326 RELIGION, MORALITY, FAITH, AND REASONone thinks of an agent as the cause of her choices. In Case 3, as stated, no
matter what, Mary will decide not to send the letter. The question is
whether she decides on her own – is herself the cause of her choice – or Ann
causes her to decide. Then the incompatibilist will make:
Move 3: What remains open even in Case 3 is whether Mary shall
cause her choice. If she does cause it, she is responsible,
for she could have refrained from causing it. True, had
she refrained from causing it, Ann would have caused it
for her; in that case, Mary – not being the cause of her
choice – cannot be responsible for it. Since she is the
cause of her choice, she is responsible for it; but if she is
the cause of her choice, (PA*) is true of her choice – she
could have caused it (as she did) or not caused it (in
which case Ann would have caused it and Mary would
not be responsible for her choice).
For Move 3, Case 3 simply requires another application of (PA*). In spite of
appearances, it introduces nothing more than this: it brings us up to the
point where one sees the very minimal conditions of responsibility, which
turn out to be the minimum conditions of categorical freedom.
There is something deeply suspicious, however, about Move 3 as it
stands. It makes essential use of the idea that an agent causes her choices.
To choose is an action; presumably so is causing a choice. But if an agent
chooses to stand up by causing her choice to stand up, presumably she must
also cause her causing herself to choose to stand up, and cause her causing
her causing herself to choose to stand up, and so on. To choose will involve
doing an endless number of causings, causings that are instantaneous and
simultaneous or nearly so. We are plainly not aware of doing anything like
that, and doing such a magnitude of things seems beyond our powers.
Further, there seems no good theoretical reason to suppose that any such
thing occurs. In sum: Move 3 requires that an agent perform an endless
series of actions in order to make even the simplest choice, which makes
making even the simplest choice impossible. The incompatibilist is in
trouble if there is no way to state his viewpoint without the assumption
that for a person to choose is for him to cause his choices or, more
generally, that for a person to act is for him to cause his action.
Correspondingly, the compatibilist account of actions being the results
of action chains that include action-inclining states has this feature: the
action-inclining states that (at least partially) cause what the compatibilist
thinks of as an action are themselves products of other states that are not
action-inclining, and as one traces the chain backwards, so to speak, one
comes to states that are not only not action-inclining but are also not states