# Agent Causation ## Intro Almost everything philosophers say about causes is about **events** causing other events. The brick's impact caused the window to break. The temperature drop caused the pipe to freeze. One happening brings about another, and the chain runs backward indefinitely. Agent causation is the position that there is a second kind of causing, in which **a substance, a thing, rather than an event, brings something about**. On this view, when a person raises his hand deliberately, the cause is not merely a prior event inside him, a desire, a neural state, a belief. The cause is *him*, the enduring person, originating the action rather than transmitting it from something earlier. The idea sounds strange stated abstractly, and it is worth seeing why anyone holds it. Consider what libertarian free will requires. It requires that a choice be genuinely up to the person, not settled by what came before. But if the choice is caused by prior events, it is not up to him, it is up to them. And if it is caused by nothing at all, it is random, which is no better, because a twitch is not a free act. Freedom seems to need something that is neither determined nor random. Agent causation is the proposal that this third option is real and that we are acquainted with it, because it is what deliberate action is like from the inside. When you decide, you do not experience yourself observing which desire wins. You experience yourself as the one settling it. The position has an obvious theological resonance. God is classically described as the first cause, the one who originates without being originated. If agent causation is coherent for God, the concept is already in play, and a creature made in God's image having a limited version of it is not an alien addition to the framework but an expected one. See [Imago Dei](/codex/imago-dei/). Quick reply line: *"If my choice was caused by prior events, it was not mine, it was theirs. If it was caused by nothing, it was random, and random is not free either. Freedom needs a cause that is neither a prior event nor no cause at all. That is what an agent is."* ## In full Agent causation, also called substance causation, holds that persons are causes in their own right, not reducible to causation by events involving them. It is the central commitment of **agent-causal libertarianism**, one of the main incompatibilist accounts of free will, and stands in contrast to both determinism and event-causal libertarianism. Its principal defenders are Thomas Reid (1710-1796), who framed it against Hume, Roderick Chisholm ("Human Freedom and the Self", 1964), Richard Taylor, Timothy O'Connor (*Persons and Causes*, 2000) and Randolph Clarke. The framework's ancestry is older: Aristotle's unmoved mover and the scholastic treatment of the will as a rational appetite move in the same territory, and [Thomas Aquinas](/codex/thomas-aquinas/)'s account of the will's self-motion is a recognisable predecessor. ## The problem it solves The argument for agent causation is best presented as a dilemma facing any account of free will, sometimes called the luck or randomness objection. 1. **If determinism is true**, every choice is the necessary consequence of prior states plus the laws. The person could not have done otherwise, given the past. See [Hard Determinism](/codex/hard-determinism/). 2. **If indeterminism is true and the choice is caused by prior events indeterministically**, then given exactly the same prior state the choice might have gone either way, and nothing about the person settles which. The outcome is a matter of chance, and chance is not control. This is the objection to event-causal libertarianism. 3. **If the choice is uncaused**, it is a brute occurrence, which is worse still. Each horn removes the responsibility that free will was supposed to secure. Agent causation is the claim that the dilemma is not exhaustive, because it assumes that all causation is event causation. Introduce a causal relation whose first term is a substance rather than an event, and the choice is caused, so not random, but not caused by prior events, so not determined. Chisholm's formulation is that in acting freely a person is a prime mover unmoved: something happens because of him, and nothing makes him make it happen. ## Objections and replies **1. It is mysterious. What is this relation between a thing and an event?** The most common complaint. The reply is that event causation is not notably less mysterious once examined, as Hume's analysis of the causal relation demonstrated at length. We do not have a reductive account of what makes any causal relation causal; we have regularity, counterfactual dependence and manipulation accounts, each with known problems. Charging agent causation with primitiveness assumes that event causation has an analysis it does not have. Defenders take agent causation as primitive and note that every framework has primitives. **2. The timing problem.** If the agent is an enduring substance, unchanging in the relevant respect, why does the act occur *now* rather than earlier or later? The reply distinguishes the cause from the conditions of its exercise. The agent causes, but exercises the power in a context of reasons, deliberation and circumstance, which explains the timing without determining the outcome. Critics regard this as unstable; supporters regard the demand for a *determining* explanation of timing as begging the question, since that is exactly what is denied. **3. It conflicts with the causal closure of the physical.** If the physical world is causally closed, no non-physical agent-cause can intervene without violating conservation laws. Three responses. Closure is a metaphysical thesis rather than an experimental result, and it is contested. If the person is not a separate immaterial item pushing on neurons but a substance whose activity is realised in the physical, the framing of intervention does not apply straightforwardly. And the argument presupposes physicalism about persons, which is exactly what [Substance Dualism](/codex/substance-dualism/) and [Property Dualism](/codex/property-dualism/) dispute. **4. Neuroscience has refuted it.** Benjamin Libet's experiments found readiness potentials preceding reported conscious intention. Libet's own interpretation preserved a veto capacity, and the results concern the initiation of simple spontaneous movements, not deliberated choices over time. Later work, particularly Schurger and colleagues (2012), reinterpreted the readiness potential as accumulating neural noise crossing a threshold rather than a decision already made. The experiments are also about timing and awareness rather than about causal origination, so they do not reach the metaphysical claim. ## Why it matters apologetically - **Moral responsibility.** Praise, blame, guilt and desert presuppose that the agent could have done otherwise in a sense stronger than compatibilism supplies. See [Conscience](/codex/conscience/) and [Divine Command Theory](/codex/divine-command-theory/). - **The free-will defence.** Its standard form requires libertarian freedom, since a God who determines every choice cannot appeal to creaturely freedom to explain moral evil. See [Problem of Evil, Free Will Defense](/codex/problem-of-evil-free-will-defense/). - **The argument from reason.** If beliefs are produced by non-rational causes rather than adopted for reasons by a rational agent, the naturalist's own beliefs are undercut along with everyone else's. See [Argument from the Reliability of Reason](/codex/argument-from-the-reliability-of-reason/) and [Argument from Free Will](/codex/argument-from-free-will/). - **The first cause.** A cause that originates without being originated is precisely what the cosmological arguments arrive at, and agent causation gives the concept a home in ordinary experience rather than leaving it a special exemption for God alone. See [Cosmological Arguments](/codex/cosmological-arguments/) and [Causal Principle](/codex/causal-principle/). ## Where Christians disagree This is a genuine intramural dispute and the codex records it rather than settling it. Reformed theology has generally been compatibilist, holding that freedom is doing what one wills without external constraint, and that this is consistent with God's decree. Arminian, Molinist and much Catholic thought has generally been libertarian. Agent causation is the strongest metaphysical development of the libertarian side, and a compatibilist can accept everything on this page except its necessity for responsibility. See [Free Will and Determinism](/codex/free-will-and-determinism/) and [Libertarian Free Will](/codex/libertarian-free-will/). ## See also - [Free Will and Determinism](/codex/free-will-and-determinism/), the parent debate - [Libertarian Free Will](/codex/libertarian-free-will/), the position agent causation develops - [Hard Determinism](/codex/hard-determinism/), the principal rival - [Argument from Free Will](/codex/argument-from-free-will/), the theistic argument built on it - [Causal Principle](/codex/causal-principle/), causation in the cosmological arguments - [Metaphysics](/codex/metaphysics/), the parent discipline - [Substance Dualism](/codex/substance-dualism/), the account of persons that most naturally supports it - [Property Dualism](/codex/property-dualism/), the weaker dualist option - [Problem of Evil, Free Will Defense](/codex/problem-of-evil-free-will-defense/), the theodicy that depends on libertarian freedom - [Argument from the Reliability of Reason](/codex/argument-from-the-reliability-of-reason/), the parallel argument about belief formation - [Thomas Aquinas](/codex/thomas-aquinas/), the scholastic predecessor - [Imago Dei](/codex/imago-dei/), the theological ground for creaturely origination
## Common questions this page answers **Q: What is agent causation?** The view that a person, an enduring substance, can cause an action directly, rather than the action being caused only by prior events such as desires or brain states. On this account, when you deliberately raise your hand, the cause is you, not merely something that happened inside you a moment earlier. **Q: Why do philosophers think free will needs agent causation?** Because of a dilemma. If a choice is determined by prior events, it belongs to those events rather than to you. If it is undetermined but still caused by prior events, then given the same starting state it might have gone either way for no reason, which is chance rather than control. And if it has no cause at all, it is a brute happening. Agent causation denies that the dilemma is exhaustive by adding a cause that is a thing rather than an event. **Q: Isn't agent causation just mysterious hand-waving?** Event causation is not much better understood once examined, as Hume showed. There is no agreed reductive analysis of what makes any relation causal, only competing accounts with known problems. Charging agent causation with being primitive assumes event causation has an analysis it does not have, and every metaphysical framework has primitives somewhere. **Q: Do Libet's neuroscience experiments disprove free will?** They do not reach the claim. Libet himself preserved a conscious veto, the experiments concerned simple spontaneous finger movements rather than deliberated choices, and later work by Schurger and colleagues reinterpreted the readiness potential as accumulating neural noise crossing a threshold rather than a decision already taken. The studies address the timing of awareness, not whether an agent originates action. **Q: Do all Christians believe in libertarian free will?** No, and this is a long-standing internal disagreement. Reformed theology has generally been compatibilist, holding that freedom means acting according to one's own will without external constraint, which it takes to be consistent with God's decree. Arminian, Molinist and much Catholic thought has generally been libertarian, and agent causation is the strongest metaphysical development of that side. **Q: How does agent causation relate to God as the first cause?** Directly. The cosmological arguments conclude to a cause that originates without itself being caused, which is the same structure agent causation attributes, in a limited form, to created persons. If the concept is coherent for God, it is already in the framework, and creatures made in God's image possessing a limited version of it follows naturally rather than being an ad hoc addition.