ArgumentThis paper argues that Samuel Clarke's account of agent causation (i) provides a philosophical basis for moderate voluntarism, and (ii) both leads to and benefits from the acceptance of partial occasionalism as a model of causation for material beings. Clarke's account of agent causation entails that for an agent to be properly called an agent (i.e. causally efficacious), it is essential that the agent is free to choose whether to act or not. This freedom is compatible with the existence of conceptually necessary connections. Hence, Clarke can harmonize God's freedom of choosing with the existence of eternal and necessary relations among things. Moreover, in Clarke's account, only intelligent entities can be properly understood as efficacious causes. Beings deprived of intelligence are not agents or efficacious causes at all and their effects are thus the result of the immediate action of some intelligent being operating upon them.

中文翻译：

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塞缪尔·克拉克（Samuel Clarke）谈代理因果关系、自愿主义和偶然主义

论点本文认为，塞缪尔克拉克对代理因果关系的解释（i）为温和的自愿主义提供了哲学基础，并且（ii）既导致并受益于将部分偶然主义作为物质存在的因果关系模型的接受。克拉克对代理因果关系的解释意味着，要使代理被恰当地称为代理（即因果有效），代理必须自由选择是否采取行动。这种自由与概念上必要的联系的存在是相容的。因此，克拉克可以将上帝的选择自由与事物之间永恒的必然关系的存在相协调。此外，在克拉克的叙述中，只有智能实体才能被正确地理解为有效的原因。