Contact Information
Department of Philosophy
Brown University
Box 1918
Providence, RI 02912
Home: (401) 521-8973
Work: (401) 863-2718
Fax: (401) 863-2719
Dale_Tuggy@Brown.edu,
dat7@mailcity.com
http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/tuggy/HomePage.html
Education
Ph.D. Philosophy: Brown
University (degree expected May 2000)
M.A. Philosophy: The
Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA (1995)
B.A. Philosophy: Biola
University, La Mirada, CA. (1993)
Honors
Claremont Graduate University Philosophy Department Fellowships
(1993-1995)
Brown University Philosophy Department Fellowship (1995-1996)
Brown University Research Fellowships (1998-1999, Spring
2000)
Dissertation
Title: Agent Causation
Committee: James
Van Cleve (chair), Ernest
Sosa, Victor
Caston
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics, Modern Philosophy
Areas of Competence
Epistemology, Philosophy of Religion
Additional Areas of Teaching Interest
Ancient & Medieval Philosophy, Logic
Sample syllabi for courses in all of the above subjects
are viewable and downloadable at: http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/tuggy/syl.html
Dissertation Abstract
The only way to be a libertarian about free will is to
believe in agent causation. I show why several recent non-agent-causation
libertarian theories fall short, and why some traditional agent causation
theories are inadequate as well. Despite these failed projects, one must
conceive of the agent as the cause of her free actions. Further, one can
spell out what it is to be an agent cause in an intelligible way. To be
an agent cause is just to exercise a two-way power. Only these events,
exercises of two-way powers, are theoretically qualified to be events which
are by their nature under our control. Such events are by their
nature free actions, and other events are free actions inasmuch as they
are related in the right way to these. Indeed, no event is an action at
all, unless it is under an agentís control in a certain sense. A
further
sort of control is necessary for an action being free. But there is no
way to account for control without the notion of agent causation. My theory
of agent causation is thus both a theory of action and a theory of free
will, or free action. (A fuller, chapter by chapter description of Agent
Causation is at the end of this c.v.)
Languages
Ancient Greek (reading knowledge)
Medieval Latin (reading knowledge)
Forthcoming Paper
"Thomas Reid on Causation" in Reid Studies
Paper Under Review
"Naturalism vs. Natural Functions"
Translation
"A
Tract on Future Events by Richard Lavenham" (d. 1383?) in
Time,
Creation and
World-Order, ed. Mogens Wegener (Aarhus University
Press), 1999.
Conference Papers
"Thomas Reid on Causation", presented at the First
International Reid Symposium, Aberdeen, Scotland, July 1998 and at
the Pacific Regional Meeting of the Society of Christian Philosophers (SCP),
January 1998
"Why There Can be no Swampman", presented at the Mountain-Plains
Regional Meeting of the SCP, March 1998
"Defusing the Divine Command Theory", presented at Eastern
Regional Meeting of the SCP, April 1998
"Truth, Indeterminism, and Al Gore", presented at the
Pacific Division of the SCP, March 1997
Works in Progress
"Truth and Indeterminism"
"Taking the Leap: Logic without Bivalence"
"Three Arguments for Logical Fatalism"
"Necessity, Control, and the Divine Command Theory"
Teaching Experience
Full Instructional Responsibility
PL 4 Reason and Religion, Fall 1999,
Brown
PL 54 Logic, Summer 1999, Brown
PL 54 Logic, Summer 1997, Brown
Teaching Assistant
PL 1 The Place of Persons, Fall 1997,
Brown, for Matthew McGrath
PL 36 Early Modern Philosophy, Spring
1997, Brown, for Justin
Broackes
PL35 Ancient Philosophy, Fall 1996,
Brown, for Victor Caston
Attended Teaching Practica sponsored by the Philosophy
Department of the Claremont Graduate University, 1993-4: Class Structure
and Grading , Lecture and Class Discussion, Teaching an Introduction to
Philosophy, Teaching an Introduction to Ethics, Teaching Critical Thinking,
Teaching the Philosophy of Religion, Teaching Reading and Writing Skills
in the Philosophy Class, Teaching Ancient Philosophy.
Graduate Coursework
Brown University
Epistemology Seminar (Ernest Sosa)
- Spring 1997
Epistemology Seminar (Sosa) - Spring
1996
Mental Causation Seminar (Jaegwon
Kim)
Philosophy of Thomas Reid Seminar
(James Van Cleve)
Intentionality in Ancient Greek Philosophy
Seminar (Victor Caston)
Sensation and Perception Seminar (Justin
Broackes)
British Empiricism (Broackes)
Medieval Philosophy (Caston)
The Nature of Morality (James Dreier)
Philosophical Logic (Van Cleve)
Plato (Caston)
Readings on logical fatalism and temporal
logic (Van Cleve)
Providence College
Medieval Latin (John Lawless)
The Claremont Graduate University
Locke and Contemporary Essentialism
Seminar (Edwin McCann)
Hume (McCann)
Kant (Jill Buroker)
Philosophy of Mind Seminar (Dion Scott-Kakures)
Philosophy of Religion (Steven Davis)
History of the Philosophy of Science
(Joel Smith)
Aristotle's Ethics Seminar (Charles
Young)
Philosophical Greek (Young)
Greek Readings (Young)
Logic II (John Vickers)
Logic (Jay Atlas)
Topics in Philosophy: Lockeís
Essay
and Millís
On Liberty
(Vickers, Al Louch)
Computer Skills
Taught logic twice using Tarskiís
World and Hyperproof
programs and books.
Basic knowledge of html, used in maintaining and updating most of the Brown Philosophy Departmentís WWW pages at:
http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/main.html
and constructing pages such as these:
http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/tuggy/HomePage.html
http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/chisholm.html
Longer Dissertation Abstract
In recent years there has been excellent
work on libertarian theories of human freedom. A strong, though not universal
trend among these theories is to eschew any appeal to the agent as cause
of her free actions. After laying out five criteria for a successful libertarian
account of free will in chapter 1, in chapter 2 I examine the four best
recent alternatives to traditional agent causation theories, by Carl Ginet,
Stewart Goetz, Randolph Clarke, and Robert Kane. I find that each of these
proposals clearly fails on its own terms. In addition, I highlight other
problems they face. First, all are theories of free actions done for a
reason, and not free actions simpliciter. It seems best to account
for the latter first. Second, the proposals by Clarke and Kane depend crucially
on the notion that events consisting of an agentís having of reasons
"probabilistically cause" her free actions. I develop an argument that
there is the notion of probabilistic causation is at least as problematic
as agent causation, so long as we are conceiving of causation in a realistic,
non-reductive way. Third, the proposals of Clarke and Kane inherit problems
plaguing any causal theory of action, in particular the problem of deviant
causal chains. The situation warrants a careful reconsideration of the
prospects of agent causation theories.
In chapters 3 and 4 I give a critical
account of the theories of Richard Taylor and Roderick Chisholm, who re-popularized
agent causation theories in the late fifties and sixties. Ironically, both
later abandoned agent causation. I lay out the development and motivations
for their theories of agent causation, as well as their stated reasons
for abandoning them. In doing this I make plain the inadequacies of their
respective views, and how these doomed their projects from the start. Still,
I argue that they were in fundamental ways on the right track, and I incorporate
some of their insights in my own account.
In chapter 5, I lay out my theory
of agent causation in detail, which owes more to Thomas Reid and William
Rowe than to Taylor or Chisholm. The fundamentals of the theory are (1)
an action is (a) an exercise a two-way power to bring about an event or
(b) an event with an exercise of active power in its causal history, (2)
we call very different kinds of events "actions" - some which can be free
or not, and some which by their nature free, and cannot be caused, and
(3) the fundamental concept in both action theory and free will theory
is control. Actions just are events which are under our control
in one sense, and free actions are those which are under our control in
more restrictive sense. In the sixth chapter I show how my account supplies
principled and compelling replies to objections which have plagued both
agent causation and non-agent-causation libertarian theories. The former
have to do with the intelligibility of agent causation, the incompatibility
of agent causation with naturalism, and various alleged vicious regresses
generated by appeals to the agent as cause. The latter have to do chiefly
with the difficulty of both allowing for indeterminism
and
guaranteeing that the agent has the right sort of control over her free
actions.
References
James Van Cleve, Brown University JVC@Brown.edu
Ernest Sosa, Brown University
Ernest_Sosa@Brown.edu
Victor Caston, Brown University
Victor_Caston@Brown.edu
Department Phone: (401) 863-2718
Download a viewable and printable version of Dale's C.V. in Adobe .pdf format by clicking here.