A Noncausal Theory of Agency

In this paper, I assume the plausibility of agency theory or libertarianism and develop a noncausal theory of agency. For the most part, agency theorists have been causal theorists of action. According to causal theories of action, the essential difference between actions and mere happenings is to be found in their prior causal histories. Causal agency theorists hold that actions are events which at some point are caused by agents, as opposed to other events. Hence, they have been called agent-causationists. However, the concept of agent-causation has been much criticized and its two principal advocates have now renounced it.' Therefore, an important question is whether one can have agency without agent-causation. I believe that one can, and in this paper I go some way in explaining how this is possible. In Section I, I do three things. First, I state a desideratum which the agent-causationist claims any theory of agency must satisfy. Second, I summarize why agent-causationists have claimed both that a noncausal theory of agency cannot satisfy thts desideratum and that the concept of agent-causation is a necessary element in an agency theory which does fulfill it. Third, I explain how agent-causation does not provide an agency theory which satisfies this desideratum and show how agent-causation is actually superfluous for this task, once the concept of a reason for acting has been invoked to explain an action's performance. In other words, I