This is a wonderful book. The writing is lucid and crisp, the argumentation is powerful, and the position defended is novel and attractive. The book develops what Sartorio calls “big-picture causalism,” the view that “when a behavior is an action/free action, the actual causal history of the behavior is what makes it an action/free action” (3). Sartorio assumes that causalism about action is true (6) and asks how we can build on a causalist account of action to arrive at an account of free action. In her view, causes are of central importance because of their bearing on agential control—the control required for action and the more complex control required for free action.

After a brief introductory chapter, Sartorio turns in chapter 2 to the main motivations for causalism about action and about free action. Causalism about action, she contends, “offers a natural explanation of (1) the distinction between the...

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