Agent Causation and its Problems

It seems that if determinism holds, in other words, if every event has been caused by some previous events, then what an agent does at this moment has been caused by some events prior to the agent's birth. This means that no agent is morally responsible for what he does. On the other hand, if non-determinism holds, i.e. if some events occur randomly without having a cause, then the agents are not morally responsible as well. By introducing the notion of agent causation, Roderick Chisholm tries to escape this dilemma. According to his view, every event has a cause but some events are not caused by other events but by agents which do not themselves have a cause. In this paper, I review Chisholm's theory and his responses to some of the alleged objections. I argue why some of these objections, along with some new objections, undermine the adequacy of Chisholm's position.