I.  Introduction

          Scott Sehon’s Free Will and Action Explanation:  A Non-Causal, Compatibilist Account is a well-written, engaging theory of agency, free will, and moral responsibility.  In the face of contemporary free will skepticism, Sehon sets out to argue that freedom and responsibility are consistent with our common-sense beliefs and scientific assumptions about the world.  One of the central questions of the contemporary free will debate is whether freedom and responsibility are compatible with universal causal determinism, the theory that there is only one possible future, completely causally necessitated by the laws of nature and the state of affairs at the beginning of time.  Scientific theories assume universal causal determinism.  However, skeptics ask how anyone can be free if their actions are determined by states of affairs that occurred long before they were born.

          Sehon contends this skepticism is largely a byproduct of philosopher’s commitment to casual theories of action — the theory of action that contends that an agent’s actions are caused by her reasons.  Here, Sehon defends a teleological theory of action — the theory that actions are best understood as goal-directed, and the goal-directedness of actions cannot be reduced to causal explanations. 

          Consider the following story:

(S) Scott got up from his desk, went to the kitchen, and got cup of coffee.

According to the causal theory of action, we should interpret this story as follows:

(S-C) Scott desired a cup of coffee, believed there was a cup of coffee in the kitchen, and the belief-desire pair caused him to get up from his desk go to the kitchen, and get a cup of coffee.

In contrast, according to the teleological account of action, we should interpret the story as goal directed:

(S-T) Scott’s goal was to get a cup of coffee, and acted to reach that goal.

Sehon contends that typical action-explanations are teleological, goal-directed explanations and not reducible to causal explanations.  He doesn’t deny that our actions are caused, rather he contends that how our actions are caused — deterministically or otherwise — is irrelevant to questions about whether our actions are free and whether we can be appropriate candidates of praise or blame for them.

The book begins with a concise and compelling introduction, followed by a single chapter in which he outlines what is at stake in the free will debate.  The rest of the book is comprised of two parts, each with six chapters.  In part 1, Sehon lays out and defends a teleological account of action.  This includes a strong chapter 4 in which Sehon responds to criticism of the teleological view from Alfred Mele and Carl Ginet.  In part 2, he defends a teleological account of free will and moral responsibility.

 

II.  Two Concerns — Reducibility and Responsibility

A. Reducibility

          Sehon contends that what makes a behavior an action is its goal-directedness, but argues that goal-directedness cannot be reduced to facts about causal chains (4-5).  There are two problems with this claim — First, Sehon’s teleological account of freedom agency is said to be compatibilist — meaning it is compatible with the theory of universal causal determinism.  However, according to universal causal determinism, every thing in the universe is reducible to causal chains.  Thus, either the teleological account of freedom contends there are facts about the world independent of causal chains that make us free, or (less ontologically-burdensomely) the goal-directness of actions can be reduced to facts about causal chains — such as facts about what the agent intended.  This latter option seems preferable, as Sehon could argue that it makes more sense to talk about actions as goal-directed than as the inescapable result of the laws of nature and states of affairs of the universe long before any of us were born.

Second, and more problematic, is that this option isn’t always open to Sehon, as in many cases the actual causal chains — what caused the agent to act — makes all the difference in determining whether than event is an agent’s action, and what kind of action it is.  Consider the following claim:

(T) Scott dumps coffee on his laptop.

For compatibilists, the truth of this sentence is compatible with any set of the following:

(T-1) Black bumps into Scott’s elbow in such a way that makes it impossible for Scott to avoid dumping coffee on his laptop.

(T-2) Scott knows his warranty on his laptop is about to expire and believes that if he dumps coffee onto his laptop the warranty will cover a replacement.

(T-3) Scott has the absurd belief that his laptop is in constant pain and believes dumping coffee onto it will destroy it, ending its pain.

Sehon contends that we ought to judge action explanations based on the degree to which the explanation makes the behavior appropriate for achieving a goal and the degree to which the goal is valuable (28) and that we can determine the correct explanation by finding out the account that makes the best rational sense of the agent at the time (39).  Yet surely the first question we should ask is whether Scott acted or was acted upon by Black.  Scott might very well have intended to dump coffee on his laptop, but if he did so only because Black bumped him, in an important sense Scott didn’t act!  If Scott does act, say for either (T-2) or (T-3), his goal is to destroy his laptop.  Suppose Scott acts believing both (T-2) and (T-3), surely whether his action is malicious or benign depends upon which actually caused his action — (T-2) or (T-3).  Surely this is best understood as a fact about the causal chain.

 

B.  Responsibility

Theories of responsibility that purport to be compatible with determinism often have trouble explaining why it makes sense to hold causally determined human agents morally responsible but not non-human agents like animals or computers, and Sehon’s teleological account seems to fare no better.  Sehon holds the following account of freedom and moral responsibility:

free actions = actions for which we are responsible = intentional actions = goal-directed actions (129)

However, this definition of freedom and responsibility is too broad.  It’s not clear that all free actions are goal-oriented, but surely actions can be goal-oriented without being free.  Many non-person animals can sensibly be described as acting to achieve goals (eating to satisfy their hunger), and most artificial machines — such as computers — can be said to perform actions to achieve goals (the computer runs a virus scan to detect viruses).

III.  Conclusion

          In this book, Sehon makes substantial contributions to the contemporary debate over the compatibility of free will and determinism.  Although I cannot say that Sehon has convinced me that how our actions are caused is superfluous to questions regarding freedom and responsibility, Sehon’s theory is one of the more original and promising compatibilist theories, and his arguments are clear, interesting, and well worth review for those interested in and familiar with the contemporary free will debate.

 

© 2016 William Simkulet

 

William Simkulet, Ph.D., University of Wisonsin, Marshfield/Wood County