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Dretske on the Metaphysics of Freedom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Hugh J. McCann
Hugh J. McCann*
Affiliation:
Texas A & M University, College Station, TX, 77843-4237, USA
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Extract

Most philosophers of action have seen little or no connection between the individuation of action and questions of freedom and responsibility. Is this a mistake? According to a recent suggestion by Fred Dretske it may be. Dretske views overt actions not as observable events with a distinctive sort of causal history, but rather as causal sequences, in which a distinctive sort of inner cause produces the appropriate outcome. So when Jimmy voluntarily wiggles his ears, the motion of his ears is not his action; it is only a component of the action, its result. The entire action consists in an event-causal sequence wherein an inner event C causes the result: it is C’s causing the motion of Jimmy’s ears.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , December 1993 , pp. 619 - 630
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1987

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References

1 Dretske, Fred ‘The Metaphysics of Freedom,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 22 (1992) 1-13CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Page references in the text are to this source.

2 Roughly, the result of an action is the event the bringing about of which is the action in question. As Dretske notes (’The Metaphysics of Freedom,’ 7), an action cannot occur without its result occurring, but the result is not sufficient for the action.

3 Dretske makes no explicit commitment to this view in the text, but a footnote points us to his Explaining Behavior (Boston: MIT Press 1988), where such a view is defended, and what is said in the text fits nicely with it.

4 Dretske, Explaining Behavior, 39-44Google Scholar

5 It is not clear whether Dretske himself would endorse the protest. Some of his remarks suggest he might accept the idea of triggering causes producing causal sequences (Explaining Behavior, 42). The remarks are not decisive, however, and in any case this line of response deserves consideration, given the importance of the distinction between triggering and structuring causes in Dretske’s views.

6 Actually, the issue is not this simple. If by completing Jimmy’s reason I also put in place the structuring cause of his action, there is still room for an argument that I cause him to act, this time by being the agent of the structuring cause. Dretske’s suggestion is vulnerable on this front too, since he holds that in fact it is the agent’s reasons which, through their content, supply the structuring cause of action (’The Metaphysics of Freedom,’ 13; Explaining Behavior, 114-15).

7 This is not a surprising result. The component theory of overt actions does not, after all, prevent our viewing them as triggering causes: my pressing the button, even if we view it as a causal complex, still causes the bell to ring. But then why should the component theory prevent our viewing such actions as triggered effects? I can see no reason why not, even if for the sake of the agent’s freedom we might wish it did.

8 I have defended such a theory in a number of places, most recently in ‘Intrinsic Intentionality,’ Theory and Decision20 (1986) 247-73.

9 Lewis, David ‘Postscripts to “Causation,“’ in Philosophical Papers, Vol. II (New York: Oxford University Press 1986) 172-213, at 184-6Google Scholar

10 It should be noted that Lewis might not agree with this argument, since he denies that we get sensitivity simply by going through the actions of others (Lewis, 185).

11 I am indebted to Peter Smith for criticism of an earlier version of this paper, as well as to an anonymous reviewer for this journal for comments.