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- Peter Menzies & Huw Price (1993). Causation as a Secondary Quality. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44 (2):187-203.In this paper we defend the view that the ordinary notions of cause and effect have a direct and essential connection with our ability to intervene in the world as agents.1 This is a well known but rather unpopular philosophical approach to causation, often called the manipulability theory. In the interests of brevity and accuracy, we prefer to call it the agency theory.2 Thus the central thesis of an agency account of causation is something like this: an event A is a cause of a distinct event B just in case bringing about the occurrence of A would be an effective means by which a free agent could bring about the occurrence of B. In our view the unpopularity of the agency approach to causation may be traced to two factors. The first is a failure to appreciate certain distinctive advantages that this approach has over its various rivals. We have drawn attention to some of these advantages elsewhere, and we summarize below. However, the second and more important factor is the influence of a number of stock objections, objections that seem to have persuaded many philosophers that agency accounts face insuperable obstacles. In this paper we want to show that these objections have been vastly overrated. There are four main objections.Reading list | Discuss | Edit | Categorize |My bibliography
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My purpose in this paper is to set forth a theory of agency that makes no appeal to mysterious notions of agent causation. But lest I be misunderstood at the very outset, I should perhaps clarify the point that my emphasis here is on the term “mysterious” and not on the expression “agent causation.” I shall begin with what seems to me the best possible example of agent causation: the sense in which a supremely perfect God, if one should exist, would initiate or originate his own actions. I shall not, however, simply adopt without modification the standard understanding of agent causation, assuming there to be such an understanding. I shall not make it true by definition, for example, that an agent-caused event can occur only in a context of alternative possibilities and hence can never be necessitated. Neither shall I make it true by definition that the internal states of an agent can never determine, or even causally determine in the case of human beings, a genuine instance of agent causation.1 Instead, I shall begin with the assumption that God represents the best and the clearest example of..
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| | Other links: pdcnet.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... According to what I call the reductive standard-causal theory of agency, the exercise of an agent's power to act can be reduced to the causal efficacy of agent-involving mental states and events. According to a non-reductive agent-causal theory, an agent's power to act is irreducible and primitive. Agent-causal theories have been dismissed on the ground that they presuppose a very contentious notion of causation, namely substance-causation. In this paper I will assume, with the proponents of the agent-causal approach, that substance-causation is possible, as I will argue against that theory on the ground that it fails as a theory of agency. I will argue that the non-reductive agent-causal theory fails to account for agency, because it fails to account for agential control: it cannot explain why the stipulated irreducible relation between the agent and an action constitutes the agent's exercise of control over the action. This objection, I will argue, applies to the agent-causal theory in particular, and to the non-reductive approach in general.
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| | Other links: informaworld.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... I argue against a priori objections to the view that causation may be reducible to some micro-structural process in principle discoverable by physics. I distinguish explanation from causation, and argue that the main objections to such a reduction stem from conflating these two notions. Explanation is the collection of pragmatically relevant, possibly counterfactual information about causation; and causation is to be identified in a necessary a posteriori way with whatever physical processes underwrite our explanatory claims.
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| | Other links: jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... This paper explores versions of agency or manipulability theories of causation and argues that they are unacceptable both for the well-known reasons of their anthropomorphism, limited scope, and circularity and because they are subsumed by an alternative "independence" theory of causation, which is free of these difficulties.
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| | Other links: jstor.org journals.uchicago.edu dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... O’Connor refines the “transfer” or “consequence” argument for Incompatibilism, and responds to objections (chap. 1). He argues against attempts to save freedom of action by appeal to the “simple” indeterminism of Carl Ginet and the “causal” indeterminism of Robert Kane and others (chap. 2). The main positive project of Persons and Causes is to explain the selfdetermination of action by appeal to agent causation (chaps 3-5). O’Connor’s strategy is to defend a nonHumean view about event causation, and then argue that agent causation is no more mysterious or objectionable than event causation is on this nonHumean view. I will argue that O’Connor does not succeed in making agent causation palatable. But his general strategy should recommend itself to all defenders of agent causation, and his development of agency theory is an important contribution to the project. In..
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| | Scholar | More options ... The Agency and the Manipulability theory of causation, in spite of significant differences, share at least three claims. First, that manipulation – roughly, that by manipulating causes we bring about effects – is a central notion for causation; second, that such a notion of manipulation allows a reductive – i.e. general and comprehensive – account of causation; third, that this view has its forefathers in the works of Collingwood, Gasking and von Wright. This paper mainly challenges the third claim and argues that the misreading of those authors leads to a more dangerous consequence: a confusion between epistemological, metaphysical and methodological issues about causation.
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| | Scholar | More options ... In what follows, I will contend that the commonsense view of ourselves as fundamental causal agents - for which some have used the term “unmoved movers" but which I think might more accurately be expressed as “not wholly moved movers” - is theoretically understandable, internally consistent, and consistent with what we have thus far come to know about the nature and workings of the natural world. In the section that follows, I try to show how the concept of ‘agent’ causation can be understood as a distinct species (from ‘event’ causation) of the primitive idea, which I’ll term “causal production”, underlying realist or non-Humean conceptions of event causation. In section III, I respond to a number of contemporary objections to the theory of agent causation. Sections IV-V are devoted to showing that the theory is compatible with ordinary reasons explanations of action, which then places me in a position to respond, in the final section, to the contention that we could never know, in principle, whether the agency theory actually describes a significant portion of human activity.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... This paper first distinguishes three alternative views that adherents to both incompatibilism and PAP may take as to what constitutes an agent''s determining or controlling her action (if it''s not the action''s being deterministically caused by antecedent events): the indeterministic-causation view, the agent-causation view, and "simple indeterminism." The bulk of the paper focusses on the dispute between simple indeterminism - the view that the occurrence of a simple mental event is determined by its subject if it possesses the "actish" phenomenal quality and is undetermined by antecedent events - and Timothy O''Connor''s agent-causation view. It defends simple indeterminism against O''Connor''s objections to it and offers objections to O''Connor''s view.
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| | Other links: springerlink.com dx.doi.org jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... In this paper we defend the view that the ordinary notions of cause and effect have a direct and essential connection with our ability to intervene in the world as agents.1 This is a well known but rather unpopular philosophical approach to causation, often called the manipulability theory. In the interests of brevity and accuracy, we prefer to call it the agency theory.2 Thus the central thesis of an agency account of causation is something like this: an event A is a cause of a distinct event B just in case bringing about the occurrence of A would be an effective means by which a free agent could bring about the occurrence of B.
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| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: jstor.org prce.hu | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: jstor.org prce.hu | Scholar | At my library | More options ... In this paper we defend the view that the ordinary notions of cause and effect have a direct and essential connection with our ability to intervene in the world as agents.1 This is a well known but rather unpopular philosophical approach to causation, often called the manipulability theory. In the interests of brevity and accuracy, we prefer to call it the agency theory.2 Thus the central thesis of an agency account of causation is something like this: an event A is a cause of a distinct event B just in case bringing about the occurrence of A would be an effective means by which a free agent could bring about the occurrence of B.
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| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: bjps.oxfordjournals.org sydney.edu.au jstor.org prce.hu dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: bjps.oxfordjournals.org sydney.edu.au jstor.org prce.hu dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Discussion of Peter Menzies & Huw Price, Causation as a secondary quality
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