultaneous efforts of will, both indeterminate in strength. The
agent tries to make the moral choice, and at the same time she tries
to make the self-interested choice. Whichever choice she makes, then,
she succeeds, despite the indeterminism, at doing something that she
was actively trying to do.



Although it is common to try to make a choice whether to do something
or not--for example, to try to decide whether to A--it is
unclear what sense can be made of trying to make some specific
choice--e.g., trying to decide to A. Further, supposing that
sense can be made of this, it would not seem to be rational to try, at
one time, to make each of two obviously incompatible choices.



A more fundamental problem concerns the efficacy of the appeal to the
active nature of such efforts. In the case of the man who breaks the
tabletop, his breaking the tabletop is free (if it is) not just
because it results from an active effort to break the tabletop, but
because it results (we are to presume) from a free effort to break the
tabletop. A successful effort to make a certain choice can contribute
in an analogous way to the choice's being free, then, only if
the effort itself is free. If the appeal to these efforts is to
accomplish anything, then, what is needed is an account of the freedom
with which the agent acts in making these efforts of will (Clarke
2002, 2003a, and 2003b: 89-92; Mele 2006: 51-52).



In recent work, Kane (e.g., at 2007b: 174-75) accepts that
responsibility for choices that are SFWs requires that we be
responsible for the efforts of will that produce these choices. We
generally are responsible for these efforts, he maintains, because
they are influenced by character and motives resulting from our prior
free choices, and because we generally endorse the outcome of such an
effort when it succeeds--the resulting choice. The second of
these observations seems not to the point, since one's
responsibility for an action cannot depend on whether, subsequent to
that action, one endorses one of its results. The first observation
raises a regress problem: what about an agent's earliest SFWs,
in which case no prior free choices have influenced the efforts of
will preceding the SFWs? Kane says that we are responsible for the
efforts in these cases as well. But aside from appealing to our
endorsement of the resulting choices, he does not explain how this can
be so.



Kane's appeal to indeterminate efforts of will, and the appeal
thereby to indeterminism, do not appear to help meet the luck
objection. (Neither does it appear that help comes from his
requirement that, in making a choice that is an SFW, the agent comes
to want more to act on the reason for which she makes that choice.
For, on Kane's view, this wanting more is brought about by the
choice. And if an event-causal view is on the right track, the
agent's control over the making of the choice is a matter of the
production of the choice, not of what the choice produces.) A simpler
centered incompatibilist account, then, may fare just as well against
the argument from luck.


## 3. Agent-Causal Theories



A number of incompatibilists have maintained that a free decision (or
some event internal to such a decision) must be caused by the agent,
and it must not be the case that either what the agent causes or the
agent's causing that event is causally determined by prior
events. On what are called agent-causal views, causation by an agent
is held not to consist in causation by events (such as the
agent's recognizing certain reasons). An agent, it is said, is a
persisting substance; causation by an agent is causation by such a
substance. Since a substance is not the kind of thing that can itself
be an effect (though various events involving it can be), on these
accounts an agent is in a strict and literal sense an originator of
her free decisions, an uncaused cause of them. This combination of
indeterminism and origination is thought to capture best the idea
that, when we act freely, a plurality of alternatives is open to us
and we determine, ourselves, which of these we pursue, and to secure
the kind of freedom needed for moral responsibility.



George Berkeley (1710 [1998]) and Thomas Reid (1788 [1969]) held views
of this type in the early modern period. In recent years, agent-causal
accounts have been advanced by Roderick Chisholm (1966, 1971, 1976a,
1976b, and 1978), Randolph Clarke (1993 and 1996), Alan Donagan
(1987), Meghan Griffith (2005, 2007, and 2010), Jonathan Jacobs and
Timothy O'Connor (2013), T. J. Mawson (2011), Timothy
O'Connor (1995, 1996, 2000a, 2000b, 2002, 2005, 2009a and
2009b), William Rowe (1991, 2000, 2003, and 2006), Helen Steward
(2012), Richard Taylor (1966 and 1992), John Thorp (1980), and Michael
Zimmerman (1984). Derk Pereboom (2001, 2004, 2007, and 2014) has
argued that we can have free will only if we are agent-causes, but
that the evidence is against the existence of agent causation.



Setting aside (for the moment) the question of evidence, agent-causal
theories face three main objections. One concerns acting freely for a
reason and the reason-explanation of free actions; the second is the
problem of luck; the last concerns the intelligibility of the notion
of agent causation and whether causation by an agent (where this is
understood to be causation by a substance) is possible.


### 3.1 Agent Causation and Reason-Explanation



We saw in section 1.2 that difficulties confront accounts of acting
for a reason and of reason-explanation that do not appeal to the
causation of action by the agent's recognizing certain reasons.
Standard agent-causal views deny that events such as the agent's
recognizing certain reasons cause any free action (or whatever event
the agent directly causes when she acts freely). Such views must,
then, offer some alternative account of the phenomenon in
question.



The most sophisticated such proposal is that advanced by Timothy
O'Connor (2000b: ch. 5). At the core of the proposal is an
account of the reason-explanation of free decisions. As O'Connor
sees it, agents do not cause free decisions; rather, a free decision
is a causally complex event, consisting of the agent's causing
her coming to have a certain intention. (Such a causally complex event
is, in turn, a component of any free overt action, such as one's
freely raising one's arm.) Suppose, then, that someone freely
decides to A right now. The decision can be explained by citing an
antecedent desire, O'Connor maintains, if



> 
> 
> (a) prior to making that decision, the agent had the desire in
> question and believed that *A*-ing would satisfy (or contribute
> to satisfying) that desire; and
> 
> 
> 
> (b) the intention to *A* that the agent comes to have in making
> the decision is caused by the agent and is an intention to *A*
> here and now in order to satisfy the desire in question (adapted from
> O'Connor 2000b: 86).
> 
> 
> 



One objection to such a view (raised by Feldman and Buckareff [2003])
is that it appeals to something that is not necessary for the truth of
the kind of explanation we are considering. One can decide on the
basis of a certain desire, and citing that desire can yield a true
reason-explanation of one's decision, even if the intention that
one forms in deciding is not a second-order attitude, an attitude that
is about (in part) another of one's attitudes (a certain
desire). O'Connor might accept this point and propose that we
will have a true reason-explanation as well if the intention that is
acquired represents, not the desire in question, but rather the object
of that desire. The proposal would then resemble McCann's
account of reason-explanation. However, it might be objected that one
can decide on the basis of a desire even if the intention that one
forms in making that decision does not represent, in its content, the
object of that desire. As we observed in examining McCann's
view, an agent sometimes makes a decision for many reasons, and it is
implausible that each and every one of the reasons for which a
decision is made must enter into the content of that decision.



A further objection is that O'Connor's account of
reason-explanation commits him to an implausible view of the
explanation of causally complex events. As he has it, whether an
explanation citing a state of an agent truly explains the
agent's causing her acquisition of a certain intention depends
crucially on whether the effect component of this causally complex
event has a certain feature, and the truth of the explanation does not
require that the agent's being in the cited state cause either
the causally complex event, the cause component of that event, or the
effect component of that event. But we do not find this sort of thing
to be so in cases of any other kinds of causally complex event.



Consider a case that is in important respects analogous to what we are
examining here. Suppose that a flash of lightning has caused a brush
fire. A drought, let us say, had left the brush dry, and had this not
been so, the lightning flash would not have caused the fire, or at
least would have been less likely to do so. Now suppose that the
dryness of the brush is cited as an explanation of the flash's
causing the fire. Does the truth of the proffered explanation hinge on
whether the fire has a certain feature, and can the explanation be
true even if the brush's being dry did not cause either the
flash, the fire, or the flash's causing the fire? Apparently
not.



The difficulty here stems from O'Connor's requirement,
like that imposed by most proponents of agent-causal views, that only
the agent cause what is directly agent-caused in a free action. On an
alternative account, it is required that a free action be caused by
the agent and nondeterministically caused by certain agent-involving
events, such as the agent's recognizing certain reasons and
having a certain intention. Such a view, it is said, can provide the
same accounts of acting for a reason and of reason-explanation as can
event-causal theories of free will. And since the event causation that
is posited is required to be nondeterministic, the view secures the
openness of alternatives, even on the assumption that this openness is
incompatible with determinism. Finally, the required agent causation
itself is still held to be distinct from causation by any events, and
so this view may be said to secure the origination of free actions
that seemed an appealing feature of standard agent-causal accounts
(Clarke 1993, 1996, 2003b: ch. 8, and 2011; Mawson [2011: ch. 5] and
Steward [2012: 217-219] also allow that events can play a
[nondeterministic] causal role in the production of free actions in
additional to the causal role played by the agent).



Here is a brief illustration of a freely made decision, as this type
of view would have it. Suppose that on some occasion a certain
individual, Leo, is deliberating about whether to tell the truth or to
lie. He recognizes reasons favoring each alternative and has an
intention to make up his mind now. Suppose that there is a nonzero
probability that Leo's recognizing the reasons favoring telling
the truth (together with his having the indicated intention) will
nondeterministically cause his deciding to tell the truth; and suppose
that there is, as well, a nonzero probability that his recognizing the
reasons favoring lying (together with his having the intention) will
instead nondeterministically cause his deciding to lie. Then, given
all prior conditions, it is open to Leo to make the former decision
and open to him to make the latter one instead. Now suppose that, as a
matter of nomological necessity, in the circumstances, whichever of
the open decisions Leo makes, that decision will be made, and it will
be caused by his recognizing the reasons that favor it, only if
Leo--the agent--causes that decision. Finally, suppose that,
in fact, Leo decides to tell the truth. His decision is caused by him,
and it is nondeterministically caused by his recognizing reasons
favoring the action decided upon (and his having the intention to make
up his mind). He would make that decision only if he caused it. On
this view, Leo's exercising control over which decision he
makes--his determining which of the open decisions he
makes--consists in his decision's being (appropriately)
caused by him and by these mental events involving him.



It is a matter of some dispute whether event causation and agent
causation can be combined in this fashion and, if they can be, whether
the combination would provide what incompatibilists think necessary
for free will. (For discussion of these points, see Clarke 2003b:
144-48 and 2011; Ginet 2002; O'Connor 2000b: 76-70;
and O'Connor and Churchill 2004.)


### 3.2 Luck, Again



While the appeal to agent causation might be thought to solve the
problem of luck, the objection has been raised that in fact it does
not help at all (Haji 2004; Mele 2005 and 2006: ch. 3; van Inwagen
1983: 145 and 2000). Consider Leo. At a certain moment he agent-causes
a decision to tell the truth, and until he does there remains a chance
that he will instead, at that moment, agent-cause a decision to lie.
There is, then, a possible world that is exactly like the actual world
up until the time at which Leo agent-causes his decision but in which,
at that moment, Leo agent-causes a decision to lie. Nothing about the
world prior to the moment of the agent-causing accounts for the
difference between Leo's causing one decision and his causing
the other. This difference, then, is just a matter of luck. And if
this difference is just a matter of luck, Leo cannot be responsible
for his decision.



If in fact Leo's causing his decision constitutes his exercising
free will, then the difference between his causing a decision to tell
the truth and his causing a decision to lie is not just a matter of
luck; it is a matter of how Leo exercises his free will. But what can
be said to support the claim that an agent's causing a decision
is his exercising free will? Many hold that when an agent exercises
free will, it is up to the agent herself whether she does one thing or
another. A plurality of alternatives is open to the person, and the
person herself determines which alternative she pursues. It is also
said that when an agent exercises free will, she is an ultimate source
or origin of her action. An agent-causal account may be said to nicely
realize these conceptions of free will. On the assumption that
incompatibilism is correct, the account's requirement of
indeterminism is needed to secure the openness of alternatives. And
its requirement of agent causation may be thought to secure the
agent's determining, herself, which alternative she pursues, as
well as her originating her action. (Unlike what we have with any
event-causal view, with an agent-causal account, the agent is quite
literally an ultimate source or origin of her action.) If the account
satisfactorily realizes these conceptions of free will, then it may be
credibly claimed that the difference in question between worlds is a
matter of Leo's exercising his free will differently.


### 3.3 Causation by a Substance



All theorists who accept a causal construal of agents' control
over what they do--and this includes most compatibilists as well
as many incompatibilists--can accept that agents cause their free
actions (or events internal to these actions). After all, we accept
that the sun causes sunburn and that, when water dissolves sugar, it
causes the sugar to dissolve. However, it is widely thought that
causation by such things is reducible to, or consists wholly in,
causation by states of these things or events involving them, and this
is precisely what is denied with respect to the agent causation that
is invoked by agent-causal theories of free will. The denial raises
the question whether any intelligible account of agent causation can
be given. Even some proponents of agent-causal views (e.g., Taylor
1992: 53) seem doubtful about this, declaring agent causation to be
strange or even mysterious.



Such doubts may be viewed in light of the widely held presumption
that, free will (or perhaps, more broadly, purposive agency) aside,
causation throughout nature is, fundamentally, causation by events or
states. Until recently, even most proponents of agent-causal theories
have accepted this view. And with this view granted, an appeal to
agent causation in a theory of free will may strike us an implausible
claim of metaphysical exceptionalism.



In the last couple of decades, however, a growing number of
philosophers have argued that causation by substances is ontologically
fundamental. Some (e.g., Jacobs and O'Connor 2013; Lowe 2008:
143-46; O'Connor 2014; and Swinburne 1997 and 2006) hold that,
fundamentally, all causation is substance causation. Others (e.g.,
Alvarez and Hyman 1998; Hyman 2015: 40-42; Mayr 2011: 229-30; and
Steward 2012: 207-16) advance causal pluralism, on which entities of a
variety of different categories--the list includes substances,
events, properties, features, aspects, and facts--cause things,
and causation by each of these kinds of thing is equally fundamental.
The pluralist picture is not one of competition but of
interdependence; as it may be put, events cause things only when the
substances in which these events are changes cause those things, and
substances cause things only when changes in those substances cause
those things. (Hyman [2015: 41] suggests a similar view.)



Often such views are advanced on grounds that are entirely independent
of free will or purposive agency, having to do with the nature of
causation and causal powers generally. Substance causation that is
ontologically fundamental is held to be pervasive, constituting the
activity of substances animate and inanimate, macro and micro.
Rejection of the view that causation by events or states is uniquely
fundamental often stems from a turn away from of a broadly Humean
account of causation toward a neo-Aristotelian view, one that takes
causal powers to be irreducible features of the world.



In the context of a view of this kind, an appeal to causation by
agents that is ontologically fundamental is no claim of metaphysical
exceptionalism. Further, on a causal pluralist view, an agent-causal
theorist can help herself to an understanding of acting for a reason
in terms of causation by one's recognition of reasons. For it
may be said that a free action is caused by the agent and caused by
certain states of the agent, with causation by each of these things
interdependent and equally fundamental. The verdict on such a view
hinges on the tenability of its general account of causation.



At the same time, if the activity of every substance--an
electron, an oak tree--consists in fundamental substance
causation, the worry arises whether agent causation can provide what
free-will theorists who appeal to it have thought it could provide:
origination, and the agent's determining, herself, which of
several open alternatives she pursues. After all, on the view in
question, an electron, too, may be an undetermined determinant of what
it does. Perhaps, in the end, the difference between the electron and
the free agent isn't a matter of the agent being the ultimate
source of her behavior, but rather in the purposiveness involved in
agent causation.


## 4. The Evidence



Our discussion of incompatibilist theories of free will has focused so
far on whether they provide an adequate account of what free will
would be if it exists. However, even if one or another of these views
is theoretically satisfactory in this regard, the question remains
whether there is any evidence that what the theory says is required
for free will actually exists.



Incompatibilist accounts require, first, that determinism be false.
But more than this, they require that there be indeterminism of a
certain sort (e.g., with some events entirely uncaused, or
nondeterministically caused, or caused by agents and not
deterministically caused by events) and that this indeterminism be
located in specific places (generally, at the time of the occurrence
of decisions and other basic actions). What is our evidence that these
requirements are satisfied?



The scientific evidence for quantum mechanics is sometimes said to
show that determinism is false. Quantum theory is indeed very well
confirmed. However, there is nothing approaching a consensus on how to
interpret it. Indeterministic as well as deterministic interpretations
have been developed, but it is far from clear whether any of the
existing interpretations is correct. (For a more in depth discussion
of rival interpretations of quantum mechanics see section 4.4 of the
Determinism entry.) Perhaps the best that can be said here is that
there is currently no good evidence that determinism is true.



The scientific evidence is even less decisive with respect to whether
there is the kind of indeterminism located in exactly the places
required by typical incompatibilists. Unless there is a complete
independence of mental events from physical events, then even for free
decisions there has to be indeterminism of a specific sort at specific
junctures in certain brain processes. There are some interesting
speculations in the works of some incompatibilists about how this
might be so (see, e.g., Kane 1996b: 128-30, 137-42, and
the sources cited there), but our current understanding of the brain
gives us little evidence one way or the other about whether it is in
fact so.



Some noncausal theories of free will maintain that for us to act
freely our actions must be uncaused. However, we seem to have little
evidence that this (alleged) requirement is ever met. We do, however,
have evidence that it often isn't met, as a compelling case can
be made that many of our everyday actions have causes (Capes 2017).
Consider an ordinary, everyday action: Tony goes to the store to buy
some chocolate cake. Why did he do so? In part because his wife asked
him to, and the 'because' here is arguably causal. That
the request is a cause of Tony's action is suggested by the
presence of several causal markers, things that indicate a causal
connection between two states or events. For instance, effects often
(though not always) *counterfactually depend* on their causes,
and Tony's action *counterfactually depends* on his
wife's request; had she not asked him to go to the store and get
cake, he wouldn't have done so. Tony's action also
*counterfactually varies* with the content of his wife's
request; had she asked for carrot cake instead of chocolate, he would
have gotten carrot cake instead. His wife's request *raised
the probability* (even if it didn't ensure) that he would go
to the store and buy some cake, it *helps explain* why he went
to the store and got what he got, and it was a *means to the
end* of getting Tony to go to the store. The joint presence of
these causal markers strongly suggests that Tony's wife's
request that he go to the store and get some cake is a cause of his
doing so. Note, moreover, that Tony's action isn't special
in this regard. Similar claims can be made about many of our everday
behaviors. If so, and if an action must be uncaused in order to be
free, then we have reason to suppose that we rarely, if ever, act
freely.



What about agent causation? It is sometimes argued that agent
causation must be anomic, not subject to any laws of nature, and that
on our best evidence this requirement is not met (Pereboom 2001: ch. 3
and 2014: 65-69). However, the claim that free will requires such
lawlessness is contested (Clarke 2010).



Some incompatibilists (e.g., Campbell 1957: 168-70 and
O'Connor 1995: 196-97) claim that our experience when we
make decisions and act constitutes evidence that there is
indeterminism of the required sort in the required place. There are
various ways to develop this claim. A strong version has it that our
experience of our own agency represents our actions as being produced
in just the way that one or another incompatibilist account says they
must be if we are to have free will. (For an objection to this claim,
see Mele 1995: 135-37). A weaker version of the claim is that we
experience some of our actions as free (even if that experience
doesn't represent our actions as being uncaused or
non-deterministically caused or agent caused) and then infer from this
experience, together with the assumption that free will requires
indeterminism of the relevant sort, that the right sort of
indeterminism obtains. However, both versions of the claim are open to
the following objection. If things are to be the way they are said to
be by some incompatibilist account, then the laws of nature--laws
of physics, chemistry, and biology--must be a certain way. (This
is so for overt, bodily actions regardless of the relation between
mind and body, and it is so for decisions and other mental actions
barring a complete independence of mental events from physical,
chemical, and biological events.) And many find it incredible that how
things seem to us when we act gives us insight into the laws of
nature.



Whether they should, though, is a matter of controversy. Suppose one
experiences oneself falling. Surely this imposes some limits on how
the laws of nature could be. Perhaps there must be something like a
law of gravity in order for this experience to be veridical. Or, more
minimally, one can at least infer from the experience of falling that
the laws of nature don't preclude falling. So, there is no
general problem with inferring facts about the laws of nature from
one's own experiences. The question, then, is whether there is
some special problem with inferring from our experience of our own
agency that the incompatibilist requirements are met.



Some incompatibilists (e.g., van Inwagen 1983: 204-13) hold
that, although we lack good empirical or experiential evidence that we
have free will, we nevertheless have good moral reason to believe that
we have it. The claim is that we have good reason to believe that we
are sometimes morally responsible for our behavior and that moral
responsibility requires free will. Together, these claims give us good
reason to suppose that we sometimes have free will. However, absent
solid evidence for the indeterminism that incompatibilists say is
required for free will, if we justifiably believe that responsibility
requires free will and that free will requires indeterminism, it seems
to some that, rather than concluding that we have free will, we should
instead withhold judgment on whether we are ever morally responsible
for anything.



If an incompatibilist theory of free will is correct, it thus appears
to be an open question whether the requirements for free will
specified by the theory are ever satisfied, and thus an open question
as well whether anyone ever has free will.