ABSTRACT
Theories concerning the nature of free action fall into different groups. Among these is a group of theories that, in common, take our having the power to act freely to be inconsistent with the truth of causal determinism and that, in common as well, do not require either that free acts be uncaused or that they be caused by agents as substances. In other words, on this collection of theories, we cannot act freely if every event is causally necessitated by the past and the laws of nature; and, in order to act freely, it need not be the case that our acts have no causal antecedents whatsoever nor need it be the case that agents cause actions in some way that is irreducible to event-causal terms. So, for instance, if you raise your glass to make a toast, this cannot be a free action if it is true that, at every moment, there is exactly one physically possible future. Furthermore, this action’s counting as a free act of yours does not require that the act had no causes at all, and it does not require that you, as a substance, brought it about. Instead, according to these theories, your act of raising your glass, if free, had events that led up to it and brought it about. Particular accounts within this group differ over which sorts of events precede free actions and over where, in the causal history of the free act, there must be causation that is indeterministic in nature.
