ABSTRACT
It is essential to decision and choice–no mere logical accident as it were–that there be agents, actions and reasons for doing. Some actions are voluntary, others involuntary; we say, as circumstances warrant, that a person could or could not have done otherwise; we recognize that some have and others do not have much will-power; and that some acts are and others are not performed of the agent's own free will. The familiar view is that the distinction is to be made in terms of the order of the causes of action: a voluntary action is one that is somehow produced by the will–acts of volition; an involuntary action is one that proceeds from other events. The centrally important uses of 'voluntary' and 'involuntary' are those which refer us to the scene of social and moral conduct, where actions performed by one agent have a bearing upon the lives and actions of others.
