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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Along with more customary claims, Richard Taylor advances a new argument against a straightforward indeterministic analysis of free will. The analysis at issue is straightforward in the sense that it considers an occurrence to be a freely performed action, for which someone is fully responsible, if and only if it is causally contingent (i.e. causally possible but not necessary) in a particular way. Since Taylor's assumptions lead him to regard this position as a non-starter, the new part of his argument is not expressly designed as anti-indeterministic. He assumes that if an action were merely causally contingent relative to its antecedent conditions, then it would be random in a sense which involves that no-one could be responsible for it. Unlike the determinists who assume this too, he believes, however, that causal contingency is a necessary, though not sufficient, feature of any freely performed action, for which someone is fully responsible. The new part of his argument is expressly designed to support this intermediate position by establishing the existence of some further factor in agency which in one of its roles supplements the contingency of any action that is freely performed.
1 Action and Purpose. Prentice-Hall. 1966. pp. 53-59.
2 See also op cit. p. 130.
3 Actually Taylor writes as if the ‘Can’ indicates that the action is Causally contingent as well as causally possible. In some contexts no doubt it does, but not explicitly or apart from context. since there is no contradiction about saying ‘can, and must’
4 Incidentally, Taylor seems not to notice that the decision is up to me only on the assumption that the actions of moving my finger and keeping it still are equally available at the relevant moment, and that this contradicts supposition (b).
5 See Cranston, Maurice. Freedom pp. 169–170Google Scholar: Foot, Philippa ‘Free Will as Involving Determinism’, Philosophical Review. October 1957CrossRefGoogle Scholar: and Rankin, K. W. ‘Doer and Doing', Mind, July 1960CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Choice and Chance (Oxford 1961); ‘More on The Dererministic Windmill’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 1964.
6 Note that in their causal application ‘may’ and ‘might’ seem interchangeable. But the former has also a prescriptive or permissive application in which ‘He may not do X’ is the contradictory, not the subcontrary of ‘He may do X'.