Time and agency: SMM/DTT and compatibilism and indeterminism

01Three different questions

Determinism asks whether a complete state and law fix later states. Indeterminism permits more than one later outcome under the relevant description. Agency asks whether an action arises through the person’s capacities in an appropriate way. SMM/DTT’s inner production and outer completion address the formation of an outcome, but can be combined with different answers to the first two questions. A theory of freedom therefore needs an explicit account of the third. ^[1]

02What the SMM/DTT distinction contributes

SMM begins with one nonspatial generative source. DTT distinguishes its inner production from the outer order in which completed results become accessible. The six inner levels are nested functional dependencies within that production; the seventh denotes outer completion. They are not six independent clocks, six spatial directions, or six simultaneously occupied temporal axes. This distinction makes the framework more specific than a general claim that everything changes: it asks how a world of persistent relations can be generated before its spatial representation is taken for granted.

A world that becomes is not automatically a world containing free agents. New outcomes may be random, mechanically determined, responsive to reasons, or imposed from elsewhere. SMM/DTT’s emphasis on completion can illuminate when an action becomes a settled event, but freedom concerns how that event relates to the agent’s capacities, deliberation and control. The philosophical task is to explain agency within a source-generated world without erasing the difference between the person’s action and a merely external occurrence.

Determinism and fatalism are also different. A deterministic process can include deliberation as a cause of what happens. Fatalism would make the outcome unavoidable regardless of relevant deliberation or action. Introducing indeterminism does not by itself improve control: an unpredictable coin flip is not an exercise of will. A source-based theory can therefore explore a reasons-responsive form of agency even if its update law is deterministic. A stronger libertarian proposal would need to explain how alternatives remain genuinely open and how their resolution belongs to the agent. ^[2]

03A reasons-responsive mechanism

Suppose an agent’s action A depends on evidence E, goals G and retained commitments M through a rule A = f(E,G,M). If changing relevant evidence changes the action through the agent’s deliberative process, the model captures one form of control. Adding a random variable ξ to the rule does not automatically strengthen that control. It can instead make the action less responsive to reasons. This elementary model is not a full theory of moral responsibility, but it locates the causal organization a source theory must preserve when it claims to explain action.

04The source and the local agent

Dependence on one source need not make the agent an irrelevant appearance. A physical system can depend on its components while its organized capacities remain essential to explaining what it does. Similarly, a source model can realize deliberation as a stable generated organization. The stronger claim that the agent originates a choice in a way irreducible to prior conditions requires a separate account. DTT’s six nested levels cannot provide that account merely by being hidden from outer observation. Hidden determination and genuine alternative possibilities are different ideas.

05What becoming can contribute

Completion gives a useful distinction between a considered possibility and an enacted consequence. It can support an account of commitment, responsibility and the persistence of an action’s effects through records. Its philosophical value is not limited to choosing between determinism and indeterminism. DTT can explain how a local agent’s history participates in forming a new record, and how later learning changes future actions. The resulting account becomes assessable when it specifies what evidence, coercion or impairment would alter. That is a concrete contribution to agency, while the broader debate about ultimate freedom remains an explicit philosophical choice.

06A further conceptual benchmark

An agent chooses between helping a neighbor and continuing a private task. Suppose better information about the neighbor’s need would change the choice, while coercion would undermine it. A reasons-responsive account regards these counterfactual differences as evidence of agency. Now replace the decision by a random switch with the same observed outcome. The event remains unpredictable, but the relation to the agent’s reasons has vanished. This example shows why temporal openness and agency are separate. A DTT model of becoming can provide the setting for action, yet a theory of freedom must identify the relevant control relations within that setting.

THE SAME QUESTION, DIFFERENT STARTING POINTS

The comparison at a glance

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