Vanessa Carr

This paper addresses the question of whether two-way powers – powers to act in some way (to ɸ) or to refrain from acting in that way (to refrain from ɸ-ing) – are causal powers. That is, the question is whether the power to ɸ or refrain from ɸ-ing could amount to the power to cause an effect of some kind, E, or refrain from causing an E-effect. It is argued that, for the incompatibilist regarding two-way powers, though not for the compatibilist, two-way powers cannot be causal powers. But an alternative account of two-way powers as powers of non-causal determination is presented as available and favourable.

Human freedom is often characterised as a unique power of self-determination. Accordingly, free human action is often thought to be determined by the agent in some distinctive manner. What is more, this determination is widely assumed to be a kind of efficient-causal determination. In reaction to this efficient-causal-deterministic conception of free human action, this paper argues that if one takes up the understanding of determination and causality that is offered by Anscombe in ‘Causality and Determination’, and moreover takes up an understanding of free human action that is constrained by Anscombe’s account of intentional action in Intention, then an account of free human action as distinctively caused or determined by the agent is untenable. However, the notion of necessitation that Anscombe presents in ‘Causality and Determination’, which implies neither causality nor determination, offers an attractive alternative account. This alternative account pushes us to reconsider the sense in which human freedom is a power of self-determination, and to acknowledge the limits of our control in free action.

Amongst the entities that have been created by human agents, and can be changed by human agents, besides concrete particulars, such as tables and chairs, our intuitions suggest that there are repeatables—entities that can each have multiple concrete instances. And since there is reason to think that repeatables are acausal, there is reason to think that that there are entities that are created, changeable, repeatable and acausal. Then again, it might be supposed that if an entity is created then it is causal, and that if an entity is changed then it is causal. It is argued here that these suppositions are insufficiently motivated to undermine the case for the existence of entities that are created, changeable, repeatable and acausal.