Abstract
There is an important but unorthodox view within the philosophy of action that when it comes to certain mental actions of a person—her decisions and choices—these actions cannot be caused by her beliefs and desires or by any prior event or state of her at all. The reason for this, it is said, is that there is something in the very nature of a person’s decisions and choices that entails that they cannot be caused in this way. The arguments for this view, however, have largely gone unexamined. This paper, therefore, critically examines the arguments that have been proposed for this view. It concludes, however, that they are unpersuasive. There is, as yet, no good reason offered as to why we should think that decisions and choices must be uncaused by prior events or states of the agent.
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Notes
Thus, this is not the view that only a person’s freely made decisions and choices must be uncaused by prior events or states of her. It is the broader-in-scope view that her decisions and choices per se cannot be so caused.
Of course, it would still follow given this criticism of (1), and granting (2), that decisions cannot be deterministically caused, which would be a significant result. But the issue here is whether decisions and choices are incompatible with causation by prior events or states per se, and not just deterministic causation by such events or states. And this claim is not well-supported by Ginet’s argument. (In later work, Ginet (2007) changed his mind about the anti-causal status of decisions, arguing that while decisions per se can be caused by prior events or states, a person’s freely willed decisions cannot be so caused.)
When I say that a choice or decision cannot be caused, I mean they cannot be caused by prior events or states of the agent. Whether they can be caused in any other way—say by the agent as an irreducible substance (so-called “agent-causation”)—is not something I address in this paper. Both Goetz and McCann are skeptical that decisions and choices can be caused in this way, but they offer different explanations as to why not.
He writes: “When we decide, we mean to be deciding, and we mean to decide exactly as we do—that is, we intend for the content of our decision to be precisely what it is. This is not a matter of our carrying out some prior intention to decide: spur of the moment decisions are just as intentional as those made after long deliberation…Intentionality does not have to be conferred on our decisions; they are intentional by their very nature” (2012, p. 254).
That this is the argument they really have in mind is suggested by Goetz’s (2008) characterization of choices as “essentially” intrinsically active, as well as McCann’s claim that decisions are “intentional by their very nature” (2012, p. 254).
Not all intrinsic properties are essential properties. That I am conscious is an intrinsic property of me, but it is not essential. I could be knocked momentarily unconscious.
As I explained at the end of the last section, I am happy to grant McCann the claim, for the sake of argument, that decisions are essentially intentional and spontaneous. The issue here is why it would follow that if a person’s decisions and choices can be caused by antecedent events or states it would be possible for them not to have these features.
Of course, decisions will have some essential features that intentional bodily actions do not. Decisions, for examples, are essentially mental. But the fact that decisions are essentially mental is no reason to think that they cannot be caused deviantly or that if they cannot be caused deviantly, then they cannot be caused at all.
I would like to thank Jordan Baker and two anonymous reviewers for this journal for very valuable and much appreciated help with this paper.
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Palmer, D. Must Choices and Decisions be Uncaused by Prior Events or States of the Agent?. Erkenn (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-023-00729-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-023-00729-9