The Causality of Moral Actions Integrating Mind and Body : Thomas Reid and Thomas Aquinas

Abstract

In the realm of analytic philosophy, agent-causation theory posits that human actions are moral insofar as they are caused by the agent, and are therefore not simply events that follow other events according to the laws of nature. Such causality is, however, problematic : How can an agent cause an action involving physical events ? Reference in agent-cause theory to Thomas Reid, a leading philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment, has allowed us to discover the natural philosophical and metaphysical dimensions of this problem within contemporary philosophy of action. To understand this problem, we have had to investigate the capacity of the will as a faculty, avoiding the contemporary reduction of the will to mere phenomena, or events, or episodes. This is not possible without recourse to the history of philosophy, but represents an approach which frees us from the confinement of certain sometimes constraining philosophical categories.