258 Contemporary Incompatibilism: Libertarianism
Ginet subsequently writes:
The false premise is (2).... For it seems evident to me that, given that an
action was uncaused, all its agent had to do to make it the case that she per-
formed that action was to perform it. If my deciding to vote for the motion,
for example, was uncaused, then it follows that nothing other than me
made it the case that I decided to vote for the motion, and it also follows
that I made it the case that I so decided: I did so simply by deciding. (Ginet,
2007: 247)However, in the sentence: “all its agent had to do to make it the case that she
performed that action was to perform it,” “make it the case” would appear to be
causal, and (2) would then seem true.
McCann’s position (1998: 180) is also vulnerable to this kind of objection.
His view specifies that an agent’s exercise of active control has two features. A
basic action must be:
- a spontaneous, creative undertaking on the part of the agent, and
- intrinsically intentional. The intentionality of a basic action is a matter of its
being intrinsically an occurrence that is meant, by the individual undergoing
it, to be her doing.
The specification that the basic action is a spontaneous, creative undertaking is
suggestive of the agent’s making it the case that the basic action occurs, which
also risks invoking the causal relation. The same would seem true for the notion
of intrinsic intentionality. For it wouldn’t appear to make sense to say that a
basic action is intrinsically intentional while denying that it is made to occur by
the agent or that the agent makes the difference whether it occurs. How could
one intend an action and do so successfully without making it happen, or without
this process making the difference as to whether it would happen?
But suppose we can make sense of these positions not invoking causation at
all. Objecting to McCann’s view in particular, Clarke argues: “Where intention-
ality is divorced from an appropriate causal production, it does not seem that it
can, by itself, even partly constitute the exercise of active control” (2008, 2003:
20–1). This objection finds support in one’s sense that McCann’s conditions (1)
and (2) could not be satisfied if it is specified that the agent neither makes the
basic action occur nor makes the difference whether it occurs. For how could an
action be a spontaneous and creative undertaking on the part of the agent, or an
agent’s doing, without her making it happen or making the difference whether it
will happen? But if it’s agreed that the agent does indeed have a making- happen
and a difference- making role, the account would appear to be causal after all.
A hypothesis for why non- causalism is nevertheless coherent is that falling
under general laws, whether they are deterministic or probabilistic, is essential
to the causal relation. This view was held by Bergson, by the Neo- Kantians
who developed non- causalist positions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth