Qi Shuo 's Actor Causality Theory

Agent-causation is one of the important ways to deal with the everlasting problem of free will. In 18th century, this idea was mainly expounded and demonstrated by Thomas Reid. And undoubtedly, this perspective also faced lots of challenges as its counterparts, namely, hard determinism, event-causation and the ambiguity and other flaws in its own system. As along with the developments of western philosophy, this hypothesis has been refined and advanced according to different philosophical schools. Thus, the atlas of free will is also fulfilled and elaborated by all those different approaches.The main focus of the essay is Roderick Milton Chisholm, who is the prominent philosopher in analytic philosophy domain in the USA, and his thoughts about agent-causation.The introduction part presents briefly the ideas of certain representative philosophers about free will such as Thomas Reid and John Locke and the direct perception and consideration of freedom in everyday life, and also points out the agent causation as one of the major forces to support the freedom and responsibilities of humans to solve the free will problem. Then it leads to the subject of the paper, namely the agent-causation theory of Roderick Chisholm.The first chapter deals with the concept of causation since action or will both has a reason and humans’freedom is different from natural events and accordingly agent was introduced. Then how could agent cause an action or will? We must analyze causation specifically from event-causation and agent-causation, immanent causation and especially causal contribution as the major part of Chisholm’s agent-causation theory to establish the basic causation thoughts.The second chapter analyzes the concept of ’could’ because almost all discussion about free will could not be sufficient without mentioning the proposition’could have done otherwise’. The chapter demonstrates the respective ideas about the proposition from the classic compatibilists and Chisholm and at length the analysis of ’could’ by Chisholm.The third chapter discusses the agent from ’within one’s power’ ’the purposive activities’ ’endeavor’ and ’moral responsibilities’ so that we can grasp the concept of agent and freedom comprehensively and thoroughly.The metaphysical ideas of Chisholm, of course as his big characteristic, are so intimately to his agent-causation stance and provide sufficient demonstration of the agent-causation perspective. Hence, the agent-causation represents fresh vitality in the 20th century.