ABSTRACT
To establish procedures for deciding the responsible agency question will be to nail down one step in the procedures for justifying both attributions and ascriptions of responsibility. Philosophers have answered in a variety of ways: that it means the man 'is free to choose his course of action', that he 'could have done otherwise than he did', that he has 'response-ability'. For, it is said, if a man could not have acted otherwise, he cannot be held morally responsible for the act. The argument has been concisely put by Chisholm. This seems to wipe out the legitimacy of the notion of a responsible agent, and thus a necessary presupposition of many attributive and deontic R-statements is lost. A brief comment on the former attempt, which might be called the 'autonomous agent' view, is appropriate. But the more serious difficulties arise with the attempt to formulate the 'causal hypothesis', the so-called determinist thesis and the corresponding thesis for indeterminism.
