  On the basis of these and other difficulties, many conclude that the appeal to agent-causation provides no more insight into autonomy than the simple assertion that we can sometimes govern the causal efficacy of our own motives. Incompatibilists who are sympathetic with this complaint nonetheless insist that even if an agent’s causal power must be understood in terms of the causal relations among events, autonomous agency is possible only if the conditions that immediately give rise to an agent’s intention need not suffice to produce it. If, they argue, an agent cannot authorize a given action without being determined to do so by powers beyond her control, then autonomous agency is an illusion. If our every action is an event in a deterministic causal chain, then we authorize our actions only in the sense that a figurehead authorizes the decisions she is forced to sign. Indeed, unlike a political puppet, we do not even have the option of   defiance[20]. 