## 1. Preliminaries



In the literature, "determinism" is sometimes used as an
umbrella term for a variety of different claims which have
traditionally been regarded as threats to free will. Given this usage,
the thesis that we are calling "determinism" (nomological
determinism, also sometimes called 'causal determinism')
is just one of several different kinds of determinism, and the free
will/determinism problem we will be discussing is one of a family of
related problems. For instance, *logical* determinism is the
thesis that the principle of bivalence holds for all propositions,
including propositions about the future, and the problem of free will
and logical determinism is the problem of deciding whether our belief
that we have free will is compatible with the existence of truths
about all our future actions. (It should be noted that on this point
there is almost universal agreement among philosophers that the answer
is "yes".) For more on logical determinism, see the entry
on
 fatalism;
 Taylor 1962; D. Lewis 1976; Merricks 2009; Fischer & Todd 2011;
Van Cleve 2019; Vihvelin 2013 and 2020. *Theological*
determinism is the thesis that God exists and has infallible knowledge
of all true propositions including propositions about our future
actions; the problem of free will and theological determinism is the
problem of understanding how, if at all, we can have free will if God
(who *cannot* be mistaken) knows what we are going to do. For
more on theological determinism, see the entries on
 fatalism
 and
 divine foreknowledge
 and Fischer & Todd 2015.



In this entry, we will be restricting our attention to arguments for
the incompatibility of free will and nomological determinism, but it
is important to understand one preliminary point. Nomological and
logical determinism are very different kinds of claims. Logical
determinism is a claim about *truth*; nomological determinism
is a claim about the *natural laws*. Logical determinism
doesn't say anything about causation or the laws; it simply says
that, regardless of whether we ever come to know them or not, there
are timelessly true propositions about the past, present, and future,
including our future actions. Logical determinism doesn't entail
nomological determinism; it might be true even if nomological
determinism is false. But nomological determinism says (roughly) that
facts about the past together with facts about the laws determine all
the facts about the future. So if nomological determinism is true,
there are true propositions about all our future actions.



Why does this matter? For the following reason. A common first
response to logical determinism is the fatalist's response:



If there are truths about what I will do in the future, then I
*must* do whatever I *will* do, and so I have no free
will.



While this response has a powerful intuitive grip (as can be seen from
much of the popular and even scientific discussion of time travel), it
is generally agreed, by philosophers, that the fatalist is making a
mistake. Different diagnoses have been given of the "fatalist
fallacy" or other mistake in modal reasoning, but the basic
point is simple. Truth is not the same as necessity; it isn't
the same as logical necessity, metaphysical necessity, or even the
relative necessity of unavoidability or lack of ability or power. The
existence of a detailed set of truths about my future actions is
consistent with my ability to do things other than the things I
actually do.



It is of course possible to agree that the existence of
*truths* about all our future actions is compatible with free
will while denying that the existence of *nomologically
determined* truths about all our future actions is compatible with
free will. But an argument is needed for this conclusion, an argument
which doesn't rely on fatalist reasoning or an appeal to
fatalist intuitions.



For comparisons between arguments for incompatibilism and arguments
for fatalism, see van Inwagen 1983, Mackie 2003, Perry 2004, and
Vihvelin 2008 and 2013.



At a first approximation, nomological determinism (henceforth
"determinism"), is a contingent and empirical claim about
the laws of nature: that they are deterministic rather than
probabilistic, and that they are all-encompassing rather than limited
in scope. At a second approximation, laws are deterministic if they
entail exceptionless regularities (e.g., that all \(F\)s are \(G\)s,
that all \(ABCD\)s are \(E\)s) and laws are probabilistic if they say
that \(F\)s have an objective chance \(N\) (less than 1) of being
\(G\)s (note that so-called "statistical laws" need not be
probabilistic laws; see Armstrong 1983, Loewer 1996a). The laws of
nature are all-encompassing if deterministic or probabilistic laws
apply to everything in the universe, without any exceptions. If, on
the other hand, some individuals or some parts of some individuals
(e.g., the nonphysical minds of human beings) or some of the behaviors
of some of the individuals (e.g., the free actions of human beings) do
not fall under either deterministic or probabilistic laws, then the
laws are limited rather than all-encompassing.



For a more precise articulation of determinism, the contemporary
literature offers us two main choices.



Determinism is standardly defined in terms of entailment, along these
lines: A complete description of the state of the world at any time
together with a complete specification of the laws entails a complete
description of the state of the world at any other time. (Hoefer 2002,
Mele 2009, Beebee 2013; see also van Inwagen 1983, Ginet 1990, and the
Encyclopedia entry on
 causal determinism).



Alternatively, following D. Lewis 1973, we might understand
determinism as the thesis that our world is governed by a set of
natural laws which is such that *any two possible worlds with our
laws* which are exactly alike at any time are also exactly alike
at every other time (see also Earman 1986). This second definition of
determinism is stronger than the first; if a possible world is
deterministic according to the Lewis/Earman definition, it is
deterministic according to the Entailment definition, but not vice
versa.



Let's call a possible world 'deterministic' iff the
thesis of determinism is true at that world;
'non-deterministic' iff the thesis of determinism is false
at that world. There are two very different ways in which a world
might be non-deterministic. A world might be non-deterministic because
at least some of its fundamental laws are probabilistic, or a world
might be non-deterministic because it has no laws or because its laws
are not all-encompassing. Let's call worlds which are
non-deterministic in *only* the first way 'probabilistic
worlds' and let's call worlds which are non-deterministic
in the second way 'lawless' or 'partly
lawless' worlds.



Determinism is a thesis about the statements or propositions that are
the laws of our world; it says nothing about whether these statements
or propositions are knowable by finite beings, let alone whether they
could, even in principle, be used to predict all future events. (For
more on the relation between determinism and predictability, see the
Encyclopedia entry on
 Causal Determinism.)



Determinism, understood according to either of the two definitions
above, is neutral with respect to different philosophical accounts of
lawhood, ranging from the so-called "naive
regularity" account (Swartz 1986) to broadly Humean or
"best system" accounts (D. Lewis 1973; Earman 1986; Loewer
1996a; Beebee 2000; Schaffer 2008) to various kinds of necessitarian
accounts (Armstrong 1983; Carroll 2008). In the book that set the
stage for much of the contemporary discussion of the free
will/determinism problem, van Inwagen 1983 appealed only to two
relatively uncontroversial assumptions about the laws of nature: that
the propositions that are laws have this status independent of the
history or present state of scientific knowledge and that the laws
impose limits on our abilities. Most of the participants in the
current debate agree, but there are dissenters who think that
determinism must be defined in a metaphysically stronger way, as a
kind of necessitation relation between particular events (Mumford
& Anjum 2014). For critique, see Mackie 2014a and Franklin
2014.



Determinism (understood according to either of the two definitions
above) is not a thesis about causation; it is not the thesis that
causation is always a relation between events, and it is not the
thesis that every event has a cause. If the fundamental laws turn out
to be probabilistic rather than deterministic, this doesn't mean
that there is no causation; it just means that we have to revise our
theories of causation to fit the facts. And this is what philosophers
of causation have done; there are probabilistic versions of lawful
entailment theories of causation, of counterfactual theories of
causation, and so on, for all major theories of causation (see the
entries on the
 metaphysics of causation
 and
 counterfactual theories of causation).
 It is now generally accepted that it might be true that every event
has a cause even if determinism is false and thus some events lack
sufficient causes.



More controversially, it might be true that every event has a cause
even if our world is neither deterministic nor probabilistic. If there
can be causes without laws (if a particular event, object, or person
can be a cause, for instance, without instantiating a law), then it
might be true, even at a lawless or partly lawless world, that every
event has a cause (Anscombe 1981; van Inwagen 1983).



It's less clear whether determinism entails the thesis that
every event has a cause. Whether it does depends on what the correct
theory of causation is; in particular, it depends on what the correct
theory says about the relation between causation and law.



What is clear, however, is that we should *not* make the
assumption, almost universally made in the older literature, that the
thesis that every event has a cause is equivalent to the thesis of
determinism. This is an important point, because some of the older
arguments in the literature *against* incompatibilism assume
that the two claims are equivalent (Hobart 1934).



In the older literature, it was assumed that determinism is the
working hypothesis of science, and that to reject determinism is to be
against science. This no longer seems plausible. Some people think
that quantum physics has shown determinism to be false. This remains
controversial (Albert 1992; Loewer 1996b; P. Lewis 2016), but it is
now generally agreed that we can reject determinism without accepting
the view that the behavior of human beings falls outside the scope of
natural laws. If naturalism is the thesis that human behavior can be
explained in the same kind of way--in terms of events, natural
processes, and laws of nature--as everything else in the
universe, then we can reject determinism without rejecting
naturalism.



Note, finally, that determinism neither entails physicalism nor is
entailed by it. There are possible worlds where determinism is true
and physicalism false; e.g., worlds where minds are nonphysical things
which nevertheless obey deterministic laws (van Inwagen 1998). And
there are possible worlds (perhaps our own) where physicalism is true
and determinism is false.



So much for determinism. What about free will? How should we
understand the disagreement between the compatibilist and the
incompatibilist?



There's lots of room for argument about how, exactly, we should
understand our commonsense beliefs about ourselves as persons with
free will. (Are we born with free will? If not, when do we acquire it,
and in virtue of what abilities or powers do we have it? What is the
difference between acting intentionally and acting with free will?)
Luckily we don't have to answer these questions in order to say
what is at issue between the compatibilist and the incompatibilist.
Let's define the *free will thesis* as the thesis that at
least one non-godlike (human-like) creature has free will, leaving it
open what that amounts to. The free will thesis is a *minimal*
claim about free will; it would be true if one person in the universe
acted with free will (acted freely, acted while possessing free will)
on one occasion. We won't assume that the free will thesis is
true or even possibly true, but let a *free will world* be any
possible world where the free will thesis is true. Since
non-determinism is the negation of determinism, and since determinism
is a contingent thesis, we can divide the set of possible worlds into
two non-overlapping subsets: deterministic worlds and
non-deterministic worlds.



Given this apparatus, we could define incompatibilism and
compatibilism in the following way: incompatibilism is the thesis that
*no deterministic world is a free will world*. (Equivalently,
incompatibilism is the claim that necessarily, if determinism is true,
then the free will thesis is false.) And we could define compatibilism
as the denial of incompatibilism; that is, as the claim that some
deterministic worlds are free will worlds. (Equivalently,
compatibilism is the claim that possibly, determinism and the free
will thesis are both true.)



This way of defining compatibilism is unproblematic. There are
compatibilists who are agnostic about the truth or falsity of
determinism, so a compatibilist need not be a soft determinist
(someone who believes that it is in fact the case that determinism is
true and we have free will). And a compatibilist might believe that we
don't have free will for reasons independent of determinism. But
all compatibilists believe that it is at least possible that
determinism is true and we have free will. So all compatibilists are
committed to the claim that there are deterministic worlds that are
free will worlds.



But this definition of incompatibilism has a surprising consequence.
Suppose, as some philosophers have argued, that we lack free will
because free will is conceptually or metaphysically impossible, at
least for nongodlike creatures like us (Taylor 1962; G. Strawson 1986,
1994). If these philosophers are right, there are no free will worlds.
And if there are no free will worlds, it follows that there are no
*deterministic* free will worlds. So if free will is
conceptually or metaphysically impossible, at least for creatures like
us, it follows that incompatibilism (as we have just defined it) is
true. But this doesn't seem right. If it is conceptually or
metaphysically impossible for us to have free will, then we lack free
will *regardless* of whether determinism is true or false. And
if that is so, then the incompatibilist cannot say the kind of things
she has traditionally wanted to say: that the truth or falsity of
determinism is *relevant* to the question of whether or not we
have free will, that if determinism were true, then we would lack free
will *because* determinism is true, and so on.



If we want to avoid this counter-intuitive result, there is a remedy.
Instead of understanding compatibilism and incompatibilism as
propositions that are contradictories, we can understand them as
propositions that are contraries. That is, we can understand
compatibilism and incompatibilism as claims that can't both be
true, but that can both be false. Compatibilism and incompatibilism
are both false if a third claim, impossibilism, is true. Impossibilism
is the thesis that free will is conceptually or metaphysically
impossible for non-godlike creatures like us.



If we accept this three-fold classification, we can define our terms
as follows: Impossibilism is the thesis that there are no free will
worlds. Incompatibilism is the thesis that there are free will worlds
but no deterministic world is a free will world. Compatibilism is the
thesis that there are free will worlds and free will worlds include
deterministic worlds. (For some objections to this three-fold
classification see McKenna 2010 and Mickelson 2015a. For defense, see
Vihvelin 2008 and 2013.)



The term 'impossibilism' is being coined; however, the
position it describes is recognized in the literature under a variety
of names: the "no free will either way" view,
"non-realism", "illusionism",
"pessimism". Theorists who defend impossibilism include G.
Strawson 1986 and 1994, and Smilansky 2000. Another kind of
impossibilist is the fatalist (Taylor 1962).



In the older literature, there were just two kinds of
incompatibilists--hard determinists and libertarians. A hard
determinist is an incompatibilist who believes that determinism is in
fact true (or, perhaps, that it is close enough to being true so far
as we are concerned, in the ways relevant to free will) and because of
this we lack free will (Holbach 1770; Wegner 2003). A libertarian is
an incompatibilist who believes that we in fact have free will and
this entails that determinism is false, in the right kind of way (van
Inwagen 1983). Traditionally, libertarians have believed that
"the right kind of way" requires that agents have a
special and mysterious causal power not had by anything else in
nature: a godlike power to be an uncaused cause of changes in the
world (Chisholm 1964). Libertarians who hold this view are committed,
it seems, to the claim that free will is possible only at worlds that
are at least partly lawless, and that our world is such a world (but
see O'Connor 2000, Clarke 2003 and Steward 2012). But in the
contemporary literature there are incompatibilists who avoid such
risky metaphysical claims by arguing that free will is possible at
worlds where some of our actions have indeterministic event causes
(Kane 1996, 1999, 2008, 2011a; Ekstrom 2000; Balaguer 2010; Franklin
2018) or that free will is possible at worlds where some of our
actions are uncaused (Ginet 1990). Note that none of these three kinds
of incompatibilists (agent-causation theorists, indeterministic
event-causation theorists, non-causal theorists) need be libertarians.
They may reserve judgment about the truth or falsity of determinism
and therefore reserve judgment about whether or not we in fact have
free will. They might also be hard determinists because they believe
that determinism is in fact true. But what they do believe--what
makes them incompatibilists--is that it is *possible* for
us to have free will and that our having free will depends on a
*contingent fact* about the *laws* that govern the
universe: that they are indeterministic in the right kind of way. (See
the entry on
 incompatibilist theories of free will).



Given these definitions and distinctions, we can now take the first
step towards clarifying the disagreement between compatibilists and
incompatibilists. Both sides agree that it is conceptually and
metaphysically possible for us to have free will; their disagreement
is about whether any of the possible worlds where we have free will
are deterministic worlds. The compatibilist says 'yes';
the incompatibilist says 'no'. Arguments for
incompatibilism must, then, be arguments for the claim that
necessarily, if determinism is true, we lack the free will we might
otherwise have.


## 2. Two Reasons for Thinking that Free Will is Incompatible with Determinism



A common first response to determinism is to think that it means that
our choices *make no difference* to anything that happens
because earlier causes have pre-determined or "fixed" our
entire future (Nahmias 2011). It is easy to think that determinism
implies that we have a destiny or fate that we cannot avoid, no matter
what we choose or decide and no matter how hard we try.



> 
> 
> Man, when running over, frequently without his own knowledge,
> frequently in spite of himself, the route which nature has marked out
> for him, resembles a swimmer who is obliged to follow the current that
> carries him along; he believes himself a free agent because he
> sometimes consents, sometimes does not consent, to glide with the
> stream, which, notwithstanding, always hurries him forward. (Holbach
> 1770 [2002]: 181; see also Wegner 2003)
> 
> 
> 



It is widely agreed, by incompatibilists as well as compatibilists,
that this is a mistake. Empirical discoveries about our brain and
behavior might tell us that we don't have as much conscious
control as we think we have (Wegner 2003; Libet 1999). (For critique
of arguments claiming that recent scientific research has shown that
"conscious will is an illusion", see Mele 2009, some of
the essays in Sinnott-Armstrong & Nadel 2011, Mele 2015, and
Roskies & Nahmias 2016.) And there are worries, arising from
certain versions of physicalism, that our mental states don't
have the causal powers we think they have (Kim 1998). But these
threats to free will have nothing to do with determinism. Determinism
might imply that our choices and efforts have earlier sufficient
causes; it does not imply that we don't make choices or that our
choices and efforts are causally impotent. Determinism is consistent
with the fact that our deliberation, choices and efforts are part of
the causal process whereby our bodies move and cause further effects
in the world. And a cause is the kind of thing that "makes a
difference" (Sartorio 2005, Menzies 2017, List 2019). If I raise
my hand because I chose to do so, then it's true, *ceteris
paribus*, that if my choice had not occurred, my hand-raising
would not have occurred.



Putting aside this worry, we may classify arguments for
incompatibilism as falling into one of two main varieties:


1. Arguments for the claim that determinism would make it impossible
for us to *cause and control our actions in the right kind of
way.*
2. Arguments for the claim that determinism would deprive us of the
*power or ability to do or choose otherwise*.



Arguments of the first kind focus on the notions of self, causation,
and responsibility; the worry is that determinism rules out the kind
of causation that we invoke when we attribute actions to persons
("It was Suzy who broke the vase") and make judgments of
moral responsibility ("It wasn't her fault; Billy pushed
her"). Someone who argues for incompatibilism in this way may
concede that the truth of determinism is consistent with the causal
efficacy of our deliberation, choices, and attempts to act. But, she
insists, determinism implies that the *only* sense in which we
are responsible for what we do is the sense in which a dog or young
child is responsible. Moral responsibility requires something more
than this, she believes. Moral responsibility requires autonomy or
self-determination: that our actions are caused and controlled by, and
*only by*, our selves. To use a slogan popular in the
literature: We act freely and are morally responsible only if
*we* are the ultimate source of our actions.



> 
> 
> Each of us, when we act, is a prime mover unmoved. In doing what we
> do, we cause certain events to happen, and nothing--or no
> one--causes us to cause these events to happen. (Chisholm 1964:
> 32)
> 
> 
> 
> Free will...is the power of agents to be the ultimate creators or
> originators and sustainers of their own ends or purposes...when
> we trace the causal or explanatory chains of action back to their
> sources in the purposes of free agents, these causal chains must come
> to an end or terminate in the willings (choices, decisions, or
> efforts) of the agents, which cause or bring about their purposes.
> (Kane 1996: 4)
> 
> 
> 



Arguments of the second kind focus on the notion of choice. To have a
choice, it seems, is to have genuine options or
alternatives--different ways in which we can act. The worry is
that determinism entails that what we do is, always, the *only*
thing we can do, and that because of this we never *really*
have a choice *about anything*, as opposed to being under the
(perhaps inescapable) illusion that we have a choice. Someone who
argues for incompatibilism in this way may concede that the truth of
determinism is consistent with our making choices, at least in the
sense in which a dog or young child makes choices, and consistent also
with our choices being causally effective. But, she insists, this is
not enough for free will; we have free will only if we have a genuine
choice about what actions we perform, and we have a genuine choice
only if there is more than one action we *are able to*
perform.



> 
> 
> A person has free will if he is often in positions like these: he must
> now speak or be silent, and he *can* now speak and *can*
> now remain silent; he must attempt to rescue a drowning child or else
> go for help, and he is *able* to attempt to rescue the child
> and *able* to go for help; he must now resign his chairmanship
> or else lie to the members; and he has it within his power to resign
> and he has it within his power to lie. (van Inwagen 1983: 8)
> 
> 
> 



van Inwagen is giving what he takes to be uncontroversial examples of
persons who have free will; he isn't saying that free will just
*is* the ability to perform more than one overt action. Our
choices include choices among purely mental actions (to pay attention
to a lecture or to spend the time deciding what to cook for dinner) as
well as choices about the actions we perform by moving our bodies. If
the incompatibilist claims that determinism robs us of free will by
robbing us of choice, this must be understood as the claim that
determinism has the consequence that we are never able to do
*anything* other than what we actually do, where
"do" includes deciding, choosing, and other instances of
mental agency as well as the things we do by moving our bodies.



We might question whether arguments based on self-determination and
arguments based on choice are independent ways of arguing for
incompatibilism for the following reason: I cause and control my
actions in the self-determining way required for moral responsibility
only if my actions are the product of my free will and my actions are
the product of my free will only if I have the ability to do (choose
to do, decide to do, intend to do, try to do) otherwise. If
determinism has the consequence that I *never* have the ability
to do otherwise, it also has the consequence that I never cause my
actions in the self-determining way required for moral responsibility
(Kane 1996).



At one time, this link between moral responsibility,
self-determination, and the ability to do otherwise was common ground
between compatibilists and incompatibilists. That is, everyone agreed
that a person is morally responsible only if she has the right kind of
*control* over what she does, and everyone assumed that a
person has the right kind of control over something she does only if
she *is able to do (or at least decide, choose, intend, or try)
otherwise*. Given this assumption, anyone hoping to defend the
claim that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism had to
first show that the ability to do otherwise is compatible with
determinism. During the heyday of ordinary language philosophy in the
middle years of the last century, there was a further assumption: that
the ability to do otherwise is compatible with determinism only if
sentences like "\(S\) could have done \(X\)" (where \(X\)
is something \(S\) did not do) were equivalent in meaning to
counterfactual conditionals like "if \(S\) had chosen (or tried,
wanted, preferred, etc.) to do \(X\), \(S\) would have done
\(X\)". This debate was crippled by the fact that it took place
at a time when counterfactuals were still poorly understood, before
the advent of the Lewis-Stalnaker possible worlds semantics (D. Lewis
1973). There were counterexamples to the analyses proposed, and there
was a growing consensus that the prospects for a successful
"Conditional Analysis" were dim (Austin 1956; Chisholm
1964; Lehrer 1968 and 1976). (For an argument that this pessimism was
premature, see Vihvelin 2004 and 2013. For an argument that a
compatibilist doesn't need to defend a Conditional Analysis, see
Lehrer 1976.)



It was against this background that Harry Frankfurt proposed his
famous counterexample to the "Principle of Alternate
Possibilities" (a person is morally responsible for what he has
done only if he could have done otherwise). Frankfurt wanted to defend
the claim that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism
without having to defend the claim that the ability to do otherwise is
compatible with determinism. His strategy took the form of an
ingenious thought experiment that was supposed to show that no matter
how you understand ability to do otherwise--whether you are a
compatibilist or an incompatibilist--you should agree that the
possession of this ability is not a necessary condition of being
morally responsible (Frankfurt 1969).



There were two steps to the thought experiment. In the first step he
invited you to imagine a person, Jones, who has free will, and who
acts freely and who satisfies all the conditions you think necessary
and sufficient for moral responsibility. You may imagine Jones in one
of the scenarios van Inwagen describes, faced with a choice to speak
or be silent, to try to rescue the child or go for help, to resign his
chairmanship or to lie, and to imagine that Jones deliberates and
decides, for his own reasons, in favor of one of his contemplated
alternatives, and then successfully acts on his decision. In the
second step you are invited to add to the story the existence of a
powerful being, Black, who takes a great interest in what Jones does,
including how he deliberates and decides. You may fill in the details
however you like, but you must imagine that Black has the power to
interfere with Jones in a way that ensures that Jones does
*exactly* what Black wants him to do. And you must also imagine
that Black is paying very close attention and is prepared to intervene
instantly, should it be necessary, to stop Jones from doing something
Black doesn't want him to do. But, as it turns out, it
wasn't necessary. By lucky co-incidence, Jones did exactly what
Black wanted him to do. (He even deliberated and decided the way Black
wanted him to deliberate and decide.) So Black remained on the
sidelines and only watched.



Because Black never laid a finger on Jones, or interfered in any way,
it seems that Jones is as morally responsible in the second step of
the story as he is in the first step. But it also seems that the
existence of the powerful Black suffices to make it the case that
Jones is unable to do otherwise (or, as Frankfurt put it, that he
lacks "alternate possibilities".)



Frankfurt's story has strong intuitive force, and many were
convinced that it shows that we were mistaken when we thought that a
person has the right kind of control over what she does--the kind
of control that is necessary for moral responsibility--only if
she is able to do otherwise. These philosophers, who later became
known as "Source" compatibilists or
"semi-compatibilists", took the moral to be that it is not
relevant, *so far as moral responsibility is concerned*,
whether determinism has the consequence that we don't have the
free will we think we have, that we never have any genuine choices,
that we are never able to do otherwise. They said that what matters,
so far as moral responsibility is concerned, is only what happens in
the "actual sequence" (Fischer 1994; Fischer & Ravizza
1998; Sartorio 2016).



But a little reflection should make us wonder whether facts about the
"actual sequence" can come apart from facts about free
will in the way envisaged by Frankfurt. How can it be true that Black
succeeds, not just in limiting the *range* of Jones'
alternative courses of action, but in making it the case that Jones
has *no* alternatives? How can Black, sitting on the sidelines,
deprive Jones of the ability to deliberate, decide, or try
otherwise?



We can easily grant that Black has the power to directly manipulate
Jones' body so Jones loses the ability to move his body in any
way other than the ways that Black wants. We might even grant that
Black has the power to directly manipulate Jones' mind/brain, so
Jones loses the ability to "move" his mind in any way
other than the ways that Black wants. But Black never exercises his
power. There is a difference between the *existence* of a power
and the *exercise* of a power. It is a modal fallacy to reason
from "Black has the power to bring it about that Jones lacks the
ability to do otherwise" to "Jones lacks the ability to do
otherwise". The truth about Jones is not that Black robs him of
the ability to do otherwise; it is the more complicated truth that
Black puts him at constant *risk* of losing the ability to do
otherwise. Jones' free will and his moral responsibility are
dependent on the luck of his deliberations and intentions
co-coinciding with those of Black (Vihvelin 2013; for some other
criticisms of Frankfurt's argument see Lamb 1993, Alvarez 2009,
and Steward 2009).



Frankfurt's argument has been enormously influential, though
perhaps not in the way he intended. His thought experiment was a
failure; while most compatibilists were convinced, most
incompatibilists were not. (Compatibilists who were not convinced
include Smith 1997, 2004; Campbell 2005; Fara 2008; Vihvelin 2000 and
2013.) These incompatibilists insisted, though not for the reason
given above, that Black does not succeed in robbing Jones of all his
freedom; there is *something* that remains up to Jones
(Widerker 1995; Ginet 1996; Kane 1996). This response, famously dubbed
the "flickers of freedom" reply, was criticized by
defenders of Frankfurt's argument on the ground that the
"alternative possibilities" retained by Jones are not
sufficiently "robust" (Fischer 1994, 2003; Fischer &
Ravizza 1998). The critics of the argument rejected this charge,
arguing that Jones retains a morally relevant ability to do otherwise,
thus resurrecting the very debate that Frankfurt had hoped to
undermine. Other defenders of Frankfurt's argument told more
complicated stories and argued that, even if Frankfurt's story
does not succeed, these new stories show that a person may be morally
responsible for her action despite lacking *any* ability to do
otherwise (Mele & Robb 1998; Pereboom 2003). More than fifty years
after the publication of Frankfurt's article, the debate
continues. For a sample of some of this vast literature, see Widerker
& McKenna 2003.



Frankfurt's aim was to make it easier to defend the claim that
*moral responsibility* is compatible with determinism and there
is a case to be made that he was successful or, at least, successful
against the "Source" incompatibilists who were convinced
by his argument (Fischer 2003, Sartorio 2016). But there has been a
cost. Our interest in free will is not limited to our interest in
moral responsibility. Compatibilism has historically been charged with
being "a wretched subterfuge" and a "quagmire of
evasion". Determinism seems prima facie incompatible with
genuine choice and the ability to do otherwise, and while there was a
time when the philosophical consensus was that the incompatibilist is
guilty of some simple confusion or mistake akin to the
fatalist's mistake, this is no longer the case, thanks to the
Consequence argument (to be discussed later). The influence of
Frankfurt's argument (and his other essays, especially Frankfurt
1971) has been so great that most compatibilists have turned their
attention away from the free will/determinism problem and focused
exclusively on problems about moral responsibility (and related
topics, like blame, desert, and punishment). The term
'compatibilism' is now often used to refer to a thesis
about moral responsibility--that the freedom sufficient for moral
responsibility is compatible with determinism (Pereboom 1995), that
the existence of actions free in the sense required for moral
responsibility is compatible with determinism (Markosian 1999), that
the unique ability of persons to exercise control in the manner
necessary for moral responsibility is compatible with determinism
(McKenna 2004b [2015]). The literature on the traditional problem of
free will and determinism is dominated by incompatibilists. There is a
growing consensus that the incompatibilist is right: if our universe
is a deterministic one, we never have the ability to choose and do
anything other than what we actually do.



Before we ask whether this pessimism about the compatibility of free
will with determinism is warranted, we should pause to ask whether
there really is a substantive disagreement between compatibilists and
incompatibilists. When an incompatibilist says that determinism would
rob us of the free will we think we have, including genuine choices
and the ability to do otherwise, and when the compatibilist denies
this, are they asserting and denying the same proposition? Or is the
incompatibilist asserting one thing while the compatibilist is denying
something else?



Some of the things said in the literature suggest that there is no
substantive debate. For instance, some philosophers contrast a
"strong incompatibilist ability" with a "weak
compatibilist ability" (or "libertarian free will"
with "compatibilist free will") and write in a way that
suggests that they think that the only substantive question about free
will is whether it is or entails the "strong"
incompatibilist ability to do otherwise (since the "weak"
compatibilist ability to do otherwise is, *by definition*,
compatible with determinism). And one leading semantic proposal might
seem to support the claim that there is no real dispute. According to
the Lewis/Kratzer, proposal 'can' (and other modal words,
including 'is able', 'has the power',
'is free to') means 'compossible with relevant facts
F', and the relevant facts are determined by the context
together with the intentions of the speaker (D. Lewis 1976, Kratzer
1977). For a different kind of contextualist proposal see Hawthorne
2001; for criticism, see Feldman 2004. Whittle 2021 is a book-length
defense of a contextualist account of freedom and responsibility.



So, for instance, it might be true, given one context, that I can
speak Finnish (I'm a native Estonian speaker, so it
wouldn't take that long for me to learn Finnish) and false,
given another context (don't take me to Finland as your
interpreter). There is no contradiction in saying that I both can and
can't speak Finnish, so long as we understand that what we are
saying is that my speaking Finnish is compossible with one set of
facts (my ability to easily learn the language) and not compossible
with another, more inclusive set of facts (my current inability to
speak it). Given this understanding of 'can, it might seem that
there is no genuine disagreement between the compatibilist and the
incompatibilist. When the compatibilist asserts that deterministic
agents are often able to do otherwise, she has in mind contexts (the
contexts of ordinary speakers, in daily life) in which the relevant
facts \(F\) are restricted to some *relatively local facts*
about the agent and her surroundings. When the incompatibilist denies
that any deterministic agent is ever able to do otherwise, she has in
mind contexts (the contexts of philosophers discussing the free
will/determinism problem) in which the relevant facts include *all
the facts about the laws and the past*. So the proposition denied
by the incompatibilist is not the proposition asserted by the
compatibilist.



The leading contemporary incompatibilist, van Inwagen, rejects any
suggestion that the compatibilist and the incompatibilist have a
merely verbal disagreement, either because they are using different
senses of 'can' ('ability',
'power', "free will" etc.) or because they are
focusing on different contexts of utterance. The debate, he says, is
about whether determinism has the consequence that no one is ever able
to do otherwise (equivalently, that no one ever has it in their power
to do otherwise) given what *ordinary speakers* mean, in the
contexts in which they use these words. The contexts to which he is
referring are the contexts of deliberation and choice in which we
consider our options, while believing that we are able to pursue each
of them. When a compatibilist asserts, and an incompatibilist denies,
that a person at a deterministic world is sometimes able to do
otherwise, they mean exactly the same thing by 'is able
to'; they mean what ordinary English speakers mean (in these
contexts). The proposition asserted by the compatibilist is the
proposition denied by the incompatibilist. Citing David Lewis as his
example of a compatibilist opponent, van Inwagen says that he and
Lewis cannot both be right. One of them is wrong, but neither is
muddled or making a simple mistake (van Inwagen 2008).



In what follows, we will assume that the debate about free will
(including, but not necessarily limited to, genuine choice and the
ability to do otherwise) and determinism is a substantive debate, and
not one that can be dissolved by appeal to different senses or
contexts of utterance. We will now turn to the arguments.


## 3. Arguments based on Intuition



Some arguments for incompatibilism don't fall into either of the
two varieties described above--arguments that determinism is
incompatible with ultimate sourcehood and arguments that determinism
is incompatible with choice and the ability to do otherwise. These are
arguments that appeal primarily to our intuitions. There are many
variations on this way of arguing for incompatibilism, but the basic
structure of the argument is usually something like this:



If determinism is true, we are like: billiard balls, windup toys,
playthings of external forces, puppets, robots, victims of a nefarious
neurosurgeon who controls us by directly manipulating the brain states
that are the immediate causes of our actions. Billiard balls (windup
toys, etc.) have no free will. So if determinism is true, we
don't have free will.



Most of these intuition-based arguments are not very good. Even if
determinism entails that there is *something* we have in common
with things which lack free will, it doesn't follow that there
are no relevant differences. Billiard balls, toys, puppets, and simple
robots lack minds, and having a mind is a necessary condition of
having free will. And determinism doesn't have the consequence
that all our actions are caused by irresistible desires that are, like
the neurosurgeon's direct manipulations, imposed on us by
external forces outside our control. (For criticism of
"intuition pumps", see Dennett 1984. For discussion of
cases involving more subtle kinds of manipulation, see
 Section 3.2.)



With this caveat in mind, let's take a closer look at the two
most influential intuition-based arguments.


### 3.1 No Forking Paths Argument



The No Forking Paths argument (van Inwagen 1983; Fischer 1994; Ekstrom
2000) begins by appealing to the idea that whenever we make a choice
we are doing (or think we are doing) something like what a traveler
does when faced with a choice between different roads. The only roads
the traveler is able to choose are roads which are a continuation of
the road she is already on. By analogy, the only choices we are able
to make are choices which are a continuation of the *actual past
and consistent with the laws of nature*. If determinism is false,
then making choices really is like this: one "road" (the
past) behind us, two or more different "roads" (future
actions consistent with the laws) in front of us. But if determinism
is true, then our journey through life is like traveling (in one
direction only) on a road which has no branches. There are other
roads, leading to other destinations; if we could get to one of these
other roads, we could reach a different destination. But we
can't get to any of these other roads from the road we are
*actually* on. So if determinism is true, our actual future is
our *only possible future*; we are never able to choose or do
anything other than what we actually do. (See also Flint 1987 and
Warfield 2003 for discussion of a related argument that appeals to the
metaphor of our freedom to "add" to the list of truths
about the world.)



This is intuitively powerful, since it's natural to think of our
future as being "open" in the branching way suggested by
the road analogy and to associate this kind of branching structure
with freedom of choice. But several crucial assumptions have been
smuggled into this picture: assumptions about time and causation and
assumptions about possibility. The assumptions about time and
causation needed to make the analogy work include the following: that
we "move" through time in something like the way that we
move down a road, that our "movement" is necessarily in
one direction only, from past to future, that the past is
*necessarily* "fixed" or beyond our control in some
way that the future is not. These assumptions are all controversial;
on some theories of time and causation (the four-dimensionalist theory
of time, a theory of causation that permits time travel and backwards
causation), they are all false (D. Lewis 1976; Horwich 1987; Sider
2001; Hoefer 2003).



The assumption about possibility is that possible worlds are concrete
spatio-temporal things (in the way that roads are) and that worlds can
overlap (literally share a common part) in the way that roads can
overlap. But most possible worlds theorists reject the first
assumption and nearly everyone rejects the second assumption (D. Lewis
1986).



Determinism (without these additional assumptions) does *not*
have the consequence that our "journey" through life is
like moving down a road; the contrast between non-determinism and
determinism is *not* the contrast between traveling on a
branching road and traveling on a road with no branches.



As an argument for incompatibilism, the appeal to the metaphor of the
branching roads ("the garden of forking paths") fails. If
we strip away the metaphors, the main premise of the argument turns
into the claim that we have genuine choices between alternative course
of action only if *our choosing and doing otherwise is compossible
with the actual past and the actual laws*. But this claim is none
other than a statement of what the incompatibilist believes and the
compatibilist denies.



If the intuitions to which the No Forking Paths argument appeals
nevertheless continue to engage us, it is because we think that our
range of possible choices is constrained by two factors: the laws and
the past. We can't change or break the laws; we can't
causally affect the past. (Even if backwards causation is logically
possible, it is not within *our* power.) These
beliefs--about the laws and the past--are the basis of the
most influential contemporary argument for incompatibilism: the
Consequence argument. More of this later.


### 3.2 Manipulation and Design Arguments



We turn now to a family of arguments that work by appealing to our
intuitive response to cases involving two persons, whom we will call
"Victim" and "Producer". Producer designs or
manipulates Victim (in some of the stories, in the way the maker of a
robot designs his robot or a god creates a human being; in other
stories, by employing techniques of behavioral engineering or neural
manipulation). Producer's purpose is to ensure either that
Victim performs a specific action (Mele 1995, 2006, 2019; Rosen 2002;
Pereboom 1995, 2001, 2008, 2014) or that he will have the kind of
psychology and motivational structure which will ensure or make
probable that he performs certain kinds of actions and leads a certain
kind of life. (See Kane 1996 for discussion of Huxley's
*Brave New World* and Skinner's *Walden Two*.)



We are supposed to agree that Victim is not morally responsible
because he acts unfreely and that he acts unfreely because of
Producer's role in the causation of his actions. Victim performs
the actions he performs because that's what he was designed or
more directly manipulated to do, and it was Producer who made him be
that way or do those things.



The argument then goes as follows:


1. Victim doesn't act freely and, for that reason, is not
morally responsible for what he does.
2. If determinism is true, there is no relevant difference between
Victim and *any* normal case of apparently free and morally
responsible action.
3. Therefore, if determinism is true no one ever acts freely or is
morally responsible for what he does.



We are supposed to accept premise 1 on the grounds of our intuitive
response to the story about Victim. The argument for premise 2 is that
if determinism is true, then we are like Victim with respect to the
fact that we are merely the *proximate* causes of our actions.
We do what we do because of the way we are (our psyche or
"design" together with the total mix of our thoughts,
desires, and other psychological states at the time of action) and the
causes of these psychological characteristics *ultimately come from
outside us, from forces and factors beyond our control*. The only
difference between us (in this imagined scenario in which determinism
is true) and Victim is that our psychological features are not the
causal upshot of the work of a single Producer who had a specific plan
for us. But this fact about the remote causes of our
actions--that they are caused by a variety of natural causes
rather than the intentional acts of a single agent--is not
relevant to questions about our freedom and responsibility. Or so it
is argued, by the advocates of Manipulation arguments.



Manipulation arguments may be seen as the Source
incompatibilist's response to Frankfurt's thought
experiment. Frankfurt was trying to show that determinism isn't
as bad as we might think. In his story, Black was a stand-in for
determinism, and Frankfurt was trying to convince us that the facts
about Black are consistent with the facts, as we know them, about how
we *actually* deliberate, decide, and act, and these facts are
the only facts that matter, so far as moral responsibility is
concerned. So even if Jones lacks the ability to do otherwise, he is
still morally responsible. The Manipulation argument says, in
effect:



Frankfurt's thought experiment is faulty. Determinism
isn't a powerful agent, standing by, in the background, like
Black. Determinism is part of the "actual sequence". Let
me tell you a story to make this clear...



And then Producer is introduced, and we are told that he has a plan
concerning the action or actions of another person, Victim, the power
to enforce his plan, and moreover, *unlike Black*, he does
enforce it.



It would be a mistake, however, to think that manipulation of one
person by another automatically undermines freedom. In real life, we
know that we may be manipulated by others to do things we would not
have done, but for their arguments or other ways of persuading us to
change our minds. Absent further reasons, we don't think that
this kind of manipulation robs us of free will or the ability to act
freely in the way required for moral responsibility. We think that we
could have resisted the argument (or the sales pitch or the subtle
pressures exerted by our manipulative friend or colleague) and we
might blame ourselves later for not doing so.



The question, then, is whether there is a case that can serve the
purposes of a manipulation argument: a case where Victim lacks the
freedom that is a necessary condition of moral responsibility while
not being different, in any relevant way, from a normal agent in
normal circumstances at a deterministic world (that is, from someone
who we think acts freely and is morally responsible for what she
does).



There are cases and cases, and many of the ones in the literature are
under-described. The first three Plums of Pereboom 2001 are an
example. Depending on how the details are spelled out, our verdict
about Plum might be that he is unfree and not morally responsible
because he is different, in relevant ways that don't require the
falsity of determinism, from a normal agent in normal circumstances
(Fischer 2004; Mickelson 2010; Sripada 2012). Alternatively, the story
might be fleshed out in a way that supports the judgment that Plum is
*not* different, in any relevant way, from a normal agent
(deterministic or indeterministic) in normal circumstances. But this
leaves it open to the compatibilist to take the hard-line reply
(McKenna 2004a, 2008; Jeppsson 2020) that since the normal
deterministic agent is morally responsible, so is Plum. Opinions vary
as to whether the intuitive cost of the hard-line reply is too great
(Pereboom 2008; McKenna 2014).



Consider, next, cases of the *Brave New World*
variety--cases where children are subjected to intensive
behavioral engineering from birth, in a way intended to make them
accept their assigned roles in a rigidly hierarchical society.
Everything depends on the details, but it is surely not implausible to
think that the subjects of some *Brave New World* cases lack a
morally significant freedom because their cognitive, evaluational, and
volitional capacities have been stunted or impaired in certain
ways:



> 
> 
> they are incapable of effectively envisaging or seeing the
> significance of certain alternatives, of reflecting on themselves and
> on the origins of their motivations. (Watson 1987)
> 
> 
> 



Wolf 1990 argues, on the basis of similar cases, that the ability that
grounds our freedom and responsibility is the unimpaired capacity to
choose and act in accordance with "the True and the Good"
(see also Nelkin 2011). But determinism doesn't have the
consequence that everyone's cognitive, evaluational and
volitional capacities are impaired in these sorts of ways.



There are cases where Victim is under the direct control of Producer
in a way that makes it true that Victim is not morally responsible for
what she does because she no longer has the kind of *causal
control* that is a necessary condition acting freely. Producer
might, for instance, directly manipulate Victim's limbs so that
Victim finds her body moving, puppetlike, in ways she does not intend.
Or Producer might directly manipulate the brain states that are the
neural realizers of Victim's first order desires so Victim is,
like Frankfurt's unwilling addict, acting intentionally but
"against her will" (Frankfurt 1971). But determinism
doesn't have the consequence that we never act intentionally and
it doesn't have the consequence that we always act contrary to
our second order volitions or that we are always subject to
psychological compulsions, addictive or "irresistible"
desires, phobias, and other pathological aversions.



Defenders of Manipulation arguments claim, however, that the argument
works even if these kinds of cases are set aside. They say that the
intuitive force of the argument depends *only* on the fact that
deterministically caused actions are ultimately caused, as are
Victim's, by factors and forces outside the agent's
control. They say that the argument succeeds even in cases where
Producer designs a Victim with unimpaired capacities and a normal
psychology, perhaps the kind we'd like our children to have,
perhaps a rationally egoistic psychology of a kind we would prefer our
children not to have. They also say that the argument succeeds even
when Producer is such a sophisticated designer of Victim that Victim
has a past history that satisfies the requirements of those
compatibilist accounts of free agency that include a historical
condition. (For a helpful account of the difference between historical
and nonhistorical compatibilist accounts in the context of
Manipulation arguments, see McKenna 2004a. For argument that the best
explanation for our belief that manipulated agents act unfreely is the
belief that these agents don't have it in their power to do
otherwise, see Berofsky 2012. For argument that Manipulation arguments
fail given a Strawsonian account of responsibility, see Latham and
Tierney 2022.)



The best example of this kind of case is Mele's Ernie. Ernie was
created as a zygote \(Z\) in Mary by goddess Diana because Diana
wanted a certain event to take place 30 years later, and she was able
to use her knowledge of the deterministic laws and the state of the
entire universe to deduce that placing a zygote with precisely
\(Z\)'s constitution in Mary would produce a normal (or better
than normal: ideally self-controlled, rational, etc.) adult who would,
30 years later, judge, on the basis of rational deliberation, that it
is best to do \(A\) and who would \(A\) on the basis of her judgment,
thereby bringing about \(E\) (Mele 2006, 2019).



To many people, it seems intuitively clear that Ernie acts unfreely
and is for that reason not morally responsible for what he does. But
if that's right, it looks like this version of the Manipulation
argument succeeds. For consider this: Ernie has an atom-for-atom
duplicate, Bert, a normal guy in every way, exactly like Ernie
(ideally self-controlled, rational, etc.) except for the fact that he
was not created by a goddess. Bert finds himself in circumstances
exactly like the ones Ernie is in, and Bert also judges, on the basis
of rational deliberation, that it is best to do \(A\), and he also
acts on the basis of his judgment, thereby bringing about \(E\). There
appears to be no relevant difference between Ernie and Bert.
Therefore, Bert also acts unfreely and is also not morally responsible
for what he does. But Bert (like Ernie) is normal in every way, and we
can also stipulate that he (like Ernie) satisfies all plausible
compatibilist conditions (historical as well as nonhistorical) for
being a free and morally responsible agent. If Bert acts unfreely, so
does *every* deterministic agent on *every* occasion.
Therefore the kind of freedom necessary for moral responsibility is
incompatible with determinism.



Mele claims that the case of Ernie is an improvement on earlier
Manipulation cases in two ways. First, it is a case where it is clear
that the causes of Ernie's action are *deterministic*
rather than the kinds of causes that might be found at a
non-deterministic world. Second, it is a case where it is clear that
there is *no relevant difference* between Ernie and any case of
apparently free and responsible action at a deterministic world.



Deery and Nahmias 2017 appeal to interventionist theories of causation
to argue that Mele is wrong about the second claim. Tierney and Glick
2020 criticise Deery and Nahmias. (See also Herdova 2020.)



Suppose, however, that there is no relevant difference between Ernie
and Bert. It does not follow that the argument succeeds. If there
really is no freedom-relevant difference between Bert and Ernie, why
should we reason from the unfreedom of Ernie to the unfreedom of Bert
rather than the other way around, from the freedom of Bert to the
freedom of Ernie?



After all, our grounds for saying that there is no relevant difference
between the two is that the *historical facts about Ernie's
creation* (that he was created by a goddess, with the powers of a
Laplacian predictor, with certain intentions, and so on) are not
relevant to the question of whether Ernie acts freely or unfreely 30
years later. If they are not relevant, they don't provide us
with *reasons* for thinking that Ernie is unfree. By contrast,
we do have reasons for thinking that Bert acts freely and is morally
responsible for what he does; he satisfies the ordinary conditions we
use in real life, as well as all the conditions of the best
compatibilist accounts on offer. If we started out with reasons for
thinking Bert free and responsible (either because we are already
compatibilists or because we have never thought about determinism),
the Zygote argument hasn't given us any reason to change our
minds. (For further elaboration on this critique, including some
helpful counter-thought experiments, see Fischer 2011, 2021; Kearns
2012.)



A defender of the Zygote argument might respond by claiming that the
intuitions that favor the unfreedom and lack of responsibility of
Ernie are stronger than the intuitions that favor the freedom and
responsibility of Bert. But this is problematic. Intuitions are not
always evidentially trustworthy and there are, as we have already
noted, reasons for being wary of our intuitive response to
descriptions of deterministic worlds: we have a natural tendency to
confuse "it will be" with "it must be". There
are further reasons for not giving evidential credence to our
intuitions about Ernie's unfreedom: he was created by a goddess,
with the kind of foreknowledge that no human being could have, for the
express purpose of performing a certain action 30 years later. Perhaps
our intuitions are explained (though not justified) by the belief that
being created in this way robs Ernie of the freedom required for
responsibility. The first premise of the Zygote argument must be
defended by something more than appeal to intuition.



(For some recent empirical work on intuitions about free will,
determinism, and moral responsibility, see Nahmias, Morris,
Nadelhoffer, and Turner 2006, Nahmias 2011 and Murray & Nahmias
2014. For a critique of the use of intuitions in Manipulation
arguments, see Vihvelin 2013 and Spitzley 2015.)



Defenders of the Zygote argument don't dispute these points. The
Manipulation argument works only if the second premise is true, and
the second premise says that there is *no relevant difference*
between Victim (in this case, Ernie) and any normal deterministic case
of apparently free and responsible action (in this case, Bert). Ernie
differs from Bert with respect to certain historical facts about his
creation: the fact that he was created by a goddess with
foreknowledge, and intentions about his future. So none of these facts
can be counted relevant, *even if they affect our intuitions*.
But one historical fact *is* relevant, according to the
defender of the argument: the fact that the deterministic causes of
Ernie's action trace back thirty years to conditions outside his
control. The claim, then, is that Ernie acts unfreely and without
responsibility because determinism is true. But this claim was
supposed to be the conclusion of the argument, not the premise.



There is one remaining possibility. Perhaps our intuitions are best
explained by our belief that Ernie doesn't have it in his power
to do anything other than act according to Diana's plan. (We
think it unfair to blame someone who wasn't able to avoid doing
what he did.) If that's the case, then the back story of
Ernie's creation functions as a way of making vivid one of the
possible ways that an otherwise normal agent at a deterministic world
might have got to be the way that he is at a certain moment in his
life. Should we reason from our belief that Ernie isn't, on that
occasion, able to do otherwise to the belief that Bert and every
normal deterministic agent also lacks this ability, or should we
reason in the opposite direction, from Bert's ability to do
otherwise to Ernie's? This requires further discussion, which we
will take up in the section on the Consequence argument. (See also
Mickelson 2015b and Huoranskzi 2021.)


## 4. Sourcehood Arguments



What has this boy to do with it? He was not his own father; he was not
his own mother; he was not his own grandparents. All of this was
handed to him. He did not surround himself with governesses and
wealth. He did not make himself. And yet he is to be compelled to pay
(Darrow 1924: 65).



Let's turn now to arguments for incompatibilism based on the
idea that a free and responsible action is an action that is caused
and controlled by its agent in a special "the buck stops
here" way, a way that is incompatible with deterministic
event-causation.



The most popular instance of this kind of argument is an argument that
we will call "the desperate defense attorney's
argument" (Darrow 1924). The defense attorney's argument
is simple:


1. My client is responsible for his crime only if he "made
himself"--that is, only if *he* caused himself to be
the kind of person he is.
2. My client did not make himself.
3. Therefore my client is not responsible for his crime.



The defense attorney is trying to persuade the jurors that his client
is not responsible for his action, but not for any of the standard
excusing conditions--insanity, accident, mistaken belief, duress,
mental handicap, and so on. Nor does he claim that there is anything
that distinguishes his client from any of the rest of us. His argument
is that his client is not responsible because he did not make himself.
But none of us has made ourselves (at least not from scratch)--we
are all the products of heredity and environment. So if we accept the
defense attorney's argument, it appears that we are committed to
the conclusion that *no one is ever responsible for
anything*.



It's not clear that this is an argument for incompatibilism.
It's an argument for incompatibilism only if it's an
argument for hard determinism--that is, if it's an argument
for the thesis that *determinism* is true and *because of
this* we are never responsible for anything. Let's take a
closer look.



What's the argument for premise (2)? After all, we do make our
selves, at least in the garden-variety way in which we make other
things: we plant gardens, cook dinners, build boats, write books and,
over the course of our lives, re-invent, re-create, and otherwise
"make something of ourselves". Of course we don't do
any of these things "from scratch", without help from
anyone or anything else, but it's impossible (or at least
impossible for human beings) to make anything from scratch. The truth
or falsity of determinism has no bearing on this point.



(See G. Strawson 1986 and 1994 for an argument for the
*impossibility* of "true responsibility" that is a
more sophisticated version of the defense attorney's argument.
See also Smilansky 2000. See Mele 1995 and Clarke 2005 for a critique
of Strawson's argument.)



If we pressed our defense attorney (or brought in a philosopher to
help him out), we might get the following reply: The kind of
garden-variety self-making possible at a deterministic world is not
good enough for the kind of moral responsibility required for deserved
blame and punishment. Granted, we can never have *complete
control* over the *actions* we perform because of our
choices (Nagel 1979), and this *limits the control* we have
over our *self-making*. But we are morally responsible for our
actions only if we have *at least some* control over our
self-making, and we have control over our self-making only if we have
control over the choices that are the causes of the actions whereby we
make our selves. And we have control over these choices only if *we
cause our choices and no one and nothing causes us to make them*
(Chisholm 1964).



The defense attorney (or philosopher) is defending premise (2) by
arguing for a certain interpretation of premise (1)--that our
responsibility for our actions requires that we have "made
ourselves" in the sense that, over the course of our lives, we
have frequently been the *first cause* of the choices that
result in actions and thus eventually (albeit often in ways we can
neither predict nor control) to changes in our selves. In arguing this
way, he has shifted the focus of the argument from the obviously
impossible demand that the freedom required for moral responsibility
requires *entirely* self-made selves to the intuitively
appealing and at least not obviously impossible demand that the
freedom required for moral responsibility requires what Robert Kane
has called "ultimate responsibility" (that we are the
ultimate sources or first causes of at least some of our
choices--those choices that are the causes of "self-forming
actions"). (See Kane 1996, 1999, 2008, 2011a. See also Chisholm
1964; Clarke 1993, 1996, 2003; O'Connor 1995a, 2000, 2011;
Pereboom 2001, 2009b, 2014; Steward 2012).



This brings us to the philosopher's version of the defense
attorney's argument. (For variations on this kind of argument,
see Kane 1996, 1999, 2008, 2011a and Pereboom 2001, 2005, 2014.)


1. We act freely (in the way necessary for moral responsibility) only
if *we* are the ultimate sources (originators, first causes) of
at least some of our choices.
2. If determinism is true, then everything we do is ultimately caused
by events and circumstances outside our control.
3. If everything we do is ultimately caused by events and
circumstances outside our control, then *we* are not the
ultimate sources (originators, first causes) of any of our
choices.
4. Therefore, if determinism is true, we are not the ultimate sources
of any of our choices.
5. Therefore, if determinism is true, we never act freely and we are
never morally responsible.



Premise (2) follows from the definition of determinism (at least given
two widely accepted assumptions: that there is causation in a
deterministic universe and that causation is a transitive relation).
(For some doubts about the latter assumption, see Hall 2000.) Premise
(3) is clearly true. So if we want to reject the conclusion, we must
reject Premise (1).



Compatibilists have argued against (1) in two different ways. On the
positive side, they have argued that we can give a satisfactory
account of the (admittedly elusive) notion of self-determination
without insisting that self-determination requires us to be the first
causes of our choices (Frankfurt 1971, 1988; Watson 1975, 1987, 2004;
Dennett 1984; Wolf 1990; Fischer 1994; Fischer & Ravizza 1998; Bok
1998; Nelkin 2011; Sartorio 2016). On the negative side,
compatibilists have challenged (1) by arguing that it is of no help to
the incompatibilist: if we accept (1), we are committed to the
conclusion that free will and moral responsibility are
*impossible*, regardless of whether determinism is true or
false.



The challenge to (1) takes the form of a dilemma: Either determinism
is true or it's not. If determinism is true, then my choices are
ultimately caused by events and conditions outside my control, so I am
not their first cause and therefore, if we accept (1), I am neither
free nor responsible. If determinism is false, then something that
happens inside me (something that I call "my choice" or
"my decision") might be the *first event* in a
causal chain leading to a sequence of body movements that I call
"my action". But since this event has no sufficient cause,
whether or not it happens is *not under my control* any more
than the spinning of a roulette wheel inside my brain is under my
control. Therefore, if determinism is false, *I* am not the
first cause or ultimate source of my choices and, if we accept (1), I
am neither free nor responsible (Ayer 1954; Wolf 1990).



In order to defend (1) against the "determined or random"
dilemma, above, the incompatibilist has to offer a positive account of
the puzzling claim that *persons* are the first causes of their
choices. The traditional incompatibilist answer is that this claim
must be taken literally, at face value. We--agents, persons,
enduring things--are causes with a very special property: we
initiate causal chains, but nothing and no one causes us to do this.
Like God, we are uncaused causers, or first movers. If Joe
deliberately throws a rock, which breaks a window, then the
window's breaking (an event) was caused by Joe's throwing
the rock (another event), which was caused by Joe's choice
(another event). But Joe's choice was not caused by any further
event, not even the event of Joe's thinking it might be fun to
throw the rock; it was caused by *Joe himself*. And since Joe
is not an event, he is not the kind of thing which can be caused. (Or
so it is argued, by agent-causalists. See Chisholm 1964;
O'Connor 1995a, 2000, 2011; Pereboom 2001.)



Many philosophers think that agent-causation is either incoherent or
impossible, due to considerations about causation. What sense does it
make to say that a person, as opposed to a *change* in a
person, or the *state* of a person at a time, is a cause? (Bok
1998). (See also Clarke 2003 for a detailed and sympathetic
examination of the metaphysics of agent-causation, which ends with the
conclusion that there are, on balance, reasons to think that
agent-causation is impossible.)



Others (van Inwagen 2000; Mele 2006) have argued that even if
agent-causation is possible, it would not solve the problem of
transforming an undetermined event into one which is in *our*
control in the way that our free choices must be. And others have
argued that if agent-causation is possible, it is possible at
deterministic as well as non-deterministic worlds (Markosian 1999;
Nelkin 2011; Franklin 2016).



Some incompatibilists have responded to the "determined or
random" dilemma in a different way: by appealing to the idea of
probabilistic causation (Kane 1996, 1999, 2008, 2011a). If our choices
are events which have probabilistic causes (e.g., our beliefs,
desires, and other reasons for acting), then it no longer seems
plausible to say that we have *no* control over them. We make
choices for reasons, and our reasons cause our choices, albeit
indeterministically. Kane's reply may go some way towards
avoiding the second (no control) horn of the dilemma. But it
doesn't avoid the first horn. If our choices are caused by our
reasons, then our choices are not the first causes of our actions. And
our reasons are presumably caused, either deterministically or
probabilistically, so they are not the first causes of our actions
either. But then our actions are ultimately caused by earlier events
over which we have no control and we are not the ultimate sources of
our actions.


## 5. Choice and the Consequence Argument



We think that we make choices, and we think that our choices typically
make a difference to our future. We think that there is a point to
deliberation: how we deliberate--what reasons we
consider--makes a difference to what we choose and thus to what
we do. We also think that when we deliberate there *really* is
more than one choice we are able to make, more than one action we are
able to perform, and more than one future which is, at least partly,
in our power to bring about.



Our beliefs about our powers with respect to the future contrast
sharply with our beliefs about our lack of power with respect to the
past. We don't think we have *any* choice about the past.
We don't deliberate about the past; we think it irrational to do
anything aimed at trying to change or affect the past ("You had
your chance; you blew it. It's too late now to do anything about
it"). Our beliefs about our options, opportunities,
alternatives, possibilities, abilities, powers, and so on, are all
future-directed. We may summarize this contrast by saying that we
think that the future is "open" in some sense that
contrasts with the non-openness or "fixity" of the
past.



Although we don't think we (now) have a choice about the past,
we have beliefs about what *was* possible for us in the past.
When called upon to defend what we did, or when we blame or reproach
ourselves, or simply wonder whether we did the right thing (or the
sensible thing, the rational thing, and so on), we evaluate our action
by comparing it to what we believe were our other possible actions,
*at that time*. We blame, criticize, reproach, regret, and so
on, only insofar as we believe we had alternatives. And if we later
discover that we were mistaken in believing that some action \(X\) was
among our alternatives, we think it is irrational to criticize or
regret our failure to do \(X\).



Is determinism compatible with the truth of these beliefs? In
particular, is it compatible with the belief that we are often able to
choose and do more than one action?



Incompatibilists have traditionally said "No". And
it's not hard to see why. If we think of 'can' in
the "open future" way suggested by the commonsense view,
then it's tempting to think that the past is necessary in some
absolute sense. And it's natural to think that we are able to do
otherwise only if we *can do otherwise given this "fixed"
past*; that is, only if our doing otherwise is a possible
continuation of the actual past. If we follow this train of thought,
we will conclude that we are able to do otherwise only if our doing
otherwise is a *possible continuation of the past consistent with
the laws.* But if determinism is true, there is only *one*
possible continuation of the past consistent with the laws. And thus
we get the incompatibilist conclusion. If determinism is true, our
actual future is our only possible future. What we actually do is the
only thing we are able to do.



But this argument is too quick. It rests on assumptions about the
nature of time which are arguably at odds with what physics tells us.
(Hoefer 2003 [2016], Ismael 2016.) There is an alternative explanation
for our beliefs about the "open" future as opposed to the
"fixed" past--the direction of causation. Causes are
always earlier than their effects. Our deliberation causes our
choices, which cause our actions. But not the other way around. Our
choices cause future events; they never cause past events. Why
causation works this way is a deep and difficult question, but the
leading view, among philosophers of science, is that the temporal
asymmetry of causation is a fundamental but contingent fact about our
universe. If things were different enough--if we could travel
backwards in time--then we would sometimes have an ability that
we don't actually have--the ability to causally affect past
persons and things (Horwich 1987; D. Lewis 1976). If this is right,
then we don't need to suppose that the past is metaphysically or
absolutely necessary in order to explain the fixed past/open future
contrast. The past *could have been different*. But, given the
way things actually are, there is nothing that *we are able to do
that would causally affect the past*.



This alternative explanation of our commonsense belief about the
contrast between fixed past and open future allows the compatibilist
to say the kind of things that compatibilists have traditionally
wanted to say: The 'can' of our freedom of will and
freedom of action is the 'can' of causal and
counterfactual dependence. Our future is open because it depends,
causally and counterfactually, on our choices, which in turn depend,
causally and counterfactually, on our deliberation and on the reasons
we take ourselves to have. (At least in the normal case, where there
is neither external constraint nor internal compulsion or other
pathology.) If our reasons were different (in some appropriate way),
we would choose otherwise, and if we chose otherwise, we would do
otherwise. And our reasons *can* be different, at least in the
sense that we, unlike simpler creatures and young children, have the
*ability to critically evaluate* our reasons (beliefs, desires,
values, principles, and so on) and that we have, and at least
sometimes exercise, the *ability to change* our reasons (Bok
1998; Dennett 1984; Fischer 1994; Fischer & Ravizza 1998;
Frankfurt 1971, 1988; Lehrer 1976, 1980, 2004; Watson 1975, 1987,
2004; Wolf 1990; Smith 1997, 2004; Pettit & Smith 1996; Nelkin
2011; Vihvelin 2004, 2013). All this is compatible with determinism.
So the truth of determinism is compatible with the truth of our
commonsense belief that we really do have a choice about the future,
that we really can choose and do other than what we actually do.



Incompatibilists think that this, and *any* compatibilist
account of the 'can' of freedom of choice, is, and
*must be*, mistaken. The Consequence Argument (Ginet 1966,
1983, 1990; van Inwagen 1975, 1983, 2000; Wiggins 1973; Lamb 1977) is
widely regarded as the best argument for this conclusion. In the
remainder of this section we will take a closer look at van
Inwagen's version of this important and influential
argument.



In *An Essay on Free Will* (1983), van Inwagen presents three
formal arguments which, he says, are intended as three versions of the
same basic argument, which he characterized as follows:



> 
> 
> If determinism is true, then our acts are the consequence of laws of
> nature and events in the remote past. But it's not up to us what
> went on before we were born, and neither is it up to us what the laws
> of nature are. Therefore, the consequences of these things (including
> our present acts) are not up to us. (1983: 56)
> 
> 
> 



We will begin by looking at the third version of the argument (the
Rule Beta argument). The Rule Beta argument uses a modal sentential
operator which van Inwagen defines as follows:
'\(\mathbf{N}p\)' abbreviates '\(p\) and no one has,
or ever had, any choice about whether \(p\)'. Van Inwagen tells
us that the logic of '\(\mathbf{N}\)' includes these two
inference rules, where \(\Box p\) asserts that it is logically
necessity that \(p\):




**Alpha**: From \(\Box p\), we may infer
\(\mathbf{N}p\).



**Beta**: From \(\mathbf{N}p\) and \(\mathbf{N}(p \supset
q)\), we may infer \(\mathbf{N}q\).




In the argument below, '\(L\)' is an abbreviation for a
sentence expressing a conjunction of all the laws of nature;
'\(H\)' is a sentence expressing a true proposition about
the total state of the world at some time in the distant past before
any agents existed; '\(\Box\)' is 'it is logically
necessary that'; '\(\supset\)' is the material
conditional, and '\(P\)' is a dummy for which we may
substitute any sentence which expresses a true proposition.



The argument is a conditional proof: Assume determinism and show that
it follows that no one has, or ever had, a choice about *any*
true proposition, including propositions about the apparently free
actions of human beings.




|  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1. | \(\Box((H \amp L) \supset P)\) | definition of determinism |
| 2. | \(\Box(H \supset(L \supset P)\) | from 1, by modal and sentential logic |
| 3. | \(\mathbf{N}(H \supset(L \supset P))\) | from 2, by rule Alpha |
| 4. | \(\mathbf{N}H\) | premise, fixity of past |
| 5. | \(\mathbf{N}(L \supset P)\) | from 3, 4, by rule Beta |
| 6. | \(\mathbf{N}L\) | premise, fixity of laws |
| 7. | \(\mathbf{N}P\) | from 5, 6, by rule Beta |



Premises (1) and (2) follow from determinism. (3) follows from (2), by
application of rule Alpha. Rule Alpha seems uncontroversial. (But see
Spencer 2017).



Premises 4 and 6 also look uncontroversial. \(N\) necessity
isn't logical or metaphysical necessity. We can insist that the
laws and the distant past *could*, in the broadly logical
sense, have been different, so neither \(\Box H\) nor \(\Box L\) are
true. But it still seems undeniably true that *we* have *no
choice about* whether the laws and the distant past are the way
they are; there is nothing that *we* are able to do that would
make it the case that either the laws or the distant past are
different from the way they actually are.



Rule Beta is the key to the argument. It's what makes the
difference between this version of the Consequence Argument and an
argument widely agreed to be fallacious.




\(\Box(P \supset Q)\)
  

\(P\)
  

Therefore, \(\Box Q\)




An example of this invalid inference is an argument sometimes called
"the fatalist fallacy":




\(\Box\)(it's true that it will rain tomorrow \(\supset\) it
will rain tomorrow)
  

It's true that it will rain tomorrow
  

Therefore, \(\Box\)(it will rain tomorrow)




Another example:




\(\Box((H \amp L) \supset P)\)
  

\(H \amp L\)
  

Therefore, \(\Box P\)




On the other hand, the following is a valid inference:




\(\Box P\)
  

\(\Box(P \supset Q)\)
  

Therefore, \(\Box Q\)




The necessity expressed by the 'no choice about' operator
is not logical or metaphysical necessity. But it might nevertheless be
similar enough for Beta to be a valid rule of inference. Or so argued
van Inwagen, and gave examples:




\(\mathbf{N}\)(The sun explodes in the year 2000)
  

\(\mathbf{N}\)(The sun explodes in the year 2000 \(\supset\) All life
on earth ends in the year 2000)
  

Therefore, \(\mathbf{N}\)(All life on earth ends in the year 2000)




An early response to the Consequence argument was to argue that Beta
is invalid because a compatibilist account of the ability to do
otherwise is correct (Gallois 1977; Foley 1979; Slote 1982; Flint
1987). For instance, if "\(S\) is able to do \(X\)" means
"if \(S\) tried to do \(X\), \(S\) would do \(X\)", then
the premises of the argument are true (since even if \(S\) tried to
change the laws or the past, she would not succeed), but the
conclusion is false (since determinism is consistent with the truth of
counterfactuals like "if \(S\) tried to raise her hand, she
would").



Incompatibilists were unmoved by this response, saying, in effect,
that the validity of Beta is more plausible than the truth of any
compatibilist account of ability to do otherwise. They pointed out
that there was no agreement, even among compatibilists, about how such
an account should go, and that the simplest accounts (so-called
"Conditional Analyses", originally proposed by Hume) had
been rejected, even by compatibilists.



(For criticism of Simple Conditional Analyses, see Austin 1956;
Chisholm 1964; Lehrer 1968, 1976; van Inwagen 1983. For defense of a
compatibilist account of ability to do otherwise, see Moore 1912;
Hobart 1934; Kapitan 1991, 1996, 2011; Lehrer 1980, 2004; Bok 1998;
Smith 1997, 2004; Campbell 2005; Perry 2004, 2008, 2010; Vihvelin
2004, 2013; Fara 2008; Schlosser 2017; Menzies 2017; List 2019.)



More recently, van Inwagen has conceded that Beta is invalid (van
Inwagen 2000). McKay and Johnson (1996) showed that Beta entails
Agglomeration:




\(\mathbf{N}p\)
  

\(\mathbf{N}q\)
  

Therefore, \(\mathbf{N}(p \amp q)\)




Agglomeration is uncontroversially invalid. To see this, let
'\(p\)' abbreviate 'The coin does not land
heads', let 'q' abbreviate 'The coin does not
land tails', and suppose that it's a fair coin which
isn't tossed but someone could have tossed it (McKay and Johnson
1996).



(For counterexamples to Beta, see Widerker 1987, Huemer 2000, and
Carlson 2000.)



Van Inwagen proposed to repair the Consequence argument by replacing
'\(\mathbf{N}\)' with '\(\mathbf{N}\)\*',
where '\(\mathbf{N}\*p\)'
says "\(p\) and
no one can, or ever could, do anything such that if she did it, \(p\)
might be false". Agglomeration is valid for '\(\mathbf{N}\)\*',
and thus this
particular objection to the validity of Beta does not apply.



It has also been suggested (Finch & Warfield 1998) that the
Consequence argument can be repaired by keeping '\(\mathbf{N}\)'
and replacing Beta with
Beta 2:




**Beta 2**: From \(\mathbf{N}p\) and \(\Box(p \supset
q)\), we may infer \(\mathbf{N}q\)




This would yield the following argument:




|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| \(\mathbf{N}(L \amp H)\) | fixity of laws and past |
| \(\Box((L \amp H) \supset P)\) | determinism |
| NP | from 1, 2 by Beta 2 |



Other ways of repairing the argument have been proposed by
O'Connor 1993 and Huemer 2000.



So it still looks as though the compatibilist is in trouble. For it
seems plausible to suppose that there is nothing that we are able to
do that *might* make it the case that either \(H\) or \(L\) is
false. And it seems plausible to suppose that we have no choice about
whether \((H \amp L)\). We need to dig deeper to criticize the
argument.



David Lewis tells us to think of the argument as a reductio (Lewis
1981). A compatibilist is someone who claims that the truth of
determinism is compatible with the existence of the kinds of abilities
that we assume we have in typical choice situations. Let's call
these 'ordinary abilities'. The Consequence argument, as
Lewis articulates it, says that if we assume that a deterministic
agent has ordinary abilities, we are forced to credit her with
incredible abilities as well.



Here, with some modifications, is Lewis's statement of the
argument:



Pretend that determinism is true, and that I did not raise my hand (at
that department meeting, to vote on that proposal) but had the ability
to do so. If I had exercised my ability--if I had raised my
hand--then either the remote past or the laws of physics would
have been different (would have to have been different). But if
that's so, then I have at least one of two incredible
abilities--the ability to change the remote past or the ability
to change the laws. But to suppose that I have either of these
abilities is absurd. So we must reject the claim that I had the
ability to raise my hand.



This counterfactual version of the Consequence argument nicely
highlights a point that the rule Beta version glosses over. The
argument relies on a claim about *counterfactuals.* The
argument says that if determinism is true, then at least one of these
counterfactuals is true:




**Different Past:** If I had raised my hand, the remote
past would have been different.



**Different Laws:** If I had raised my hand, the laws
would have been different.




Both these counterfactuals strike many people as incredible. But there
is a reason for that--we are not used to thinking in terms of
determinism and we are not accustomed to counterfactual speculation
about *what would have been the case, beforehand*, if anything
at a deterministic world had happened in any way other than the way it
actually happened.



On the other hand, we are good at evaluating counterfactuals, or at
least some counterfactuals, and we are especially good at evaluating
those counterfactuals that we entertain in contexts of choice, when we
ask questions about the causal upshots of our contemplated actions.
(What would happen if... I struck this match, put my finger in
the fire, threw this rock at that window, raised my hand?) And when we
contemplate our options, we take for granted the existence of many
facts--including facts about the laws and the past.



In other words, when we evaluate counterfactuals in real life, we do
so by considering imaginary situations which are very like the
situation we are actually in, and we do not suppose that there are any
*gratuitous* departures from actuality. And to suppose a
difference in the past or the laws seems like a gratuitous
difference.



So it is no surprise that when our attention is directed to
 **Different Past**
 and
 **Different Laws**,
 these counterfactuals strike us as incredible, or at least
*odd*. But that doesn't mean that they are false, and if
determinism is true, then either
 **Different Past**
 or
 **Different Laws**
*is* true.



So the first point is that we all need a theory of counterfactuals,
and if determinism is true, the true counterfactuals will include
either
 **Different Past**
 or
 **Different Laws**.



The second point is that the details of the correct compatibilist
solution to the free will/determinism problem will turn on the details
of the correct theory of counterfactuals.



(For similar criticisms of the Consequence argument, see Fischer 1983,
1988; Horgan 1985; Watson 1987; Vihvelin 1988, 2008, 2013; Rummens
2021.)



If Lewis's theory of counterfactuals (D. Lewis 1973, 1979) is
correct, or even more or less correct (Schaffer 2004), then the
relevant counterfactuals about the past and laws, at a deterministic
world, are:




**Almost the Same Past:** If I had raised my hand, the
past would have been exactly the same until a time shortly before the
time of my decision to raise my hand.



**Slightly Different Laws:** If I had raised my hand, the
laws would have been ever so slightly different in a way that
permitted a divergence from the lawful course of actual history
shortly before the time of my decision to raise my hand.




On the other hand, if Lewis's theory is wrong, and
counterfactuals are always evaluated by holding the laws constant,
then the relevant counterfactuals, at a deterministic world, are:




**Same Laws**: If I had raised my hand, the laws would
still have been exactly the same.



**Different Past**: If I had raised my hand, past history
would have been at least somewhat different all the way back to the
Big Bang.




(For critique of Lewis's theory, and defense of a theory of
counterfactuals that holds the laws fixed, see Bennett 1984; Dorr
2016; Vihvelin 2017b.)



We've got to choose. We all need a theory of counterfactuals,
and our theory should provide the correct verdicts for the
uncontroversially true counterfactuals at deterministic as well as
indeterministic worlds. Our choice is limited to a theory that accepts
 **Different Laws**
 or
 **Different Past**.
 Which theory we choose has nothing to do with the free
will/determinism problem and everything with how we evaluate
counterfactuals.



We can now explain the essence of Lewis's reply to the
counterfactual version of the Consequence argument in a way that
doesn't require you to accept Lewis's theory of
counterfactuals.



The argument trades on an equivocation between two
counterfactuals.



(C1)
If I had raised my hand, the laws (or the past) would have been
different.
(C2)
If I had raised my hand, I would thereby have *caused* the
laws (or the past) to be different.


There is a corresponding equivocation between two ability claims:



(A1)
I had the ability to do something (raise my hand) such that if I
had exercised my ability, the laws (or the past) would have been
different.
(A2)
I had the ability to do something (raise my hand) such that if I
had exercised my ability, I would thereby have *caused* the
laws (or the past) to be different.


The problem with the argument, says Lewis, is that it equivocates
between these two ability claims. To count as a reductio against the
compatibilist, the argument must establish that the compatibilist is
committed to
 (A2).
 But the compatibilist is committed only to
 (C1)
 and thus only to
 (A1).
 The compatibilist is committed only to saying that if determinism is
true, we have abilities we would exercise *only if* the past
(or the laws) had been different in the appropriate ways. And while
this may sound odd, it is no more incredible than the claim that the
successful exercise of our abilities depends, not only on us, but also
on the co-operation of things not in our control: the good or bad luck
of our immediate surroundings. Since we are neither superheroes nor
gods, we are always in this position, regardless of the truth or
falsity of determinism.



The Consequence Argument was intended as an argument from premises
that we must all accept--premises about our lack of control over
the past and the laws--to the conclusion that if determinism is
true, we don't have the free will common sense says we have. The
counterfactual version of the argument claims that if we attribute
ordinary abilities to deterministic agents, we are forced to credit
them with incredible past or law-changing abilities as well. But no
such incredible conclusion follows. All that follows is something that
we must accept anyway, as the price of our non-godlike nature: that
the exercise of our abilities always depends, in part, on
circumstances outside our control. (See also Fischer 1983, 1988, 1994;
Watson 1987; Nelkin 2001; Vihvelin 2008, 2011, 2013, 2017; Kapitan
1991, 2011; Carlson 2000.)



If the aim of the Consequence argument was to show that no
compatibilist account of 'could have done otherwise'
*can* succeed, then Lewis is surely right; the reductio fails.
The distinction between
 (A1)
 and
 (A2)
 permits the compatibilist to avoid making incredible claims about the
powers of free determined agents. On the other hand, the
incompatibilist surely has a point when she complains that it is
difficult to believe that anyone has the ability described by
 (A1).
 We believe that our powers as agents are constrained by the past and
by the laws. One way to understand this belief is compatible with
determinism: *we lack causal power* over the *past* and
the *laws*. But it's natural to understand the constraint
in a different, simpler way: we are able to do only those things which
are such that our doing of them does not counterfactually require a
difference in either the past or the laws. And this leads more or less
directly to the incompatibilist conclusion that if determinism is
true, then we are never able to do otherwise.



This brings us back to our starting point. Our common sense web of
beliefs about ourselves as deliberators, choosers, and agents includes
the belief that the future is open in some sense that the past is not.
It also includes the belief that our abilities and powers are
constrained by the laws. One way of understanding these beliefs leads
to incompatibilism; another way does not. Which one is right?



The Consequence argument is an attempt to provide an *argument*
in defense of the incompatibilist's way of understanding these
common sense beliefs. Even if it fails as a reductio, it has been
successful in other ways. It has made it clear that the free
will/determinism problem is a metaphysical problem and that the
underlying issues concern questions about our abilities and powers, as
well as more general questions about the nature of causation,
counterfactuals, and laws of nature. Can the abilities or powers of
choosers and agents be understood as a kind of natural capacity or
disposition? Is there a viable incompatibilist alternative? How should
we understand counterfactuals about the alternative actions and
choices of agents at deterministic worlds? Is the compatibilist
proposal about the way in which the laws and past constrain us
defensible? Are incompatibilists committed to the defense of a
particular view about the nature of laws of nature? Are they committed
to the rejection of a Humean view, for instance?



Insofar as the Consequence argument has pointed us in the direction of
these deep and difficult underlying metaphysical questions, it
represents a significant step forward in the discussion of one of the
most intractable problems of philosophy. (For discussion of some of
these issues, see D. Lewis 1979; Dennett 1984, 2003; Hoefer 2002;
Berofsky 2003, 2012; Beebee & Mele 2002; Beebee 2000; Schaffer
2004, 2008; Vihvelin 1990, 2004, 2013, 2017; Perry 2004, 2008, 2010;
van Inwagen 2004a; Fara 2008; Holton 2009; Wilson 2014; Clarke 2015;
Ismael 2016; van Inwagen 2017; Spencer 2017; Franklin 2018; List 2019,
Esfeld 2021; Loew and Huttemann 2022)