Causation and Agency

Abstract

‘Causation’ covers a variety of dependent relationships between and among objects and events. The axiom concerning the unicity of reality has been thought to warrant the assumption that causal relationships of social phenomena, including economics, share common properties with corporeal objects, that, in short, agency is a form of causation. This paper defends the opposite view, to wit, that causation based on the properties and powers of corporeal objects (be they natural or man-made) is unlike causation based on agency. Whereas causation among the former is a function of the properties and powers of the objects at play, agency ‘causation’ is the product of human intentionality. Any theory of agency must account for free will even where, as in the case of rule based roles, the instantiation of free will is qualified. An agent’s action may, of course, set in motion a causal law by instantiating the properties of the object(s) producing the intended effect (eg. pulling the trigger of a loaded gun), and the agent will be responsible for the consequences, but the discharge of the bullet is the result of the properties and powers of the gun and the bullet and not of the agent. The profound ontological difference between causation and agency cannot be overcome with resort to epistemological, logical or linguistic considerations. In economic and social life the agent relies not on the causal properties of corporeal objects, but on her action authorised by social rules. The causal properties and powers of objects are fundamentally different from the causal powers of rules, because, unlike the former, the latter are designed for the achievement of an intended result and cannot operate without intentional application. The proper study of economics is not the study of the properties of objects contrived by economic theory, but the nature of purposeful human action.