PH. They will act in a way to conserve themselves (419). I give the example of the thirsty man who can choose to take a drink or not, and ôin either case, whether he partakes of the water, or whether he does not, the two actions will be equally necessary; they will be the effect of that motive which finds itself most puissant; which consequently acts in the most coercive manner upon his willö (419).

MS. You are conflating an issue of physical survival--which has to do with the laws of nature and the human organismÆs need for water--with moral choice. A drink of water, except in a condition in extremis, does not rise to the level of moral choice, and any situation in which it does will involve not a shelf of motives floating in a sea of necessity but competing wills.

PH. You are deliberately misunderstanding me. I am saying that natural law is indeed working on the (illusory) will of man and determining his behavior. The individual responds to the force of such law as a motive power. Just because you may not be able to identify the source of the manÆs decision does not mean there isnÆt one. You must ôrecur[] back [and] . . . perceive[] the multiplied, the compli

MS. Your agenda seems deliberately provocative and self-contradictory. Are you making a case for a wholly determined existence because you really want to show that actions in the pursuit of, say, happiness of hedonism or of wealth at the expense of others, are perfectly understandable and reasonable because they were inevitable? In that case, you are effectively valorizing power and cunning and making irrelevant the experience of those who are their victims. In other words you are valorizing the problem of evil, which is for some a problem of human agency and responsibility and for others proof of the nonexistence of God.

PH. You cannot grasp the reality, so attached are you to your illusion of human agency. As I have said, everything that happens by and to and in and next to a person, ôas well as all that happens in nature, or that is attributed to her, is derived from necessary causes, which act according to necessary laws, and which produce necessary effects form whence necessarily flow othersö (422). I insist on that point.

MS. I havenÆt said they are not, and moreover it may be that a raft of influences may motivate A to push B into the abyss. But identifying motive and cause is one thing, and looking at the action as an act of will or an exemplum of the cosmos is another. If a bad action is not an act of will, then we must look at motive, neurosis, and so on. Maybe even nature in some manner, such as in the complex of psychological and social development. But these are complicating factors of choice, not counterexamples that prove it is impossible. I am talking about free will in the context of ôa familiar psychological typeö (Nagel 58). ôWe must find the person in whom the decisive junction of causes lies. The question of who is responsible is the question concerning the correct point of application of the motiveö (61). You donÆt need to go to an infinite regression, or ôrecur,ö to some ômysterious connection be