Free Will A Contemporary Introduction

Contemporary Incompatibilism: Libertarianism 257

“Made it the case that it occurred” is prima facie causal language. For arguably,
the making- happen relation is a causal relation, perhaps the paradigmatic causal
relation. Plausibly, causation just is making something happen or producing
something? As Clarke specifies:

An event that nondeterministically causes another brings about, produces, or

makes happen that other event, though it is consistent with the laws of nature

that the former have occurred and not have caused the latter. (2003: 33)

Even Ginet, just prior to the above quotation, remarks:

To suppose it is possible for there to be indeterministic causation is to

suppose that causation does not reduce, Humean fashion, to universal regu-

larity but is rather a brute relation among particular events, a relation of pro-

duction, a relation that may be impossible to specify in non- synonymous

terms. (2007: 244)

Moreover, “Keep it from occurring” also appears causal—the keeping- from-
occurring relation would seem to be a causal relation. Thus a challenge for the
non- causalism of Ginet’s account is that when he says “I made it the case that
the event occurred,” this seems equivalent to “I caused the event to occur,” for
the reason that to report that A caused B is really just to report that there is a
relation of production from A to B.
David Lewis proposes another characterization of causation that calls into
question non- causalism in a similar way:

We think of a cause as something that makes a difference, and the differ-

ence it makes must be a difference from what would have happened without

it. (Lewis, 1986)

But Ginet’s [Making] would appear to be equivalent to: It was up to me at time
T whether that event would occur only if at T I made it the case that it occurred,
and at T I made the difference as to whether it would occur. But then, given a
“difference making” account of causation, the event’s occurring and its being up
to me whether that event would occur would also amount to my causing it.
To develop this concern, it is valuable to examine Ginet’s reason for rejecting
an argument (which he formulates) for the conclusion that an uncaused action
cannot have been up to the agent:

1. For any event e that has actually occurred, it was up to the agent S whether
   e occurred only if S made it the case that e occurred.


2. For any event e, S made it the case that e occurred only if S caused e to occur.


3. If S caused e to occur, then e was not uncaused.


4. Therefore, an uncaused action cannot have been one such that it was up to
   the agent whether it would occur.