Contemporary Incompatibilism: Libertarianism 24910.9. Contrastive Explanations and an Expanding
Agent- Causal Power
Another kind of challenge to agent-causal libertarianism is that it cannot deliver
on a number of different demands for contrastive explanation. One such objec-
tion, first stated by C.D. Broad (1952) and then developed by Ginet (1990,
1997), claims that this account precludes a contrastive explanation for the timing
of an action, why it occurred at the exact time it did and not at some other time.
Ginet argues that in addition, contrastive explanations for the exact kind of
action performed are also ruled out:
The agent per se cannot explain why the event happened precisely when it
did rather than at some slightly different time. Only some difference
between the agent at one time and the agent at the other times, some tem-
porally located property, could do that. Nor, it might be added, can the agent
per se explain why that particular sort of event rather than some other sort
happened just then. (Ginet, 1997: 93–4, 1990: 13–14)From the unavailability of these kinds of contrastive explanations Ginet con-
cludes that the parallel sort of causation must be absent as well:
What sense can it make, then, to say that the agent as such is the cause of
the occurrence of that particular sort of event rather than some other sort,
and is the cause of its occurring at that particular time rather than at some
other time? (Ginet, 1997: 93–4)O’Connor responds by arguing that “a full explanation of why an agent-
caused event occurred, will include, among other things, an account of the
reasons upon which the agent acted,” and that as a result, the agent- causal theory
has resources to explain the timing of such an event (O’Connor, 1995b: 184). In
his reply, Clarke invokes his integrated two- causal stream view, on which one
cause of a free action is an event, for example, the agent’s acquisition of certain
reasons, and that such an event has the potential to explain an action’s occurring
at a certain time rather than another (Clarke, 1996: 298–9; cf., 2003). However,
we’ve just seen that Clarke’s integrated account of how agent- causes can act on
reasons faces a serious objection: The way reasons- causation and agent-
causation are integrated is by brute law, where one would think a substantive
explanation would be required. O’Connor’s solution to this problem—and argu-
ably the only plausible alternative available—is to build the relevant capacity to
act on reasons into the agent- causal power as a component. It might be described
as a power of an agent fundamentally as a substance to cause a decision upon
consideration of reasons, and on the basis of certain reasons, without being caus-
ally determined to do so. On this proposal, instead of Clarke’s distinct pair of
causal powers, those of agents as substances and reasons as events, we have a
single, albeit complex, causal power that can do the requisite explanatory work.