Prof. Erasmus Mayr: "Reasons, Causes and Deviant Causal Chains: Can Dispositions Help?"

Most philosophers still think that when we explain an action in terms of the agent's motivating reasons, we provide a causal explanation of her action. The main problem for this view is usually held to be the so-called deviant causal chains problem. In this talk, I argue that, while deviant causal chain cases, as they are normally conceived, do not undermine the causalist's view, there is another kind of cases which does and which resists the proposed solutions to the deviant causal chains problem. Especially, these cases cannot be dealt with by adopting the dispositionalist version of causalism that has recently become a serious contender in the debate.