We believe that we have free will and this belief is so firmlyentrenched in our daily lives that it is almost impossible to takeseriously the thought that it might be mistaken. We deliberate andmake choices, for instance, and in so doing we assume that there ismore than one choice we can make, more than one action we are able toperform. When we look back and regret a foolish choice, or blameourselves for not doing something we should have done, we assume thatwe could have chosen and done otherwise. When we look forward and makeplans for the future, we assume that we have at least some controlover our actions and the course of our lives; we think it is at leastsometimes up to us what we choose and try to do.

Determinism is a highly general claim about the universe: veryroughly, that everything that happens, including everything you chooseand do, is determined by facts about the past together with the laws.Determinism isn’t part of common sense, and it is not easy totake seriously the thought that it might, for all we know, be true.The incompatibilist believes that if determinism turned out to betrue, our belief that we have free will would be false. Thecompatibilist denies that the truth of determinism would have thisdrastic consequence. According to the compatibilist, the truth ofdeterminism is compatible with the truth of our belief that we havefree will. The philosophical problem of free will and determinism isthe problem of deciding who is right: the compatibilist or theincompatibilist.

Much of the philosophical interest in the free will/determinismproblem is motivated by concerns about moral responsibility because,it is generally agreed, having free will is a necessary condition ofbeing morally responsible. So if determinism precludes free will, italso precludes moral responsibility. But it’s important todistinguish questions about free will (whether we have it, what itamounts to, whether it is compatible with determinism, whether it iscompatible with other things we believe true) from questions aboutmoral responsibility. Someone might believe that we have free will andthat free will is compatible with determinism while also believing,for other reasons, that no one is ever morally responsible. Andsomeone might believe that we don’t have free will (because ofdeterminism or something else) while also believing, againstconventional wisdom, that we are nevertheless morally responsible.What one believes about determinism and moral responsibility willdepend, in large part, on what one believes about various matterswithin the scope of ethics rather than metaphysics. Among otherthings, it will depend on what one takes moral responsibility to be(P. Strawson 1962; G. Strawson 1986, 1994; Scanlon 2008; Watson 1996,2004; Wolf 1990). For these reasons it is important not to conflatethe question of the compatibility of free will and determinism withthe question of whether moral responsibility is compatible withdeterminism.

It must be acknowledged that a change in definitions has crept intothe literature, and many contemporary theorists understand‘compatibilism’ and ‘incompatibilism’ asclaims about moral responsibility (or “moral freedom” orthe freedom that “grounds” or “explains” “moralresponsibility”) rather than claims about free will (Pereboom1995, 2001, 2014. See Vihvelin 2011 for discussion). This entry willnot follow that usage.

This encyclopedia entry is about the free will/determinism problem;more specifically, it is about arguments for the claim that free willis incompatible with determinism. Since so much of the contemporaryfree will literature is dominated by concerns about moralresponsibility, some of the arguments considered will be arguments forthe thesis that if determinism is true, we are never morallyresponsible because we never satisfy the “freedomrequirement” for being morally responsible for our actions. Butthe focus, in this entry, will be on the question of whether free will(or acting with free will) is compatible with determinism.

• 1. Preliminaries
• 2. Two Reasons for Thinking that Free Will is Incompatible with Determinism
• 3. Arguments based on Intuition
  • 3.1 No Forking Paths Argument
  • 3.2 Manipulation Arguments
• 4. Sourcehood Arguments
• 5. Choice and the Consequence Argument
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Preliminaries

In the literature, “determinism” is sometimes used as anumbrella term for a variety of different claims which havetraditionally been regarded as threats to free will. Given this usage,the thesis that we are calling “determinism” (nomologicaldeterminism, also sometimes called ‘causal determinism’)is just one of several different kinds of determinism, and the freewill/determinism problem we will be discussing is one of a family ofrelated problems. For instance,logical determinism is thethesis that the principle of bivalence holds for all propositions,including propositions about the future, and the problem of free willand logical determinism is the problem of deciding whether our beliefthat we have free will is compatible with the existence of truthsabout all our future actions. (It should be noted that on this pointthere is almost universal agreement among philosophers that the answeris “yes”.) For more on logical determinism, see the entryonfatalism; Taylor 1962; D. Lewis 1976; Merricks 2009; Fischer & Todd 2011;Van Cleve 2019; Vihvelin 2013 and 2020.Theologicaldeterminism is the thesis that God exists and has infallible knowledgeof all true propositions including propositions about our futureactions; the problem of free will and theological determinism is theproblem of understanding how, if at all, we can have free will if God(whocannot be mistaken) knows what we are going to do. Formore on theological determinism, see the entries onfatalism anddivine foreknowledge and Fischer & Todd 2015.

In this entry, we will be restricting our attention to arguments forthe incompatibility of free will and nomological determinism, but itis important to understand one preliminary point. Nomological andlogical determinism are very different kinds of claims. Logicaldeterminism is a claim abouttruth; nomological determinismis a claim about thenatural laws. Logical determinismdoesn’t say anything about causation or the laws; it simply saysthat, regardless of whether we ever come to know them or not, thereare timelessly true propositions about the past, present, and future,including our future actions. Logical determinism doesn’t entailnomological determinism; it might be true even if nomologicaldeterminism is false. But nomological determinism says (roughly) thatfacts about the past together with facts about the laws determine allthe 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 firstresponse to logical determinism is the fatalist’s response:

If there are truths about what I will do in the future, then Imust do whatever Iwill do, and so I have no freewill.

While this response has a powerful intuitive grip (as can be seen frommuch of the popular and even scientific discussion of time travel), itis generally agreed, by philosophers, that the fatalist is making amistake. Different diagnoses have been given of the “fatalistfallacy” or other mistake in modal reasoning, but the basicpoint is simple. Truth is not the same as necessity; it isn’tthe same as logical necessity, metaphysical necessity, or even therelative necessity of unavoidability or lack of ability or power. Theexistence of a detailed set of truths about my future actions isconsistent with my ability to do things other than the things Iactually do.

It is of course possible to agree that the existence oftruths about all our future actions is compatible with freewill while denying that the existence ofnomologicallydetermined truths about all our future actions is compatible withfree will. But an argument is needed for this conclusion, an argumentwhich doesn’t rely on fatalist reasoning or an appeal tofatalist intuitions.

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

At a first approximation, nomological determinism (henceforth“determinism”), is a contingent and empirical claim aboutthe laws of nature: that they are deterministic rather thanprobabilistic, and that they are all-encompassing rather than limitedin scope. At a second approximation, laws are deterministic if theyentail exceptionless regularities (e.g., that all \(F\)s are \(G\)s,that all \(ABCD\)s are \(E\)s) and laws are probabilistic if they saythat \(F\)s have an objective chance \(N\) (less than 1) of being\(G\)s (note that so-called “statistical laws” need not beprobabilistic laws; see Armstrong 1983, Loewer 1996a). The laws ofnature are all-encompassing if deterministic or probabilistic lawsapply to everything in the universe, without any exceptions. If, onthe other hand, some individuals or some parts of some individuals(e.g., the nonphysical minds of human beings) or some of the behaviorsof some of the individuals (e.g., the free actions of human beings) donot fall under either deterministic or probabilistic laws, then thelaws are limited rather than all-encompassing.

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

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

Alternatively, following D. Lewis 1973, we might understanddeterminism as the thesis that our world is governed by a set ofnatural laws which is such thatany two possible worlds with ourlaws which are exactly alike at any time are also exactly alikeat every other time (see also Earman 1986). This second definition ofdeterminism is stronger than the first; if a possible world isdeterministic according to the Lewis/Earman definition, it isdeterministic according to the Entailment definition, but not viceversa.

Let’s call a possible world ‘deterministic’ iff thethesis of determinism is true at that world;‘non-deterministic’ iff the thesis of determinism is falseat that world. There are two very different ways in which a worldmight be non-deterministic. A world might be non-deterministic becauseat least some of its fundamental laws are probabilistic, or a worldmight be non-deterministic because it has no laws or because its lawsare not all-encompassing. Let’s call worlds which arenon-deterministic inonly the first way ‘probabilisticworlds’ and let’s call worlds which are non-deterministicin the second way ‘lawless’ or ‘partlylawless’ worlds.

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

Determinism, understood according to either of the two definitionsabove, is neutral with respect to different philosophical accounts oflawhood, ranging from the so-called “naïveregularity” account (Swartz 1986) to broadly Humean or“best system” accounts (D. Lewis 1973; Earman 1986; Loewer1996a; Beebee 2000; Schaffer 2008) to various kinds of necessitarianaccounts (Armstrong 1983; Carroll 2008). In the book that set thestage for much of the contemporary discussion of the freewill/determinism problem, van Inwagen 1983 appealed only to tworelatively uncontroversial assumptions about the laws of nature: thatthe propositions that are laws have this status independent of thehistory or present state of scientific knowledge and that the lawsimpose limits on our abilities. Most of the participants in thecurrent debate agree, but there are dissenters who think thatdeterminism must be defined in a metaphysically stronger way, as akind of necessitation relation between particular events (Mumford& Anjum 2014). For critique, see Mackie 2014a and Franklin2014.

Determinism (understood according to either of the two definitionsabove) is not a thesis about causation; it is not the thesis thatcausation is always a relation between events, and it is not thethesis that every event has a cause. If the fundamental laws turn outto be probabilistic rather than deterministic, this doesn’t meanthat there is no causation; it just means that we have to revise ourtheories of causation to fit the facts. And this is what philosophersof causation have done; there are probabilistic versions of lawfulentailment theories of causation, of counterfactual theories ofcausation, and so on, for all major theories of causation (see theentries on themetaphysics of causation andcounterfactual theories of causation). It is now generally accepted that it might be true that every eventhas a cause even if determinism is false and thus some events lacksufficient causes.

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

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

What is clear, however, is that we shouldnot make theassumption, almost universally made in the older literature, that thethesis that every event has a cause is equivalent to the thesis ofdeterminism. This is an important point, because some of the olderarguments in the literatureagainst incompatibilism assumethat the two claims are equivalent (Hobart 1934).

In the older literature, it was assumed that determinism is theworking hypothesis of science, and that to reject determinism is to beagainst science. This no longer seems plausible. Some people thinkthat quantum physics has shown determinism to be false. This remainscontroversial (Albert 1992; Loewer 1996b; P. Lewis 2016), but it isnow generally agreed that we can reject determinism without acceptingthe view that the behavior of human beings falls outside the scope ofnatural laws. If naturalism is the thesis that human behavior can beexplained in the same kind of way—in terms of events, naturalprocesses, and laws of nature—as everything else in theuniverse, then we can reject determinism without rejectingnaturalism.

Note, finally, that determinism neither entails physicalism nor isentailed by it. There are possible worlds where determinism is trueand physicalism false; e.g., worlds where minds are nonphysical thingswhich nevertheless obey deterministic laws (van Inwagen 1998). Andthere are possible worlds (perhaps our own) where physicalism is trueand determinism is false.

So much for determinism. What about free will? How should weunderstand the disagreement between the compatibilist and theincompatibilist?

There’s lots of room for argument about how, exactly, we shouldunderstand our commonsense beliefs about ourselves as persons withfree 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 thedifference between acting intentionally and acting with free will?)Luckily we don’t have to answer these questions in order to saywhat is at issue between the compatibilist and the incompatibilist.Let’s define thefree will thesis as the thesis that atleast one non-godlike (human-like) creature has free will, leaving itopen what that amounts to. The free will thesis is aminimalclaim about free will; it would be true if one person in the universeacted with free will (acted freely, acted while possessing free will)on one occasion. We won’t assume that the free will thesis istrue or even possibly true, but let afree will world be anypossible world where the free will thesis is true. Sincenon-determinism is the negation of determinism, and since determinismis a contingent thesis, we can divide the set of possible worlds intotwo non-overlapping subsets: deterministic worlds andnon-deterministic worlds.

Given this apparatus, we could define incompatibilism andcompatibilism in the following way: incompatibilism is the thesis thatno 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 compatibilismas the denial of incompatibilism; that is, as the claim that somedeterministic worlds are free will worlds. (Equivalently,compatibilism is the claim that possibly, determinism and the freewill thesis are both true.)

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

But this definition of incompatibilism has a surprising consequence.Suppose, as some philosophers have argued, that we lack free willbecause free will is conceptually or metaphysically impossible, atleast 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 nodeterministic free will worlds. So if free will isconceptually or metaphysically impossible, at least for creatures likeus, it follows that incompatibilism (as we have just defined it) istrue. But this doesn’t seem right. If it is conceptually ormetaphysically impossible for us to have free will, then we lack freewillregardless of whether determinism is true or false. Andif that is so, then the incompatibilist cannot say the kind of thingsshe has traditionally wanted to say: that the truth or falsity ofdeterminism isrelevant to the question of whether or not wehave free will, that if determinism were true, then we would lack freewillbecause 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 aspropositions that are contradictories, we can understand them aspropositions that are contraries. That is, we can understandcompatibilism and incompatibilism as claims that can’t both betrue, but that can both be false. Compatibilism and incompatibilismare both false if a third claim, impossibilism, is true. Impossibilismis the thesis that free will is conceptually or metaphysicallyimpossible for non-godlike creatures like us.

If we accept this three-fold classification, we can define our termsas follows: Impossibilism is the thesis that there are no free willworlds. Incompatibilism is the thesis that there are free will worldsbut no deterministic world is a free will world. Compatibilism is thethesis that there are free will worlds and free will worlds includedeterministic worlds. (For some objections to this three-foldclassification see McKenna 2010 and Mickelson 2015a. For defense, seeVihvelin 2008 and 2013.)

The term ‘impossibilism’ is being coined; however, theposition it describes is recognized in the literature under a varietyof 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 ofimpossibilist is the fatalist (Taylor 1962).

In the older literature, there were just two kinds ofincompatibilists—hard determinists and libertarians. A harddeterminist is an incompatibilist who believes that determinism is infact true (or, perhaps, that it is close enough to being true so faras we are concerned, in the ways relevant to free will) and because ofthis we lack free will (Holbach 1770; Wegner 2003). A libertarian isan incompatibilist who believes that we in fact have free will andthis entails that determinism is false, in the right kind of way (vanInwagen 1983). Traditionally, libertarians have believed that“the right kind of way” requires that agents have aspecial and mysterious causal power not had by anything else innature: a godlike power to be an uncaused cause of changes in theworld (Chisholm 1964). Libertarians who hold this view are committed,it seems, to the claim that free will is possible only at worlds thatare at least partly lawless, and that our world is such a world (butsee O’Connor 2000, Clarke 2003 and Steward 2012). But in thecontemporary literature there are incompatibilists who avoid suchrisky metaphysical claims by arguing that free will is possible atworlds where some of our actions have indeterministic event causes(Kane 1996, 1999, 2008, 2011a; Ekstrom 2000; Balaguer 2010; Franklin2018) or that free will is possible at worlds where some of ouractions are uncaused (Ginet 1990). Note that none of these three kindsof incompatibilists (agent-causation theorists, indeterministicevent-causation theorists, non-causal theorists) need be libertarians.They may reserve judgment about the truth or falsity of determinismand therefore reserve judgment about whether or not we in fact havefree will. They might also be hard determinists because they believethat determinism is in fact true. But what they do believe—whatmakes them incompatibilists—is that it ispossible forus to have free will and that our having free will depends on acontingent fact about thelaws that govern theuniverse: that they are indeterministic in the right kind of way. (Seethe entry onincompatibilist theories of free will).

Given these definitions and distinctions, we can now take the firststep towards clarifying the disagreement between compatibilists andincompatibilists. Both sides agree that it is conceptually andmetaphysically possible for us to have free will; their disagreementis about whether any of the possible worlds where we have free willare deterministic worlds. The compatibilist says ‘yes’;the incompatibilist says ‘no’. Arguments forincompatibilism must, then, be arguments for the claim thatnecessarily, if determinism is true, we lack the free will we mightotherwise 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 thatour choicesmake no difference to anything that happensbecause earlier causes have pre-determined or “fixed” ourentire future (Nahmias 2011). It is easy to think that determinismimplies that we have a destiny or fate that we cannot avoid, no matterwhat 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 outfor him, resembles a swimmer who is obliged to follow the current thatcarries him along; he believes himself a free agent because hesometimes consents, sometimes does not consent, to glide with thestream, which, notwithstanding, always hurries him forward. (Holbach1770 [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 andbehavior might tell us that we don’t have as much consciouscontrol as we think we have (Wegner 2003; Libet 1999). (For critiqueof arguments claiming that recent scientific research has shown that“conscious will is an illusion”, see Mele 2009, some ofthe essays in Sinnott-Armstrong & Nadel 2011, Mele 2015, andRoskies & Nahmias 2016.) And there are worries, arising fromcertain versions of physicalism, that our mental states don’thave the causal powers we think they have (Kim 1998). But thesethreats to free will have nothing to do with determinism. Determinismmight imply that our choices and efforts have earlier sufficientcauses; it does not imply that we don’t make choices or that ourchoices and efforts are causally impotent. Determinism is consistentwith the fact that our deliberation, choices and efforts are part ofthe causal process whereby our bodies move and cause further effectsin the world. And a cause is the kind of thing that “makes adifference” (Sartorio 2005, Menzies 2017, List 2019). If I raisemy hand because I chose to do so, then it’s true,ceterisparibus, that if my choice had not occurred, my hand-raisingwould not have occurred.

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

1. Arguments for the claim that determinism would make it impossiblefor us tocause and control our actions in the right kind ofway.
2. Arguments for the claim that determinism would deprive us of thepower 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 kindof causation that we invoke when we attribute actions to persons(“It was Suzy who broke the vase”) and make judgments ofmoral responsibility (“It wasn’t her fault; Billy pushedher”). Someone who argues for incompatibilism in this way mayconcede that the truth of determinism is consistent with the causalefficacy of our deliberation, choices, and attempts to act. But, sheinsists, determinism implies that theonly sense in which weare responsible for what we do is the sense in which a dog or youngchild is responsible. Moral responsibility requires something morethan this, she believes. Moral responsibility requires autonomy orself-determination: that our actions are caused and controlled by, andonly by, our selves. To use a slogan popular in theliterature: We act freely and are morally responsible only ifwe are the ultimate source of our actions.

Each of us, when we act, is a prime mover unmoved. In doing what wedo, we cause certain events to happen, and nothing—or noone—causes us to cause these events to happen. (Chisholm 1964:32)

Free will…is the power of agents to be the ultimate creators ororiginators and sustainers of their own ends or purposes…whenwe trace the causal or explanatory chains of action back to theirsources in the purposes of free agents, these causal chains must cometo an end or terminate in the willings (choices, decisions, orefforts) 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 achoice, it seems, is to have genuine options oralternatives—different ways in which we can act. The worry isthat determinism entails that what we do is, always, theonlything we can do, and that because of this we neverreallyhave a choiceabout anything, as opposed to being under the(perhaps inescapable) illusion that we have a choice. Someone whoargues for incompatibilism in this way may concede that the truth ofdeterminism is consistent with our making choices, at least in thesense in which a dog or young child makes choices, and consistent alsowith our choices being causally effective. But, she insists, this isnot enough for free will; we have free will only if we have a genuinechoice about what actions we perform, and we have a genuine choiceonly if there is more than one action weare able toperform.

A person has free will if he is often in positions like these: he mustnow speak or be silent, and hecan now speak andcannow remain silent; he must attempt to rescue a drowning child or elsego for help, and he isable to attempt to rescue the childandable to go for help; he must now resign his chairmanshipor else lie to the members; and he has it within his power to resignand he has it within his power to lie. (van Inwagen 1983: 8)

van Inwagen is giving what he takes to be uncontroversial examples ofpersons who have free will; he isn’t saying that free will justis the ability to perform more than one overt action. Ourchoices include choices among purely mental actions (to pay attentionto a lecture or to spend the time deciding what to cook for dinner) aswell as choices about the actions we perform by moving our bodies. Ifthe incompatibilist claims that determinism robs us of free will byrobbing us of choice, this must be understood as the claim thatdeterminism has the consequence that we are never able to doanything other than what we actually do, where“do” includes deciding, choosing, and other instances ofmental agency as well as the things we do by moving our bodies.

We might question whether arguments based on self-determination andarguments based on choice are independent ways of arguing forincompatibilism for the following reason: I cause and control myactions in the self-determining way required for moral responsibilityonly if my actions are the product of my free will and my actions arethe product of my free will only if I have the ability to do (chooseto do, decide to do, intend to do, try to do) otherwise. Ifdeterminism has the consequence that Inever have the abilityto do otherwise, it also has the consequence that I never cause myactions 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 groundbetween compatibilists and incompatibilists. That is, everyone agreedthat a person is morally responsible only if she has the right kind ofcontrol over what she does, and everyone assumed that aperson has the right kind of control over something she does only ifsheis able to do (or at least decide, choose, intend, or try)otherwise. Given this assumption, anyone hoping to defend theclaim that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism had tofirst show that the ability to do otherwise is compatible withdeterminism. During the heyday of ordinary language philosophy in themiddle years of the last century, there was a further assumption: thatthe ability to do otherwise is compatible with determinism only ifsentences like “\(S\) could have done \(X\)” (where \(X\)is something \(S\) did not do) were equivalent in meaning tocounterfactual 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 placeat a time when counterfactuals were still poorly understood, beforethe advent of the Lewis-Stalnaker possible worlds semantics (D. Lewis1973). There were counterexamples to the analyses proposed, and therewas a growing consensus that the prospects for a successful“Conditional Analysis” were dim (Austin 1956; Chisholm1964; Lehrer 1968 and 1976). (For an argument that this pessimism waspremature, see Vihvelin 2004 and 2013. For an argument that acompatibilist doesn’t need to defend a Conditional Analysis, seeLehrer 1976.)

It was against this background that Harry Frankfurt proposed hisfamous counterexample to the “Principle of AlternatePossibilities” (a person is morally responsible for what he hasdone only if he could have done otherwise). Frankfurt wanted to defendthe claim that moral responsibility is compatible with determinismwithout having to defend the claim that the ability to do otherwise iscompatible with determinism. His strategy took the form of aningenious thought experiment that was supposed to show that no matterhow you understand ability to do otherwise—whether you are acompatibilist or an incompatibilist—you should agree that thepossession of this ability is not a necessary condition of beingmorally responsible (Frankfurt 1969).

There were two steps to the thought experiment. In the first step heinvited you to imagine a person, Jones, who has free will, and whoacts freely and who satisfies all the conditions you think necessaryand sufficient for moral responsibility. You may imagine Jones in oneof the scenarios van Inwagen describes, faced with a choice to speakor be silent, to try to rescue the child or go for help, to resign hischairmanship or to lie, and to imagine that Jones deliberates anddecides, for his own reasons, in favor of one of his contemplatedalternatives, and then successfully acts on his decision. In thesecond step you are invited to add to the story the existence of apowerful being, Black, who takes a great interest in what Jones does,including how he deliberates and decides. You may fill in the detailshowever you like, but you must imagine that Black has the power tointerfere with Jones in a way that ensures that Jones doesexactly what Black wants him to do. And you must also imaginethat Black is paying very close attention and is prepared to interveneinstantly, should it be necessary, to stop Jones from doing somethingBlack doesn’t want him to do. But, as it turns out, itwasn’t necessary. By lucky co-incidence, Jones did exactly whatBlack wanted him to do. (He even deliberated and decided the way Blackwanted him to deliberate and decide.) So Black remained on thesidelines 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 ofthe story as he is in the first step. But it also seems that theexistence of the powerful Black suffices to make it the case thatJones is unable to do otherwise (or, as Frankfurt put it, that helacks “alternate possibilities”.)

Frankfurt’s story has strong intuitive force, and many wereconvinced that it shows that we were mistaken when we thought that aperson has the right kind of control over what she does—the kindof control that is necessary for moral responsibility—only ifshe is able to do otherwise. These philosophers, who later becameknown as “Source” compatibilists or“semi-compatibilists”, took the moral to be that it is notrelevant,so far as moral responsibility is concerned,whether determinism has the consequence that we don’t have thefree 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 inthe “actual sequence” (Fischer 1994; Fischer & Ravizza1998; Sartorio 2016).

But a little reflection should make us wonder whether facts about the“actual sequence” can come apart from facts about freewill in the way envisaged by Frankfurt. How can it be true that Blacksucceeds, not just in limiting therange of Jones’alternative courses of action, but in making it the case that Joneshasno alternatives? How can Black, sitting on the sidelines,deprive Jones of the ability to deliberate, decide, or tryotherwise?

We can easily grant that Black has the power to directly manipulateJones’ body so Jones loses the ability to move his body in anyway other than the ways that Black wants. We might even grant thatBlack has the power to directly manipulate Jones’ mind/brain, soJones loses the ability to “move” his mind in any wayother than the ways that Black wants. But Black never exercises hispower. There is a difference between theexistence of a powerand theexercise of a power. It is a modal fallacy to reasonfrom “Black has the power to bring it about that Jones lacks theability to do otherwise” to “Jones lacks the ability to dootherwise”. The truth about Jones is not that Black robs him ofthe ability to do otherwise; it is the more complicated truth thatBlack puts him at constantrisk of losing the ability to dootherwise. Jones’ free will and his moral responsibility aredependent on the luck of his deliberations and intentionsco-coinciding with those of Black (Vihvelin 2013; for some othercriticisms of Frankfurt’s argument see Lamb 1993, Alvarez 2009,and Steward 2009).

Frankfurt’s argument has been enormously influential, thoughperhaps not in the way he intended. His thought experiment was afailure; while most compatibilists were convinced, mostincompatibilists were not. (Compatibilists who were not convincedinclude Smith 1997, 2004; Campbell 2005; Fara 2008; Vihvelin 2000 and2013.) These incompatibilists insisted, though not for the reasongiven above, that Black does not succeed in robbing Jones of all hisfreedom; there issomething that remains up to Jones(Widerker 1995; Ginet 1996; Kane 1996). This response, famously dubbedthe “flickers of freedom” reply, was criticized bydefenders of Frankfurt’s argument on the ground that the“alternative possibilities” retained by Jones are notsufficiently “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 toundermine. Other defenders of Frankfurt’s argument told morecomplicated stories and argued that, even if Frankfurt’s storydoes not succeed, these new stories show that a person may be morallyresponsible for her action despite lackingany ability to dootherwise (Mele & Robb 1998; Pereboom 2003). More than fifty yearsafter the publication of Frankfurt’s article, the debatecontinues. 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 thatmoral responsibility is compatible with determinism and thereis a case to be made that he was successful or, at least, successfulagainst the “Source” incompatibilists who were convincedby his argument (Fischer 2003, Sartorio 2016). But there has been acost. Our interest in free will is not limited to our interest inmoral responsibility. Compatibilism has historically been charged withbeing “a wretched subterfuge” and a “quagmire ofevasion”. Determinism seems prima facie incompatible withgenuine choice and the ability to do otherwise, and while there was atime when the philosophical consensus was that the incompatibilist isguilty of some simple confusion or mistake akin to thefatalist’s mistake, this is no longer the case, thanks to theConsequence argument (to be discussed later). The influence ofFrankfurt’s argument (and his other essays, especially Frankfurt1971) has been so great that most compatibilists have turned theirattention away from the free will/determinism problem and focusedexclusively on problems about moral responsibility (and relatedtopics, like blame, desert, and punishment). The term‘compatibilism’ is now often used to refer to a thesisabout moral responsibility—that the freedom sufficient for moralresponsibility is compatible with determinism (Pereboom 1995), thatthe existence of actions free in the sense required for moralresponsibility is compatible with determinism (Markosian 1999), thatthe unique ability of persons to exercise control in the mannernecessary for moral responsibility is compatible with determinism(McKenna 2004b [2015]). The literature on the traditional problem offree will and determinism is dominated by incompatibilists. There is agrowing consensus that the incompatibilist is right: if our universeis a deterministic one, we never have the ability to choose and doanything other than what we actually do.

Before we ask whether this pessimism about the compatibility of freewill with determinism is warranted, we should pause to ask whetherthere really is a substantive disagreement between compatibilists andincompatibilists. When an incompatibilist says that determinism wouldrob us of the free will we think we have, including genuine choicesand the ability to do otherwise, and when the compatibilist deniesthis, are they asserting and denying the same proposition? Or is theincompatibilist asserting one thing while the compatibilist is denyingsomething else?

Some of the things said in the literature suggest that there is nosubstantive debate. For instance, some philosophers contrast a“strong incompatibilist ability” with a “weakcompatibilist ability” (or “libertarian free will”with “compatibilist free will”) and write in a way thatsuggests that they think that the only substantive question about freewill 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 mightseem to support the claim that there is no real dispute. According tothe Lewis/Kratzer, proposal ‘can’ (and other modal words,including ‘is able’, ‘has the power’,‘is free to’) means ‘compossible with relevant factsF’, and the relevant facts are determined by the contexttogether with the intentions of the speaker (D. Lewis 1976, Kratzer1977). For a different kind of contextualist proposal see Hawthorne2001; for criticism, see Feldman 2004. Whittle 2021 is a book-lengthdefense of a contextualist account of freedom and responsibility.

So, for instance, it might be true, given one context, that I canspeak Finnish (I’m a native Estonian speaker, so itwouldn’t take that long for me to learn Finnish) and false,given another context (don’t take me to Finland as yourinterpreter). There is no contradiction in saying that I both can andcan’t speak Finnish, so long as we understand that what we aresaying is that my speaking Finnish is compossible with one set offacts (my ability to easily learn the language) and not compossiblewith another, more inclusive set of facts (my current inability tospeak it). Given this understanding of ‘can, it might seem thatthere is no genuine disagreement between the compatibilist and theincompatibilist. When the compatibilist asserts that deterministicagents are often able to do otherwise, she has in mind contexts (thecontexts of ordinary speakers, in daily life) in which the relevantfacts \(F\) are restricted to somerelatively local factsabout the agent and her surroundings. When the incompatibilist deniesthat any deterministic agent is ever able to do otherwise, she has inmind contexts (the contexts of philosophers discussing the freewill/determinism problem) in which the relevant facts includeallthe facts about the laws and the past. So the proposition deniedby the incompatibilist is not the proposition asserted by thecompatibilist.

The leading contemporary incompatibilist, van Inwagen, rejects anysuggestion that the compatibilist and the incompatibilist have amerely verbal disagreement, either because they are using differentsenses of ‘can’ (‘ability’,‘power’, “free will” etc.) or because they arefocusing on different contexts of utterance. The debate, he says, isabout whether determinism has the consequence that no one is ever ableto do otherwise (equivalently, that no one ever has it in their powerto do otherwise) given whatordinary speakers mean, in thecontexts in which they use these words. The contexts to which he isreferring are the contexts of deliberation and choice in which weconsider our options, while believing that we are able to pursue eachof them. When a compatibilist asserts, and an incompatibilist denies,that a person at a deterministic world is sometimes able to dootherwise, they mean exactly the same thing by ‘is ableto’; they mean what ordinary English speakers mean (in thesecontexts). The proposition asserted by the compatibilist is theproposition denied by the incompatibilist. Citing David Lewis as hisexample of a compatibilist opponent, van Inwagen says that he andLewis cannot both be right. One of them is wrong, but neither ismuddled 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 theability to do otherwise) and determinism is a substantive debate, andnot one that can be dissolved by appeal to different senses orcontexts of utterance. We will now turn to the arguments.

3. Arguments based on Intuition

Some arguments for incompatibilism don’t fall into either of thetwo varieties described above—arguments that determinism isincompatible with ultimate sourcehood and arguments that determinismis incompatible with choice and the ability to do otherwise. These arearguments that appeal primarily to our intuitions. There are manyvariations on this way of arguing for incompatibilism, but the basicstructure 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 nefariousneurosurgeon who controls us by directly manipulating the brain statesthat are the immediate causes of our actions. Billiard balls (winduptoys, etc.) have no free will. So if determinism is true, wedon’t have free will.

Most of these intuition-based arguments are not very good. Even ifdeterminism entails that there issomething we have in commonwith things which lack free will, it doesn’t follow that thereare no relevant differences. Billiard balls, toys, puppets, and simplerobots lack minds, and having a mind is a necessary condition ofhaving free will. And determinism doesn’t have the consequencethat all our actions are caused by irresistible desires that are, likethe neurosurgeon’s direct manipulations, imposed on us byexternal forces outside our control. (For criticism of“intuition pumps”, see Dennett 1984. For discussion ofcases involving more subtle kinds of manipulation, seeSection 3.2.)

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

3.1 No Forking Paths Argument

The No Forking Paths argument (van Inwagen 1983; Fischer 1994; Ekstrom2000) begins by appealing to the idea that whenever we make a choicewe are doing (or think we are doing) something like what a travelerdoes when faced with a choice between different roads. The only roadsthe traveler is able to choose are roads which are a continuation ofthe road she is already on. By analogy, the only choices we are ableto make are choices which are a continuation of theactual pastand consistent with the laws of nature. If determinism is false,then making choices really is like this: one “road” (thepast) behind us, two or more different “roads” (futureactions consistent with the laws) in front of us. But if determinismis true, then our journey through life is like traveling (in onedirection only) on a road which has no branches. There are otherroads, leading to other destinations; if we could get to one of theseother roads, we could reach a different destination. But wecan’t get to any of these other roads from the road we areactually on. So if determinism is true, our actual future isouronly possible future; we are never able to choose or doanything other than what we actually do. (See also Flint 1987 andWarfield 2003 for discussion of a related argument that appeals to themetaphor of our freedom to “add” to the list of truthsabout the world.)

This is intuitively powerful, since it’s natural to think of ourfuture as being “open” in the branching way suggested bythe road analogy and to associate this kind of branching structurewith freedom of choice. But several crucial assumptions have beensmuggled into this picture: assumptions about time and causation andassumptions about possibility. The assumptions about time andcausation needed to make the analogy work include the following: thatwe “move” through time in something like the way that wemove down a road, that our “movement” is necessarily inone direction only, from past to future, that the past isnecessarily “fixed” or beyond our control in someway that the future is not. These assumptions are all controversial;on some theories of time and causation (the four-dimensionalist theoryof time, a theory of causation that permits time travel and backwardscausation), they are all false (D. Lewis 1976; Horwich 1987; Sider2001; Hoefer 2003).

The assumption about possibility is that possible worlds are concretespatio-temporal things (in the way that roads are) and that worlds canoverlap (literally share a common part) in the way that roads canoverlap. But most possible worlds theorists reject the firstassumption and nearly everyone rejects the second assumption (D. Lewis1986).

Determinism (without these additional assumptions) doesnothave the consequence that our “journey” through life islike moving down a road; the contrast between non-determinism anddeterminism isnot the contrast between traveling on abranching road and traveling on a road with no branches.

As an argument for incompatibilism, the appeal to the metaphor of thebranching roads (“the garden of forking paths”) fails. Ifwe strip away the metaphors, the main premise of the argument turnsinto the claim that we have genuine choices between alternative courseof action only ifour choosing and doing otherwise is compossiblewith the actual past and the actual laws. But this claim is noneother than a statement of what the incompatibilist believes and thecompatibilist denies.

If the intuitions to which the No Forking Paths argument appealsnevertheless continue to engage us, it is because we think that ourrange of possible choices is constrained by two factors: the laws andthe past. We can’t change or break the laws; we can’tcausally affect the past. (Even if backwards causation is logicallypossible, it is not withinour power.) Thesebeliefs—about the laws and the past—are the basis of themost influential contemporary argument for incompatibilism: theConsequence argument. More of this later.

3.2 Manipulation and Design Arguments

We turn now to a family of arguments that work by appealing to ourintuitive response to cases involving two persons, whom we will call“Victim” and “Producer”. Producer designs ormanipulates Victim (in some of the stories, in the way the maker of arobot designs his robot or a god creates a human being; in otherstories, by employing techniques of behavioral engineering or neuralmanipulation). Producer’s purpose is to ensure either thatVictim performs a specific action (Mele 1995, 2006, 2019; Rosen 2002;Pereboom 1995, 2001, 2008, 2014) or that he will have the kind ofpsychology and motivational structure which will ensure or makeprobable that he performs certain kinds of actions and leads a certainkind of life. (See Kane 1996 for discussion of Huxley’sBrave New World and Skinner’sWalden Two.)

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

The argument then goes as follows:

1. Victim doesn’t act freely and, for that reason, is notmorally responsible for what he does.
2. If determinism is true, there is no relevant difference betweenVictim andany normal case of apparently free and morallyresponsible action.
3. Therefore, if determinism is true no one ever acts freely or ismorally responsible for what he does.

We are supposed to accept premise 1 on the grounds of our intuitiveresponse to the story about Victim. The argument for premise 2 is thatif determinism is true, then we are like Victim with respect to thefact that we are merely theproximate 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 thecauses of these psychological characteristicsultimately come fromoutside us, from forces and factors beyond our control. The onlydifference between us (in this imagined scenario in which determinismis true) and Victim is that our psychological features are not thecausal upshot of the work of a single Producer who had a specific planfor us. But this fact about the remote causes of ouractions—that they are caused by a variety of natural causesrather than the intentional acts of a single agent—is notrelevant to questions about our freedom and responsibility. Or so itis argued, by the advocates of Manipulation arguments.

Manipulation arguments may be seen as the Sourceincompatibilist’s response to Frankfurt’s thoughtexperiment. Frankfurt was trying to show that determinism isn’tas bad as we might think. In his story, Black was a stand-in fordeterminism, and Frankfurt was trying to convince us that the factsabout Black are consistent with the facts, as we know them, about howweactually deliberate, decide, and act, and these facts arethe only facts that matter, so far as moral responsibility isconcerned. So even if Jones lacks the ability to do otherwise, he isstill morally responsible. The Manipulation argument says, ineffect:

Frankfurt’s thought experiment is faulty. Determinismisn’t a powerful agent, standing by, in the background, likeBlack. Determinism is part of the “actual sequence”. Letme tell you a story to make this clear…

And then Producer is introduced, and we are told that he has a planconcerning the action or actions of another person, Victim, the powerto enforce his plan, and moreover,unlike Black, he doesenforce it.

It would be a mistake, however, to think that manipulation of oneperson by another automatically undermines freedom. In real life, weknow that we may be manipulated by others to do things we would nothave done, but for their arguments or other ways of persuading us tochange our minds. Absent further reasons, we don’t think thatthis kind of manipulation robs us of free will or the ability to actfreely in the way required for moral responsibility. We think that wecould have resisted the argument (or the sales pitch or the subtlepressures exerted by our manipulative friend or colleague) and wemight blame ourselves later for not doing so.

The question, then, is whether there is a case that can serve thepurposes of a manipulation argument: a case where Victim lacks thefreedom that is a necessary condition of moral responsibility whilenot being different, in any relevant way, from a normal agent innormal circumstances at a deterministic world (that is, from someonewho we think acts freely and is morally responsible for what shedoes).

There are cases and cases, and many of the ones in the literature areunder-described. The first three Plums of Pereboom 2001 are anexample. Depending on how the details are spelled out, our verdictabout Plum might be that he is unfree and not morally responsiblebecause he is different, in relevant ways that don’t require thefalsity of determinism, from a normal agent in normal circumstances(Fischer 2004; Mickelson 2010; Sripada 2012). Alternatively, the storymight be fleshed out in a way that supports the judgment that Plum isnot different, in any relevant way, from a normal agent(deterministic or indeterministic) in normal circumstances. But thisleaves it open to the compatibilist to take the hard-line reply(McKenna 2004a, 2008; Jeppsson 2020) that since the normaldeterministic agent is morally responsible, so is Plum. Opinions varyas to whether the intuitive cost of the hard-line reply is too great(Pereboom 2008; McKenna 2014).

Consider, next, cases of theBrave New Worldvariety—cases where children are subjected to intensivebehavioral engineering from birth, in a way intended to make themaccept their assigned roles in a rigidly hierarchical society.Everything depends on the details, but it is surely not implausible tothink that the subjects of someBrave New World cases lack amorally significant freedom because their cognitive, evaluational, andvolitional capacities have been stunted or impaired in certainways:

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

Wolf 1990 argues, on the basis of similar cases, that the ability thatgrounds our freedom and responsibility is the unimpaired capacity tochoose and act in accordance with “the True and the Good”(see also Nelkin 2011). But determinism doesn’t have theconsequence that everyone’s cognitive, evaluational andvolitional capacities are impaired in these sorts of ways.

There are cases where Victim is under the direct control of Producerin a way that makes it true that Victim is not morally responsible forwhat she does because she no longer has the kind ofcausalcontrol that is a necessary condition acting freely. Producermight, for instance, directly manipulate Victim’s limbs so thatVictim finds her body moving, puppetlike, in ways she does not intend.Or Producer might directly manipulate the brain states that are theneural realizers of Victim’s first order desires so Victim is,like Frankfurt’s unwilling addict, acting intentionally but“against her will” (Frankfurt 1971). But determinismdoesn’t have the consequence that we never act intentionally andit doesn’t have the consequence that we always act contrary toour second order volitions or that we are always subject topsychological compulsions, addictive or “irresistible”desires, phobias, and other pathological aversions.

Defenders of Manipulation arguments claim, however, that the argumentworks even if these kinds of cases are set aside. They say that theintuitive force of the argument dependsonly on the fact thatdeterministically caused actions are ultimately caused, as areVictim’s, by factors and forces outside the agent’scontrol. They say that the argument succeeds even in cases whereProducer designs a Victim with unimpaired capacities and a normalpsychology, perhaps the kind we’d like our children to have,perhaps a rationally egoistic psychology of a kind we would prefer ourchildren not to have. They also say that the argument succeeds evenwhen Producer is such a sophisticated designer of Victim that Victimhas a past history that satisfies the requirements of thosecompatibilist accounts of free agency that include a historicalcondition. (For a helpful account of the difference between historicaland nonhistorical compatibilist accounts in the context ofManipulation arguments, see McKenna 2004a. For argument that the bestexplanation for our belief that manipulated agents act unfreely is thebelief that these agents don’t have it in their power to dootherwise, see Berofsky 2012. For argument that Manipulation argumentsfail given a Strawsonian account of responsibility, see Latham andTierney 2022.)

The best example of this kind of case is Mele’s Ernie. Ernie wascreated as a zygote \(Z\) in Mary by goddess Diana because Dianawanted a certain event to take place 30 years later, and she was ableto use her knowledge of the deterministic laws and the state of theentire universe to deduce that placing a zygote with precisely\(Z\)’s constitution in Mary would produce a normal (or betterthan normal: ideally self-controlled, rational, etc.) adult who would,30 years later, judge, on the basis of rational deliberation, that itis 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 unfreelyand is for that reason not morally responsible for what he does. Butif that’s right, it looks like this version of the Manipulationargument succeeds. For consider this: Ernie has an atom-for-atomduplicate, Bert, a normal guy in every way, exactly like Ernie(ideally self-controlled, rational, etc.) except for the fact that hewas not created by a goddess. Bert finds himself in circumstancesexactly like the ones Ernie is in, and Bert also judges, on the basisof rational deliberation, that it is best to do \(A\), and he alsoacts on the basis of his judgment, thereby bringing about \(E\). Thereappears to be no relevant difference between Ernie and Bert.Therefore, Bert also acts unfreely and is also not morally responsiblefor what he does. But Bert (like Ernie) is normal in every way, and wecan also stipulate that he (like Ernie) satisfies all plausiblecompatibilist conditions (historical as well as nonhistorical) forbeing a free and morally responsible agent. If Bert acts unfreely, sodoesevery deterministic agent onevery occasion.Therefore the kind of freedom necessary for moral responsibility isincompatible with determinism.

Mele claims that the case of Ernie is an improvement on earlierManipulation cases in two ways. First, it is a case where it is clearthat the causes of Ernie’s action aredeterministicrather than the kinds of causes that might be found at anon-deterministic world. Second, it is a case where it is clear thatthere isno relevant difference between Ernie and any case ofapparently free and responsible action at a deterministic world.

Deery and Nahmias 2017 appeal to interventionist theories of causationto argue that Mele is wrong about the second claim. Tierney and Glick2020 criticise Deery and Nahmias. (See also Herdova 2020.)

Suppose, however, that there is no relevant difference between Ernieand Bert. It does not follow that the argument succeeds. If therereally is no freedom-relevant difference between Bert and Ernie, whyshould we reason from the unfreedom of Ernie to the unfreedom of Bertrather than the other way around, from the freedom of Bert to thefreedom of Ernie?

After all, our grounds for saying that there is no relevant differencebetween the two is that thehistorical facts about Ernie’screation (that he was created by a goddess, with the powers of aLaplacian predictor, with certain intentions, and so on) are notrelevant to the question of whether Ernie acts freely or unfreely 30years later. If they are not relevant, they don’t provide uswithreasons for thinking that Ernie is unfree. By contrast,we do have reasons for thinking that Bert acts freely and is morallyresponsible for what he does; he satisfies the ordinary conditions weuse in real life, as well as all the conditions of the bestcompatibilist accounts on offer. If we started out with reasons forthinking Bert free and responsible (either because we are alreadycompatibilists or because we have never thought about determinism),the Zygote argument hasn’t given us any reason to change ourminds. (For further elaboration on this critique, including somehelpful counter-thought experiments, see Fischer 2011, 2021; Kearns2012.)

A defender of the Zygote argument might respond by claiming that theintuitions that favor the unfreedom and lack of responsibility ofErnie are stronger than the intuitions that favor the freedom andresponsibility of Bert. But this is problematic. Intuitions are notalways evidentially trustworthy and there are, as we have alreadynoted, reasons for being wary of our intuitive response todescriptions of deterministic worlds: we have a natural tendency toconfuse “it will be” with “it must be”. Thereare further reasons for not giving evidential credence to ourintuitions about Ernie’s unfreedom: he was created by a goddess,with the kind of foreknowledge that no human being could have, for theexpress purpose of performing a certain action 30 years later. Perhapsour intuitions are explained (though not justified) by the belief thatbeing created in this way robs Ernie of the freedom required forresponsibility. The first premise of the Zygote argument must bedefended 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 & Nahmias2014. For a critique of the use of intuitions in Manipulationarguments, see Vihvelin 2013 and Spitzley 2015.)

Defenders of the Zygote argument don’t dispute these points. TheManipulation argument works only if the second premise is true, andthe second premise says that there isno relevant differencebetween Victim (in this case, Ernie) and any normal deterministic caseof apparently free and responsible action (in this case, Bert). Erniediffers from Bert with respect to certain historical facts about hiscreation: the fact that he was created by a goddess withforeknowledge, and intentions about his future. So none of these factscan be counted relevant,even if they affect our intuitions.But one historical factis relevant, according to thedefender of the argument: the fact that the deterministic causes ofErnie’s action trace back thirty years to conditions outside hiscontrol. The claim, then, is that Ernie acts unfreely and withoutresponsibility because determinism is true. But this claim wassupposed to be the conclusion of the argument, not the premise.

There is one remaining possibility. Perhaps our intuitions are bestexplained by our belief that Ernie doesn’t have it in his powerto do anything other than act according to Diana’s plan. (Wethink it unfair to blame someone who wasn’t able to avoid doingwhat he did.) If that’s the case, then the back story ofErnie’s creation functions as a way of making vivid one of thepossible ways that an otherwise normal agent at a deterministic worldmight have got to be the way that he is at a certain moment in hislife. Should we reason from our belief that Ernie isn’t, on thatoccasion, able to do otherwise to the belief that Bert and everynormal deterministic agent also lacks this ability, or should wereason in the opposite direction, from Bert’s ability to dootherwise to Ernie’s? This requires further discussion, which wewill take up in the section on the Consequence argument. (See alsoMickelson 2015b and Huoranskzi 2021.)

4. Sourcehood Arguments

What has this boy to do with it? He was not his own father; he was nothis own mother; he was not his own grandparents. All of this washanded to him. He did not surround himself with governesses andwealth. 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 theidea that a free and responsible action is an action that is causedand controlled by its agent in a special “the buck stopshere” way, a way that is incompatible with deterministicevent-causation.

The most popular instance of this kind of argument is an argument thatwe will call “the desperate defense attorney’sargument” (Darrow 1924). The defense attorney’s argumentis simple:

1. My client is responsible for his crime only if he “madehimself”—that is, only ifhe caused himself to bethe 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 clientis not responsible for his action, but not for any of the standardexcusing conditions—insanity, accident, mistaken belief, duress,mental handicap, and so on. Nor does he claim that there is anythingthat distinguishes his client from any of the rest of us. His argumentis that his client is not responsible because he did not make himself.But none of us has made ourselves (at least not from scratch)—weare all the products of heredity and environment. So if we accept thedefense attorney’s argument, it appears that we are committed tothe conclusion thatno one is ever responsible foranything.

It’s not clear that this is an argument for incompatibilism.It’s an argument for incompatibilism only if it’s anargument for hard determinism—that is, if it’s an argumentfor the thesis thatdeterminism is true andbecause ofthis we are never responsible for anything. Let’s take acloser look.

What’s the argument for premise (2)? After all, we do make ourselves, at least in the garden-variety way in which we make otherthings: 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 doany of these things “from scratch”, without help fromanyone or anything else, but it’s impossible (or at leastimpossible for human beings) to make anything from scratch. The truthor falsity of determinism has no bearing on this point.

(See G. Strawson 1986 and 1994 for an argument for theimpossibility of “true responsibility” that is amore sophisticated version of the defense attorney’s argument.See also Smilansky 2000. See Mele 1995 and Clarke 2005 for a critiqueof Strawson’s argument.)

If we pressed our defense attorney (or brought in a philosopher tohelp him out), we might get the following reply: The kind ofgarden-variety self-making possible at a deterministic world is notgood enough for the kind of moral responsibility required for deservedblame and punishment. Granted, we can never havecompletecontrol over theactions we perform because of ourchoices (Nagel 1979), and thislimits the control we haveover ourself-making. But we are morally responsible for ouractions only if we haveat least some control over ourself-making, and we have control over our self-making only if we havecontrol over the choices that are the causes of the actions whereby wemake our selves. And we have control over these choices only ifwecause our choices and no one and nothing causes us to make them(Chisholm 1964).

The defense attorney (or philosopher) is defending premise (2) byarguing for a certain interpretation of premise (1)—that ourresponsibility for our actions requires that we have “madeourselves” in the sense that, over the course of our lives, wehave frequently been thefirst cause of the choices thatresult in actions and thus eventually (albeit often in ways we canneither predict nor control) to changes in our selves. In arguing thisway, he has shifted the focus of the argument from the obviouslyimpossible demand that the freedom required for moral responsibilityrequiresentirely self-made selves to the intuitivelyappealing and at least not obviously impossible demand that thefreedom required for moral responsibility requires what Robert Kanehas called “ultimate responsibility” (that we are theultimate sources or first causes of at least some of ourchoices—those choices that are the causes of “self-formingactions”). (See Kane 1996, 1999, 2008, 2011a. See also Chisholm1964; 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 defenseattorney’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) onlyifwe are the ultimate sources (originators, first causes) ofat least some of our choices.
2. If determinism is true, then everything we do is ultimately causedby events and circumstances outside our control.
3. If everything we do is ultimately caused by events andcircumstances outside our control, thenwe are not theultimate sources (originators, first causes) of any of ourchoices.
4. Therefore, if determinism is true, we are not the ultimate sourcesof any of our choices.
5. Therefore, if determinism is true, we never act freely and we arenever morally responsible.

Premise (2) follows from the definition of determinism (at least giventwo widely accepted assumptions: that there is causation in adeterministic 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 mustreject Premise (1).

Compatibilists have argued against (1) in two different ways. On thepositive side, they have argued that we can give a satisfactoryaccount of the (admittedly elusive) notion of self-determinationwithout insisting that self-determination requires us to be the firstcauses of our choices (Frankfurt 1971, 1988; Watson 1975, 1987, 2004;Dennett 1984; Wolf 1990; Fischer 1994; Fischer & Ravizza 1998; Bok1998; Nelkin 2011; Sartorio 2016). On the negative side,compatibilists have challenged (1) by arguing that it is of no help tothe incompatibilist: if we accept (1), we are committed to theconclusion that free will and moral responsibility areimpossible, regardless of whether determinism is true orfalse.

The challenge to (1) takes the form of a dilemma: Either determinismis true or it’s not. If determinism is true, then my choices areultimately caused by events and conditions outside my control, so I amnot their first cause and therefore, if we accept (1), I am neitherfree nor responsible. If determinism is false, then something thathappens inside me (something that I call “my choice” or“my decision”) might be thefirst event in acausal 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 isnot under my control any morethan the spinning of a roulette wheel inside my brain is under mycontrol. Therefore, if determinism is false,I am not thefirst cause or ultimate source of my choices and, if we accept (1), Iam 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 ofthe puzzling claim thatpersons are the first causes of theirchoices. The traditional incompatibilist answer is that this claimmust be taken literally, at face value. We—agents, persons,enduring things—are causes with a very special property: weinitiate causal chains, but nothing and no one causes us to do this.Like God, we are uncaused causers, or first movers. If Joedeliberately throws a rock, which breaks a window, then thewindow’s breaking (an event) was caused by Joe’s throwingthe rock (another event), which was caused by Joe’s choice(another event). But Joe’s choice was not caused by any furtherevent, not even the event of Joe’s thinking it might be fun tothrow the rock; it was caused byJoe himself. And since Joeis not an event, he is not the kind of thing which can be caused. (Orso 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 orimpossible, due to considerations about causation. What sense does itmake to say that a person, as opposed to achange in aperson, or thestate of a person at a time, is a cause? (Bok1998). (See also Clarke 2003 for a detailed and sympatheticexamination of the metaphysics of agent-causation, which ends with theconclusion that there are, on balance, reasons to think thatagent-causation is impossible.)

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

Some incompatibilists have responded to the “determined orrandom” dilemma in a different way: by appealing to the idea ofprobabilistic causation (Kane 1996, 1999, 2008, 2011a). If our choicesare events which have probabilistic causes (e.g., our beliefs,desires, and other reasons for acting), then it no longer seemsplausible to say that we haveno control over them. We makechoices for reasons, and our reasons cause our choices, albeitindeterministically. Kane’s reply may go some way towardsavoiding the second (no control) horn of the dilemma. But itdoesn’t avoid the first horn. If our choices are caused by ourreasons, then our choices are not the first causes of our actions. Andour reasons are presumably caused, either deterministically orprobabilistically, so they are not the first causes of our actionseither. But then our actions are ultimately caused by earlier eventsover which we have no control and we are not the ultimate sources ofour actions.

5. Choice and the Consequence Argument

We think that we make choices, and we think that our choices typicallymake a difference to our future. We think that there is a point todeliberation: how we deliberate—what reasons weconsider—makes a difference to what we choose and thus to whatwe do. We also think that when we deliberate therereally ismore than one choice we are able to make, more than one action we areable 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 contrastsharply with our beliefs about our lack of power with respect to thepast. We don’t think we haveany choice about the past.We don’t deliberate about the past; we think it irrational to doanything aimed at trying to change or affect the past (“You hadyour chance; you blew it. It’s too late now to do anything aboutit”). Our beliefs about our options, opportunities,alternatives, possibilities, abilities, powers, and so on, are allfuture-directed. We may summarize this contrast by saying that wethink that the future is “open” in some sense thatcontrasts with the non-openness or “fixity” of thepast.

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

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

Incompatibilists have traditionally said “No”. Andit’s not hard to see why. If we think of ‘can’ inthe “open future” way suggested by the commonsense view,then it’s tempting to think that the past is necessary in someabsolute sense. And it’s natural to think that we are able to dootherwise only if wecan do otherwise given this “fixed”past; that is, only if our doing otherwise is a possiblecontinuation of the actual past. If we follow this train of thought,we will conclude that we are able to do otherwise only if our doingotherwise is apossible continuation of the past consistent withthe laws. But if determinism is true, there is onlyonepossible continuation of the past consistent with the laws. And thuswe get the incompatibilist conclusion. If determinism is true, ouractual future is our only possible future. What we actually do is theonly thing we are able to do.

But this argument is too quick. It rests on assumptions about thenature of time which are arguably at odds with what physics tells us.(Hoefer 2003 [2016], Ismael 2016.) There is an alternative explanationfor our beliefs about the “open” future as opposed to the“fixed” past—the direction of causation. Causes arealways earlier than their effects. Our deliberation causes ourchoices, which cause our actions. But not the other way around. Ourchoices cause future events; they never cause past events. Whycausation works this way is a deep and difficult question, but theleading view, among philosophers of science, is that the temporalasymmetry of causation is a fundamental but contingent fact about ouruniverse. If things were different enough—if we could travelbackwards in time—then we would sometimes have an ability thatwe don’t actually have—the ability to causally affect pastpersons and things (Horwich 1987; D. Lewis 1976). If this is right,then we don’t need to suppose that the past is metaphysically orabsolutely necessary in order to explain the fixed past/open futurecontrast. The pastcould have been different. But, given theway things actually are, there is nothing thatwe are able to dothat would causally affect the past.

This alternative explanation of our commonsense belief about thecontrast between fixed past and open future allows the compatibilistto say the kind of things that compatibilists have traditionallywanted to say: The ‘can’ of our freedom of will andfreedom of action is the ‘can’ of causal andcounterfactual 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 reasonswe take ourselves to have. (At least in the normal case, where thereis neither external constraint nor internal compulsion or otherpathology.) If our reasons were different (in some appropriate way),we would choose otherwise, and if we chose otherwise, we would dootherwise. And our reasonscan be different, at least in thesense that we, unlike simpler creatures and young children, have theability to critically evaluate our reasons (beliefs, desires,values, principles, and so on) and that we have, and at leastsometimes exercise, theability to change our reasons (Bok1998; 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; Nelkin2011; Vihvelin 2004, 2013). All this is compatible with determinism.So the truth of determinism is compatible with the truth of ourcommonsense 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, andany compatibilistaccount of the ‘can’ of freedom of choice, is, andmust be, mistaken. The Consequence Argument (Ginet 1966,1983, 1990; van Inwagen 1975, 1983, 2000; Wiggins 1973; Lamb 1977) iswidely regarded as the best argument for this conclusion. In theremainder of this section we will take a closer look at vanInwagen’s version of this important and influentialargument.

InAn Essay on Free Will (1983), van Inwagen presents threeformal arguments which, he says, are intended as three versions of thesame basic argument, which he characterized as follows:

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

We will begin by looking at the third version of the argument (theRule Beta argument). The Rule Beta argument uses a modal sententialoperator 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 tellsus that the logic of ‘\(\mathbf{N}\)’ includes these twoinference rules, where \(\Box p\) asserts that it is logicallynecessity that \(p\):

In the argument below, ‘\(L\)’ is an abbreviation for asentence expressing a conjunction of all the laws of nature;‘\(H\)’ is a sentence expressing a true proposition aboutthe total state of the world at some time in the distant past beforeany agents existed; ‘\(\Box\)’ is ‘it is logicallynecessary that’; ‘\(\supset\)’ is the materialconditional, and ‘\(P\)’ is a dummy for which we maysubstitute any sentence which expresses a true proposition.

The argument is a conditional proof: Assume determinism and show thatit follows that no one has, or ever had, a choice aboutanytrue proposition, including propositions about the apparently freeactions of human beings.

Premises (1) and (2) follow from determinism. (3) follows from (2), byapplication of rule Alpha. Rule Alpha seems uncontroversial. (But seeSpencer 2017).

Premises 4 and 6 also look uncontroversial. \(N\) necessityisn’t logical or metaphysical necessity. We can insist that thelaws and the distant pastcould, in the broadly logicalsense, have been different, so neither \(\Box H\) nor \(\Box L\) aretrue. But it still seems undeniably true thatwe havenochoice about whether the laws and the distant past are the waythey are; there is nothing thatwe are able to do that wouldmake it the case that either the laws or the distant past aredifferent from the way they actually are.

Rule Beta is the key to the argument. It’s what makes thedifference between this version of the Consequence Argument and anargument widely agreed to be fallacious.

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

Another example:

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

The necessity expressed by the ‘no choice about’ operatoris not logical or metaphysical necessity. But it might nevertheless besimilar enough for Beta to be a valid rule of inference. Or so arguedvan Inwagen, and gave examples:

An early response to the Consequence argument was to argue that Betais invalid because a compatibilist account of the ability to dootherwise is correct (Gallois 1977; Foley 1979; Slote 1982; Flint1987). For instance, if “\(S\) is able to do \(X\)” means“if \(S\) tried to do \(X\), \(S\) would do \(X\)”, thenthe premises of the argument are true (since even if \(S\) tried tochange the laws or the past, she would not succeed), but theconclusion is false (since determinism is consistent with the truth ofcounterfactuals like “if \(S\) tried to raise her hand, shewould”).

Incompatibilists were unmoved by this response, saying, in effect,that the validity of Beta is more plausible than the truth of anycompatibilist account of ability to do otherwise. They pointed outthat there was no agreement, even among compatibilists, about how suchan account should go, and that the simplest accounts (so-called“Conditional Analyses”, originally proposed by Hume) hadbeen rejected, even by compatibilists.

(For criticism of Simple Conditional Analyses, see Austin 1956;Chisholm 1964; Lehrer 1968, 1976; van Inwagen 1983. For defense of acompatibilist 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; Vihvelin2004, 2013; Fara 2008; Schlosser 2017; Menzies 2017; List 2019.)

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

Agglomeration is uncontroversially invalid. To see this, let‘\(p\)’ abbreviate ‘The coin does not landheads’, let ‘q’ abbreviate ‘The coin does notland tails’, and suppose that it’s a fair coin whichisn’t tossed but someone could have tossed it (McKay and Johnson1996).

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

Van Inwagen proposed to repair the Consequence argument by replacing‘\(\mathbf{N}\)’ with‘\(\mathbf{N}\)*’,where‘\(\mathbf{N}*p\)’says “\(p\) andno 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 thisparticular objection to the validity of Beta does not apply.

It has also been suggested (Finch & Warfield 1998) that theConsequence argument can be repaired by keeping‘\(\mathbf{N}\)’and replacing Beta withBeta 2:

This would yield the following argument:

Other ways of repairing the argument have been proposed byO’Connor 1993 and Huemer 2000.

So it still looks as though the compatibilist is in trouble. For itseems plausible to suppose that there is nothing that we are able todo thatmight make it the case that either \(H\) or \(L\) isfalse. And it seems plausible to suppose that we have no choice aboutwhether \((H \amp L)\). We need to dig deeper to criticize theargument.

David Lewis tells us to think of the argument as a reductio (Lewis1981). A compatibilist is someone who claims that the truth ofdeterminism is compatible with the existence of the kinds of abilitiesthat we assume we have in typical choice situations. Let’s callthese ‘ordinary abilities’. The Consequence argument, asLewis articulates it, says that if we assume that a deterministicagent has ordinary abilities, we are forced to credit her withincredible abilities as well.

Here, with some modifications, is Lewis’s statement of theargument:

Pretend that determinism is true, and that I did not raise my hand (atthat department meeting, to vote on that proposal) but had the abilityto do so. If I had exercised my ability—if I had raised myhand—then either the remote past or the laws of physics wouldhave been different (would have to have been different). But ifthat’s so, then I have at least one of two incredibleabilities—the ability to change the remote past or the abilityto change the laws. But to suppose that I have either of theseabilities is absurd. So we must reject the claim that I had theability to raise my hand.

This counterfactual version of the Consequence argument nicelyhighlights a point that the rule Beta version glosses over. Theargument relies on a claim aboutcounterfactuals. Theargument says that if determinism is true, then at least one of thesecounterfactuals is true:

Both these counterfactuals strike many people as incredible. But thereis a reason for that—we are not used to thinking in terms ofdeterminism and we are not accustomed to counterfactual speculationaboutwhat would have been the case, beforehand, if anythingat a deterministic world had happened in any way other than the way itactually happened.

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

In other words, when we evaluate counterfactuals in real life, we doso by considering imaginary situations which are very like thesituation we are actually in, and we do not suppose that there are anygratuitous departures from actuality. And to suppose adifference in the past or the laws seems like a gratuitousdifference.

So it is no surprise that when our attention is directed toDifferent Past andDifferent Laws, these counterfactuals strike us as incredible, or at leastodd. But that doesn’t mean that they are false, and ifdeterminism is true, then eitherDifferent Past orDifferent Lawsis true.

So the first point is that we all need a theory of counterfactuals,and if determinism is true, the true counterfactuals will includeeitherDifferent Past orDifferent Laws.

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

(For similar criticisms of the Consequence argument, see Fischer 1983,1988; Horgan 1985; Watson 1987; Vihvelin 1988, 2008, 2013; Rummens2021.)

If Lewis’s theory of counterfactuals (D. Lewis 1973, 1979) iscorrect, or even more or less correct (Schaffer 2004), then therelevant counterfactuals about the past and laws, at a deterministicworld, are:

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

(For critique of Lewis’s theory, and defense of a theory ofcounterfactuals that holds the laws fixed, see Bennett 1984; Dorr2016; Vihvelin 2017b.)

We’ve got to choose. We all need a theory of counterfactuals,and our theory should provide the correct verdicts for theuncontroversially true counterfactuals at deterministic as well asindeterministic worlds. Our choice is limited to a theory that acceptsDifferent Laws orDifferent Past. Which theory we choose has nothing to do with the freewill/determinism problem and everything with how we evaluatecounterfactuals.

We can now explain the essence of Lewis’s reply to thecounterfactual version of the Consequence argument in a way thatdoesn’t require you to accept Lewis’s theory ofcounterfactuals.

The argument trades on an equivocation between twocounterfactuals.

(C1)

If I had raised my hand, the laws (or the past) would have beendifferent.

(C2)

If I had raised my hand, I would thereby havecaused thelaws (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 Ihad exercised my ability, the laws (or the past) would have beendifferent.

(A2)

I had the ability to do something (raise my hand) such that if Ihad exercised my ability, I would thereby havecaused thelaws (or the past) to be different.

The problem with the argument, says Lewis, is that it equivocatesbetween these two ability claims. To count as a reductio against thecompatibilist, the argument must establish that the compatibilist iscommitted 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 istrue, we have abilities we would exerciseonly if the past(or the laws) had been different in the appropriate ways. And whilethis may sound odd, it is no more incredible than the claim that thesuccessful exercise of our abilities depends, not only on us, but alsoon the co-operation of things not in our control: the good or bad luckof our immediate surroundings. Since we are neither superheroes norgods, we are always in this position, regardless of the truth orfalsity of determinism.

The Consequence Argument was intended as an argument from premisesthat we must all accept—premises about our lack of control overthe past and the laws—to the conclusion that if determinism istrue, we don’t have the free will common sense says we have. Thecounterfactual version of the argument claims that if we attributeordinary abilities to deterministic agents, we are forced to creditthem with incredible past or law-changing abilities as well. But nosuch incredible conclusion follows. All that follows is something thatwe must accept anyway, as the price of our non-godlike nature: thatthe exercise of our abilities always depends, in part, oncircumstances outside our control. (See also Fischer 1983, 1988, 1994;Watson 1987; Nelkin 2001; Vihvelin 2008, 2011, 2013, 2017; Kapitan1991, 2011; Carlson 2000.)

If the aim of the Consequence argument was to show that nocompatibilist 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 thepowers of free determined agents. On the other hand, theincompatibilist surely has a point when she complains that it isdifficult to believe that anyone has the ability described by(A1). We believe that our powers as agents are constrained by the past andby the laws. One way to understand this belief is compatible withdeterminism:we lack causal power over thepast andthelaws. But it’s natural to understand the constraintin a different, simpler way: we are able to do only those things whichare such that our doing of them does not counterfactually require adifference in either the past or the laws. And this leads more or lessdirectly to the incompatibilist conclusion that if determinism istrue, then we are never able to do otherwise.

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

The Consequence argument is an attempt to provide anargumentin defense of the incompatibilist’s way of understanding thesecommon sense beliefs. Even if it fails as a reductio, it has beensuccessful in other ways. It has made it clear that the freewill/determinism problem is a metaphysical problem and that theunderlying issues concern questions about our abilities and powers, aswell as more general questions about the nature of causation,counterfactuals, and laws of nature. Can the abilities or powers ofchoosers and agents be understood as a kind of natural capacity ordisposition? Is there a viable incompatibilist alternative? How shouldwe understand counterfactuals about the alternative actions andchoices of agents at deterministic worlds? Is the compatibilistproposal about the way in which the laws and past constrain usdefensible? Are incompatibilists committed to the defense of aparticular view about the nature of laws of nature? Are they committedto the rejection of a Humean view, for instance?

Insofar as the Consequence argument has pointed us in the direction ofthese deep and difficult underlying metaphysical questions, itrepresents a significant step forward in the discussion of one of themost intractable problems of philosophy. (For discussion of some ofthese issues, see D. Lewis 1979; Dennett 1984, 2003; Hoefer 2002;Berofsky 2003, 2012; Beebee & Mele 2002; Beebee 2000; Schaffer2004, 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)

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