Free Will in a Network of Interacting Causes

: Broadly neo-Aristotelian theories of the general ontology of objects and of causal powers and causation have proliferated in the past quarter-century. This chapter begins by canvassing such theories and defending a particular position on each of these disputed topics. It then proposes a way to think about the exercise of (indeterministic) free will within the preferred framework. A number of contemporary metaphysicians are engaged in the project of working out a pared-down, broadly neo-Aristotelian account of the natural world that provides a plausible framework for modern science. 1 Much as one seems to find differences in detail within a consistent broad vision at different locations in Aristotle's corpus, so contemporary theorists have forged different footpaths through the neo-Aristotelian grove. Two important, contested categories in the recent discussion are substance/object and efficient causation . In what follows, I have two aims. The first aim is to indicate very general analyses of these categories that I favor and to situate and motivate them within this recent discussion. These partial analyses leave open many difficult 1 'Pared-down' because they do not deploy Aristotle's central doctrine of hylomorphism. There is a smaller but growing number of contemporary theorists who argue that jettisoning hylomorphism was a mistake, including thee contributors (Hauser, Koons, and Simpson) to this volume. See note 4 for brief discussion of hylomorphism's relation to the alternative analysis of objects proposed here.