 This version appears to be immune to FSCs. And it has the added virtue of explaining standard cases in which agents are blameless  (§2.2),  so long as these can plausibly be construed as involving absent or diminished general abilities. Moreover, compatibilists will note that causal determinism is no longer the threat to moral responsibility it first appeared to be  (§1.1;  but see also  §5.2).  After all, determinism does not rob us of our unexercised general abilities. For example, even in a deterministic world, during periods of silence one typically still has the competence to speak. Why, then, should determinism deprive anyone of the ability—that is, the general ability—to do otherwise? The point is ancient (Sorabji 1980: 78), but it has received new life and sophisticated defense in the hands of the “new dispositionalists” or “dispositional compatibilists,” so-called because general abilities can be equated with dispositions (see entry on  compatibilism §4.1.5).