Shepherd on Causal Necessity and Human Agency

Shepherd defends an account of the universe founded on two causal principles: that effects necessarily have causes, and that like causes have like effects. Folding mind into the class of natural phenomena governed by these principles, Shepherd naturalizes the mind, but in doing so she sets herself t...

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Main Author: Louise Daoust
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Aperio 2022-10-01
Series:Journal of Modern Philosophy
Subjects:
Online Access:https://jmphil.org/article/id/2046/
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author Louise Daoust
author_facet Louise Daoust
author_sort Louise Daoust
collection DOAJ
description Shepherd defends an account of the universe founded on two causal principles: that effects necessarily have causes, and that like causes have like effects. Folding mind into the class of natural phenomena governed by these principles, Shepherd naturalizes the mind, but in doing so she sets herself the challenge of explaining how, within a deterministic universe, agents can be necessary causes of their own actions. With special attention to Shepherd’s resistance to materialism and to any reduction of the mental, the paper argues that we can read Shepherd as leveraging her original theory of causation to develop a distinctive compatibilist view of the psychology of intention, one that makes agents the necessary causal sources of their own actions.
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spelling doaj-art-4cdf3b984b38448cb5b8c6ab09c335582025-01-31T16:08:23ZengAperioJournal of Modern Philosophy2644-06522022-10-014010.25894/jmp.2046Shepherd on Causal Necessity and Human AgencyLouise Daoust0 Shepherd defends an account of the universe founded on two causal principles: that effects necessarily have causes, and that like causes have like effects. Folding mind into the class of natural phenomena governed by these principles, Shepherd naturalizes the mind, but in doing so she sets herself the challenge of explaining how, within a deterministic universe, agents can be necessary causes of their own actions. With special attention to Shepherd’s resistance to materialism and to any reduction of the mental, the paper argues that we can read Shepherd as leveraging her original theory of causation to develop a distinctive compatibilist view of the psychology of intention, one that makes agents the necessary causal sources of their own actions.https://jmphil.org/article/id/2046/Mary Shepherdcausal necessityagencymaterialismcompatibilism
spellingShingle Louise Daoust
Shepherd on Causal Necessity and Human Agency
Journal of Modern Philosophy
Mary Shepherd
causal necessity
agency
materialism
compatibilism
title Shepherd on Causal Necessity and Human Agency
title_full Shepherd on Causal Necessity and Human Agency
title_fullStr Shepherd on Causal Necessity and Human Agency
title_full_unstemmed Shepherd on Causal Necessity and Human Agency
title_short Shepherd on Causal Necessity and Human Agency
title_sort shepherd on causal necessity and human agency
topic Mary Shepherd
causal necessity
agency
materialism
compatibilism
url https://jmphil.org/article/id/2046/
work_keys_str_mv AT louisedaoust shepherdoncausalnecessityandhumanagency