ABSTRACT
Were occasionalism true, as to the correlations between our volitions and our bodily movements, it would have ‘no effect on human conduct’ (EAP 41), since it would not change our experience of the exertion of active powers, and thus, would not diminish our responsibility. For our concept of responsibility is entirely dependent on the consciousness of our voluntary movements (31). Indeed, ‘we know not even how those immediate effects of our power are produced by our willing them’ (40); but we do not need to know that in order to be the author of our voluntary actions. Interestingly, Reid mentions that the same ‘endless’ dispute may be also ‘applied to the power of directing our thoughts’. For instance, we cannot rule out the possibility that attention requires ‘the aid of other efficient causes’.8 A fortiori, our less voluntary or non-voluntary operations – assent, cognitive responses to evidence, certain kinds of memory, feelings, affective responses – may be considered as dependent on the actions of other efficient causes. Were we to discover that certain intermediary operations required to connect our volitions and our exertions are actions of another agent, this would not impact our responsibility. As Lindsay (2005, 30) puts it, ‘our actions can contain causal elements that we are unaware of – and not in total control of – while still being our actions’. There is a perfect match between the scope of our knowledge of powers and the extent of our responsibility.
