Abstract
Implicit in Roderick Chisholm’s (1964/2002) argument in favor of the idea of an “immanent cause” is a certain conception of self: as a cause of a particular kind, a source of change whose powers are not themselves dependent upon other, antecedent events. Chisholm presents this concept of causation and the experience of ourselves as agents as intimately intertwined, and he draws on Reid to substantiate the thought that our general grasp of causation is constitutively tied to the experience of ourselves as having the power to bring about a variety of events. On this account, we could not operate with the concept of a cause quite generally if we weren’t in a position to enjoy the experience of making things go otherwise.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the organisers of the conference “Self-Evaluation – Individual and Collective” at which this paper was presented for a stimulating and thought-provoking event. Thanks are due to Juliette Gloor in particular for her detailed and insightful comments on an earlier draft.
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Seemann, A. (2011). Interpretation, Cause, and Avowal: On the Evaluative Dimension of Selfhood. In: Konzelmann Ziv, A., Lehrer, K., Schmid, H. (eds) Self-Evaluation. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 116. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1266-9_3
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