Action as Downward Causation

Abstract

AbstractIn this paper, I try to argue that the recognition that non-human animals are relevant to the free will problem delivers interesting new ways of thinking about the central metaphysical issues at the heart of that problem. Some such dividends, I suggest, are the following: (i) that the problem of free will can be considered to be just a more specific version of a general question concerning how agency is to be fitted into the natural world; (ii) that action can be usefully regarded as an especially interesting form of downward causation; and that (iii) the metaphysical possibility of downward causation, and hence, indirectly, also of free will, can be illuminated in valuable ways by thinking about the hierarchical structure of, and systems of functioning within, biological organisms.