 Can we perhaps claim an action to be obligable if (a) it is voluntarily substitutable, and (b) the agent could have willed to do it, in the specified conditional sense of ‘could have willed’? In other words, is the joint condition of (a) and (b) sufficient for obligability? Broad rejects this proposal. Suppose the agent could not have willed differently in the past (say six months ago). It is “surely irrelevant to say that, if he had done so his conative dispositions would have been different at a later stage from what they in fact were then, and that he would have willed otherwise than he then did” (1934, p. 204). As he points out, at this juncture it is tempting to refer to still earlier volitions (say twelve months ago). He contends, however, that this is useless since the very same difficulty will reappear.