 In addition to having the general capacity for practical reasoning, however, it is often thought that an individual is appropriately blamed only if they had (and, on the occasion, exercised) free will. The excuse “I couldn’t help it” or “I was forced to do it” is often sufficient to render blame inappropriate, so it’s a natural thought that someone can only be blamed for those things that they could have helped, or weren’t forced into—in other words, for those things that they chose of their own free will. (But note that this is primarily a condition applied to actions for which one is thought to be blameworthy. Taking seriously the possibility that we can be blameworthy for our attitudes as well might naturally lead one to downplay the importance of free will, or reconceive what it involves. See, for example, Smith 2005.) Typically, free will is thought of as a sort of control: as the ability to control (by selecting) which of two possible futures obtains, for example, or as the ability to control (by guiding) one’s actions in light of one’s considered judgments about what one ought to do. (See van Inwagen 1983; Fischer 1994; Nelkin 2011; Franklin 2018.) The question of whether control of the right sort is compatible with determinism has proven to be a difficult one to answer; hence it’s a difficult question whether blame would ever be appropriate in a deterministic world. There are less sweeping threats to freedom, however. We are all vulnerable to coercion, manipulation, situational pressures, and varying degrees of temptation or compulsion, and the extent to which these factors rob us of our freedom is the extent to which we may not be deserving of blame.