ABSTRACT
Given that Robert Kane’s theory of dual efforts leads into some serious problems, in this chapter it is considered how we might be able to salvage an event-causal view which is very much like Kane’s view but rejects the theory of dual efforts. The first half of this chapter examines various problematic ways in which event-causal libertarian views could be and have been developed without appealing to dual efforts of will; among such views considered are a dual wantings model which the author, John Lemos, has proposed in prior writings; Daniel Dennett’s and Alfred Mele’s modest libertarian models; Mark Balaguer’s view; and Alfred Mele’s daring libertarian model. It is argued that each of these approaches suffer from significant problems. In the second half of the chapter the author develops two new ways to think about the nature of self-forming acts. One of these news ways is more Kanean in nature. It suggests that we keep the notion of dual efforts, but, instead of thinking of them as dual efforts to choose each of the options considered, we should rather think of them as dual efforts to keep both options alive as we deliberate. The other model rejects the notion of dual efforts altogether and suggests that we think of the agent as actively involved in the assigning of weights to reasons in the moments leading up to choice. Here Robert Nozick’s libertarian view is given some consideration.
