Compatibilism

Compatibilism offers a solution to the free will problem,
which concerns a disputed incompatibility between free will and
determinism. Compatibilism is the thesis that free will is
compatible with determinism. Because free will is typically taken to be
a necessary condition of moral responsibility, compatibilism is
sometimes expressed as a thesis about the compatibility between moral
responsibility and determinism.

It would be misleading to specify a strict definition of free will
since in the philosophical work devoted to this notion there is
probably no single concept of it. For the most part, what philosophers
working on this issue have been hunting for is a feature of agency that
is necessary for persons to be morally responsible for their
conduct.[1]
Different attempts to articulate the conditions for moral
responsibility will yield different accounts of the sort of agency
required to satisfy those conditions. What we need as a starting point
is a malleable notion that focuses upon special features of persons as
agents. As a theory-neutral point of departure, then, free will can be
defined as the unique ability of persons to exercise control over
their conduct in the manner necessary for moral
responsibility.[2]
Clearly, this definition is too lean when taken as an endpoint; the
hard philosophical work is about how best to develop this special kind
of control.

A person who is a morally responsible agent is not merely a
person who is able to do moral right or wrong. Beyond this,
she is accountable for her morally significant conduct. Hence,
she is, when fitting, an apt target of moral praise or blame, as well
as reward or punishment. And typically, free will is understood as a
necessary condition of moral responsibility since it would seem
unreasonable to say of a person that she deserves blame and punishment
for her conduct if it turned out that she was not at any point in time
in control of it. (Similar things can be said about praise and reward.)
It is primarily, though not exclusively, because of the intimate
connection between free will and moral responsibility that the free
will problem is seen as an important
one.[3]

A common characterization of determinism states that every event
(except the first, if there is one) is causally necessitated by
antecedent
events.[4]
Within this essay, we shall define determinism as the metaphysical
thesis that the facts of the past, in conjunction with the laws of
nature, entail every truth about the future. According to this
characterization, if determinism is true, then, given the actual past,
and holding fixed the laws of nature, only one future is possible at
any moment in time. Notice that an implication of determinism as it
applies to a person's conduct is that, if determinism is true, there
are (causal) conditions for that person's actions located in the remote
past, prior to her birth, that are sufficient for each of her
actions.

The compatibilists' main adversaries are incompatibilists,
who deny the compatibility of free will and determinism. Neither
compatibilism nor incompatibilism as such is committed to the further
claim that any human persons ever do, in fact, have free will.
However, many (but by no means all) compatibilists do think that we are
sometimes free. And though some incompatibilists remain agnostic
as to whether persons have free will, most take a further stand
regarding the reality or unreality of free will. These
incompatibilists, who are known as libertarians, hold that at
least some persons have free will and that, therefore, determinism is
false. Other incompatibilists, hard determinists, have a less
optimistic view, holding that determinism is true and that no persons
have free will. In recent times, hard determinism has fallen out of
fashion, largely because our best sciences suggest that determinism is
probably false. But the spirit of the hard determinist position is
sustained by hard incompatibilists, who hold that there is no
free will if determinism is true, but also, that there is no free will
if determinism is false. A salient element of the hard incompatibilist
view is that the manner in which indeterminism is true (for instance,
due to quantum indeterminacies), if it is, poses just as much of a
threat to the presumption of free will as determinism would.

If we are to understand compatibilism as a solution to the free will
problem, it would be useful to have some sense of the problem itself.
Unfortunately, just as there is no single notion of free will that
unifies all of the work philosophers have devoted to it, there is no
single specification of the free will problem. In fact, it might be
more helpful to think in terms of a range of problems. Regardless, any
formulation of the problem can be understood as arising from a
troubling entanglement of our concepts, an entanglement that seems to
lead to contradictions, and thus that cries out for disentangling. In
this regard, the free will problem is a classic philosophical problem;
we are, it seems, committed in our thought and talk to a set of
concepts which, under scrutiny, appear to comprise a mutually
inconsistent set. Formally, to settle the problem—to disentangle
the set—we must either reject some concepts, or instead, we must
demonstrate that the set is indeed consistent despite its appearance to
the contrary. Just to illustrate, consider this set of propositions as
an historically very well known (but by no means uncontroversial) way
of formulating the free will problem. Call it the Classical
Formulation:

Some agent, at some time, could have acted otherwise than she
did.

Actions are events.

Every event has a cause.

If an event is caused, then it is causally determined.

If an event is an act that is causally determined, then the agent
of the act could not have acted otherwise than in the way that she
did.

The Classical Formulation involves principles governing six
different concepts: an agent, action, could have done otherwise, event,
cause, and causal
determination.[5]
Note that this formulation involves a mutually inconsistent set of
propositions, and yet each is (seemingly) rooted in our contemporary
conception of the world. (1) is grounded in a conception of agency
(free agency) as an ability to select among different possible courses
of action. (2) identifies actions with events, which are familiar and
natural phenomena. (3) is a presupposition of natural science. (4) has
historically been an operating assumption of the natural sciences. And
(5) arises from a commonsense understanding of what it means to claim
that an event is causally determined—that, if it were, then given
the antecedent causal conditions for the event, it was not possible for
it not to have occurred.

By looking at the Classical Formulation, we can see how different
stances might emerge. For instance, within the framework of this
Classical Formulation, compatibilists would deny (5). Incompatibilists,
on the other hand, might move in a number of different directions.
Consider the incompatibilist who remains agnostic about the free will
problem. Her thesis is merely that free will and determinism are
incompatible. Hence, given the Classical Formulation, she would be
committed to the truth of (5). Yet she is not prepared to say whether
determinism is true or whether instead any person has free will. Her
view is simply that there is no world in which it is the case that a
person acts with freedom of the will and determinism is true. This sort
of agnostic incompatibilist might frame her position by appeal to a
disjunction, such as: Either (1) is false or (4) is false. (She might
appeal to a different disjunction, such as: Either (1) is false or (3)
is false.) Now consider the incompatibilist who commits to the hard
determinist thesis that no person has free will and that determinism is
true. Clearly, the hard determinist will reject (1). Finally, consider
the libertarian—the incompatibilist who embraces free will and
denies that determinism is true. She has a number of options. She might
deny (3), that every event is caused, thereby claiming that the
universe is causally indeterministic. Or she might deny (4), that if an
event is caused, then it is causally determined. On this account, she
might well agree that actions are events, and that every event is
caused (that is, she might accept (2) and (3)), but she will claim that
human agents are the cause of freely willed actions, and that human
agents are not themselves caused (which would entail that they are not
events).

The Classical Formulation of the free will problem has fallen out of
fashion. But it is meant to function here merely as an illustration of
how different positions on the free will problem might emerge, and as
an illustration of the ways that the differing positions might seek to
disentangle the collection of concepts giving rise to the problem. To
warn against settling exclusively on any single formulation of the free
will problem, it might be instructive to show why this formulation is
no longer helpful. Just to mention one problem with it, notice that the
only proposition used to represent the freedom element of the notion of
free will is (1). However, as will become apparent later in this entry,
there are notions of free will that do not appeal to a proposition
involving the claim that an agent could have acted otherwise. All the
same, such notions of free will do seem to be at odds with the thesis
of causal determinism. Hence, there are debates between compatibilists
and incompatibilists regarding a notion of free will that is entirely
independent of could have acted
otherwise.[6]
In the absence of considerations having to do with an agent's ability
to act otherwise, the Classical Formulation does not provide the
resources to show why free will might be thought to be incompatible
with
determinism.[7]

Rather than seek a formulation of the free will problem that allows
a single, perspicuous demonstration of every possible position adopted
with respect to it, it is more helpful to think in terms of different
sorts of formulations. These different formulations will involve
different considerations pertinent to the sort of freedom that is at
issue when theorizing about the conditions for moral responsibility. In
the following section, two formulations will be presented in the form
of two arguments for incompatibilism. Regardless of the specific form
they take, what is central to a proper understanding of them is that
they emerge from an apparent problematic entangling of concepts that
are a deep part of our conceptual repertoire. These concepts will
include some subset of the following: freedom, control, person, agency,
cause, causal necessity or determination, event, moral responsibility,
as well as notions like the past, and a law of nature. The
philosopher's task is to disentangle these various concepts in a useful
and illuminating manner.

Determinism poses at least two different sorts of threats to free
will. In each case, we can begin with the theory-neutral definition of
free will set out in section one: the unique ability of persons to
exercise control over their conduct in the fullest manner necessary for
moral responsibility. This characterization of free will in terms
of control can be developed in two ways. One concerns an agent's
freedom over alternatives. Another concerns the source of an agent's
actions. Incompatibilists have rightly exploited both. Each builds upon
a different model of control, and each has instigated a different
incompatibilist formulation of the free will problem.

A natural way to think of an agent's control over her conduct at a
moment in time is in terms of her ability to select among, or choose
between, alternative courses of
action.[8]
This picture of control stems from common features of our perspectives
as practical deliberators settling on courses of action. If a person is
choosing between voting for Obama as opposed to Romney, it is plausible
to assume that her freedom with regard to her voting consists, at least
partially, in her ability to choose between these two alternatives. On
this account, acting with free will requires alternative
possibilities. A natural way to model this account of free will is
in terms of an agent's future as a garden of forking paths branching
off from a single past. A locus of freely willed action arises when the
present offers, from an agent's (singular) past, more than one path
into the future. Borrowing from the Argentine fabulist Borges, let us
call this the Garden of Forking Paths model of
control.[9]
Let us say, as the Garden of Forking Paths suggests, that when a person
acts of her own free will, she could have acted otherwise.

The Garden of Forking Paths model of free will immediately invites
the thought that determinism might be a threat. For determinism,
understood in the strict sense characterized above, tells us that, at
any time, given the facts of the past and the laws of nature,
only one future is possible. But the Garden of Forking Paths
model suggests that a freely willing agent could have acted other than
she did and, hence, that more than one future is possible.

Here is an incompatibilist argument that codifies the considerations
set out above:

Any agent, x, performs an act a of x's
own free will iff x has control over a.

x has control over a only if x has the
ability to select among alternative courses of action to act
a.

If x has the ability to select among alternative courses
of action to act a, then there are alternative courses of
action to act a open to x (i.e., x could
have done otherwise than a).

If determinism is true, then only one future is possible given the
actual past, and holding fixed the laws of nature.

If only one future is possible holding fixed the actual past and
the laws of nature, then there are no alternative courses of action to
any act open to any agent (i.e., no agent could have done otherwise
than she actually does).

Therefore, if determinism is true, it is not the case that any
agent, x, performs any act, a, of her own free
will.[10]

For ease of reference and discussion throughout this entry, let us
simplify the above argument as follows:

If a person acts of her own free will, then she could have done
otherwise (A-C).

If determinism is true, no one can do otherwise than one actually
does (D-E).

Therefore, if determinism is true, no one acts of her own free will
(F).

Call this simplified argument the Classical Incompatibilist
Argument. According to the argument, if determinism is true, no
one has access to alternatives in the way required by the Garden of
Forking Paths model of free
will.[11]

There is also a second way to develop the notion of control. An
agent's control consists in her playing a crucial role in the
production of her
actions.[12]
Think in terms of the transparent difference between those events that
are products of one's agency and those that are merely bodily
happenings. For instance, consider the choice to pick up a cup of
coffee as opposed to the event of one's heart beating or one's blood
circulating. In the latter cases, one recognizes events happening to
one; in the former, one is the source and producer of that happening.
Control is understood as one's being the source whence her actions
emanate. On this model, a Source model of control, one's
actions issue from one's self (in a suitable manner).

Fixing just upon the Source model, how might determinism pose a
threat to free will? If determinism is true, then for any person, what
happened in the past prior to her birth that, when combined with the
laws of nature, provides causally sufficient conditions for the
production of her actions. But if this is so, then, while it might be
true that an agent herself provides a source of her action, that
source, the one provided by her, itself has a further source that
originates outside of her. Hence, she, as an agent, is not the
ultimate source of her actions. What is meant here by an
ultimate source, and not just a source? When an agent is an ultimate
source of her action, some condition necessary for her action
originates with the agent herself. It cannot be located in places and
times prior to the agent's freely willing her action. If an agent is
not the ultimate source of her actions, then her actions do not
originate in her, and if her actions are the outcomes of conditions
guaranteeing them, how can she be said to control them? The conditions
sufficient for their occurrence were already in place long before she
even existed!

Here is an incompatibilist argument that codifies the considerations
set out above:

Any agent, x, performs an any act, a, of her own
free will iff x has control over a.

x has control over a only if x is the
ultimate source of a.

If x is the ultimate source of a, then some
condition, b, necessary for a, originates with
x.

If any condition, b, originates with x, then
there are no conditions sufficient for b independent of
x.

If determinism is true, then the facts of the past, in conjunction
with the laws of nature, entail every truth about the future.

If the facts of the past, in conjunction with the laws of nature,
entail every truth about the future, then for any condition,
b, necessary for any action, a, performed by any
agent, x, there are conditions independent of x (in
x's remote past, before x's birth) that are
sufficient for b.

If, for any condition, b, necessary for any action,
a, performed by any agent, x, there are conditions
independent of x that are sufficient for b, then no
agent, x, is the ultimate source of any action, a.
(This follows from C and D.)

If determinism is true, then no agent, x, is the ultimate
source of any action, a. (This follows from E, F, and G.)

Therefore, if determinism is true, then no agent, x,
performs any action, a, of her own free will. (This follows
from A, B, and
H.)[13]

For ease of reference and discussion throughout this entry, let us
simplify the above argument as follows:

A person acts of her own free will only if she is its ultimate
source (A-B).

If determinism is true, no one is the ultimate source of her
actions (C-H).

Therefore, if determinism is true, no one acts of her own free will
(I).

Call this simplified argument the Source Incompatibilist
Argument. It is important to see that the demand for alternative
possibilities as illustrated on the Garden of Forking Paths Model is
not (at least not obviously) relevant to this incompatibilist argument.
Suppose, as the Garden of Forking Paths Model suggests, that a
putatively freely willing agent had access to the relevant sort of
alternative possibilities. According to the Source Incompatibilist
Argument, a further condition is that she must have been the
ultimate source of her freely willed actions. Furthermore, even if, for
some reason, agency of the sort indicated by the Garden of Forking
Paths model were not necessary for free will, the Source
Incompatibilist Argument would carry independent force. Hence, grant
for the sake of argument that it is possible for an agent to act of her
own free will without the relevant sort of alternative possibilities.
According to the Source Incompatibilist Argument, for an agent to take
the particular path that she takes and in doing so act of her own free
will, she has to be the ultimate source of her decision to
take that path. If determinism is true, then, while it might appear to
an agent that she plays a role in the production of her action, her
contribution to the subsequent action is not significant in the way
required for her to act of her own free will. Why is it not
significant? What ultimately explains why she acts need make no
reference to
her.[14]

In assessing compatibilist theories and arguments, it is useful to
consider what sort of model of control they rely upon—Garden of
Forking Paths or Source—and how they stack up against both the
Classical Incompatibilist Argument and the Source Incompatibilist
Argument. As for the Classical Incompatibilist Argument, some
compatibilists have responded to this argument by denying the truth of
the second premise: If determinism is true, no one can do otherwise
than one actually does. By doing so, these compatibilists embrace a
Garden of Forking Paths model of control. They maintain that
determinism is not a threat to it. (For example, see sections 3.3, 5.1,
and 5.4.) Others have instead resisted the first premise: If a person
acts of her own free will, then she could have done otherwise. These
compatibilists proceed by rejecting the Garden of Forking Paths model
altogether. (See sections 4.2, 5.2, 5.4, and 5.5.) They instead attempt
to make do with a Source model of control. What, then, of the Source
Incompatibilist Argument? No compatibilist, it seems, can deny the
truth of the second premise of the Source Incompatibilist Argument: If
determinism is true, no one is the ultimate source of her actions.
Given the definition of ultimacy (as given in section 2.2 above), the second
premise appears to be an analytic truth. Thus, all compatibilists must
respond to the argument by arguing against the truth of the first
premise: A person acts of her own free will only if she is its ultimate
source. [Perhaps there is some room for compatibilists to resist the
second premise instead of the first by offering a positive account of
being an ultimate source of one's action (e.g., McKenna, 2008).
Naturally, such an account would have to be shown to be consistent with
determinism, and so it would not rely upon the definition of ultimacy
offered above (in section 2.2). But few compatibilists have pursued this
option, and so it will not be explored further in this entry.]

Let us turn now from incompatibilism's plausible concerns to
compatibilism itself.

A useful manner of thinking about compatibilism's place in
contemporary philosophy is in terms of at least three stages. The first
stage involves the classical form defended in the modern era by the
empiricists Hobbes and Hume, and reinvigorated in the early part of the
twentieth century. The second stage involves three distinct
contributions in the 1960s, contributions that challenged many of the
dialectical presuppositions driving classical compatibilism. The third
stage involves various contemporary forms of compatibilism, forms that
diverge from the classical variety and that emerged out of, or resonate
with, at least one of the three contributions found in the second
transitional stage. This section will be devoted to the first stage,
that of classical compatibilism.

Classical compatibilism is associated with several distinct theses.
Only two will be considered here. One involves a strikingly austere
account of freedom. A second involves an attempt to explain how an
agent could be free to do otherwise even if she was determined to do
what she did.

According to one strand within classical compatibilism, freedom of the
sort pertinent to moral evaluation is nothing more than an agent's
ability to do what she wishes in the absence of impediments that would
otherwise stand in her way. For instance, Hobbes writes that a
person's freedom consists in his finding “no stop, in doing what
he has the will, desire, or inclination to doe [sic]”
(Leviathan, p.108). Hobbes' brief remarks represent an
exemplary expression of the classical compatibilist account of
freedom. It involves two components, a positive and a negative
one. The positive component (doing what one wills, desires, or
inclines to do) consists in nothing more than what is involved in the
power of agency. The negative component (finding “no
stop”) consists in acting unencumbered or unimpeded. Typically,
the classical compatibilists' benchmark of impeded or encumbered
action is compelled action. Compelled action arises when one is forced
by some foreign or external source to act contrary to one's will.

Classical compatibilism is often associated with the thesis that the
word freedom in the expression freedom of will
modifies a condition of action and not the agent’s will. For this
reason, some writers advised burying the expression altogether and
instead speaking only in terms of freedom of action (e.g.,
Schlick, 1939). For ease of expression, and to avoid cumbersome worries
about different authors' formulations, lets us characterize the moral
freedom pertinent to classical compatibilism as freedom of will,
keeping in mind that this notion is meant to be an especially
deflationary one attributing nothing special to the will itself:

Free will, then, is the unencumbered ability of an agent to do what
she wants. And it is plausible to conclude that the truth of
determinism does not entail that agents lack free will since it does
not entail that no agents ever do what they wish to do
unencumbered. Compatibilism is thus vindicated.

But just how convincing is the classical compatibilist account of
free will? As it stands, it cries out for refinement. To cite just one
shortcoming, various mental illnesses can cause a person to act as she
wants and do so unencumbered; yet, intuitively, it would seem that she
does not act of her own free will. For example, imagine a person
suffering from a form of psychosis that causes full-fledged
hallucinations. While hallucinating, she might “act as she wants
unencumbered,” but she could hardly be said to be acting of her
own free will. Consequently, the classical compatibilist owes us
more.

The classical compatibilist account of free will (the unencumbered
ability to do as one wants) permits all kinds of cases that intuitively
seem to involve agents lacking freedom of will. Sometimes the very
desires giving rise to actions are the sources of an agent's lack of
freedom, as in cases of addiction or neuroses. But perhaps the wants
leading to freely willed actions can be more carefully captured in ways
that fit the spirit of the classical compatibilists' strategy. If
somehow those wants could be more narrowly specified so as to rule out
the deviant freedom-undermining ones, then, like the classical
compatibilist, some brand of compatibilism could show that simple,
uncontroversial features of agency, or maybe of an agent's deliberative
capacities, are adequate to capture the kind of freedom required for
freedom of will. In subsequent sections, we will see that several
contemporary compatibilist efforts adopt precisely this approach.

The classical compatibilist account of free will, even if
incomplete, can be contrasted with the Source Incompatibilist Argument
discussed in section 2.2. The dispute is over the truth of the first
premise of that argument: A person acts of her own free will only if
she is its ultimate source. No doubt, for one to be an ultimate source
of her action, no explanation for her action can trace back to factors
prior to her. This the compatibilist cannot have since it requires the
falsity of determinism. But according to the classical compatibilist
account of free will, so long as one's action arises from one's
unencumbered desires, she is a genuine source of her action. Surely she
is not an ultimate source, only a mediated one. But she is a source all
the same, and this sort of source of action, the classical
compatibilist will argue, is sufficient to satisfy the kind of freedom
required for free will and moral responsibility. This general classical
compatibilist strategy—developing an appropriately nuanced
account of the source of agency—offers a lasting contribution to
the free will debate. Contemporary compatibilist variations must adopt
some similar posture towards the Source Incompatibilist Argument.

Consider the following incompatibilist objection to the classical
compatibilist account of free will:

If determinism is true, and if at any given time, an unencumbered
agent is completely determined to have the wants that she does have,
and if those wants causally determine her actions, then, even though
she does do what she wants to do, she cannot ever do
otherwise. She satisfies the classical compatibilist conditions
for free will. But free will requires the ability to do otherwise, and
determinism is incompatible with this. Hence, the classical
compatibilist account of free will is inadequate. Determinism is
incompatible with free will and moral responsibility because
determinism is incompatible with the ability to do otherwise.

The classical compatibilist account of freedom set out thus far can
be thought of as accounting for one-way freedom, which fixes
only on what a person does do, not on what alternatives she had to what
she did. Hence, it can be understood exclusively in terms of a
Source model of control. The incompatibilist challenge at issue
here is that such freedom, even if necessary, is insufficient in the
absence of a further freedom to do other than as one does. In
response, the classical compatibilists, such as Hobbes and Hume, also
argued for a sort of two-way
freedom.[15]
Hence, classical compatibilists were prepared to defend a Garden of
Forking Paths model of control.

The classical compatibilists responded by arguing that determinism
is compatible with the ability to do otherwise. To show this,
they attempted to analyze an agent's ability to do otherwise in
conditional terms (e.g., Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human
Understanding, p.73; Ayer, 1954; or Hobart, 1934). Since
determinism is a thesis about what must happen in the future given
the actual past, determinism is consistent with the future being
different given a different past. So the classical
compatibilists analyzed any assertion that an agent could have done
otherwise as a conditional assertion reporting what an agent would have
done under certain counterfactual conditions. These conditions involved
variations on what a freely willing agent wanted (chose, willed, or
decided) to do at the time of her freely willed action. Suppose that an
agent freely willed X. According to the classical
compatibilist conditional analysis, to say that, at the time
of acting, she could have done Y and not X is just to
say that, had she wanted (chosen, willed, or decided) to do
Y and not X at that time, then she would
have done Y and not done X. Her ability to have done
otherwise at the time at which she acted consisted in some such
counterfactual truth.

But given that a determined agent is determined at the time of
action to have the wants that she does have, how is it helpful to state
what she would have done had she had different wants than the wants
that she did have? Assuming the truth of determinism, at the time at
which she acted she could have had no other wants than the wants that
her causal history determined her to have. How is this counterfactual
ability more than a hollow freedom? However, in response, the classical
compatibilist holds that that the conditional analysis brings into
relief a rich picture of freedom. In assessing an agent's action, the
analysis accurately distinguishes those actions she would have
performed if she wanted, from those actions she could not have
performed even if she wanted. This, the classical compatibilist held,
effectively distinguishes those alternative courses of action that were
within the scope of the agent's abilities at the time of action, from
those courses of action that were not. This just is the distinction
between what an agent was free to do and what she was not free to do.
This is not at all a hollow freedom; it demarcates what persons have
within their control from what falls outside that purview.

Despite the classical compatibilists' ingenuity, their analysis of
could have done otherwise failed decisively. The classical
compatibilists wanted to show their incompatibilist interlocutors that
when one asserted that a freely willing agent had alternatives
available to her—that is, when it was asserted that she could
have done otherwise—that assertion could be analyzed as a
conditional statement, a statement that is perspicuously compatible
with determinism. But as it turned out, the analysis was refuted when
it was shown that the conditional statements sometimes yielded the
improper result that a person was able to do otherwise even though it
was clear that at the time the person acted, she had no such
alternative and therefore was not able to do otherwise in the pertinent
sense (Chisholm, 1964, in Watson, ed., 1982, pp.26–7; or van
Inwagen, 1983, pp.114–9). Here is such an example:

Suppose that Danielle is psychologically incapable of wanting to
touch a blond haired dog. Imagine that, on her sixteenth birthday,
unaware of her condition, her father brings her two puppies to choose
between, one being a blond haired Lab, the other a black haired Lab. He
tells Danielle just to pick up whichever of the two she pleases and
that he will return the other puppy to the pet store. Danielle happily,
and unencumbered, does what she wants and picks up the black Lab.

When Danielle picked up the black Lab, was she able to pick up the
blond Lab? It seems not. Picking up the blond Lab was an alternative
that was not available to her. In this respect, she could not have
done otherwise. Given her psychological condition, she cannot even
form a want to touch a blond Lab, hence she could not pick one up. But
notice that, if she wanted to pick up the blond Lab, then
she would have done so. Of course, if she wanted to pick up the
blond Lab, then she would not suffer from the very psychological
disorder that causes her to be unable to pick up blond haired doggies.
The classical compatibilist analysis of ‘could have done
otherwise’ thus fails. According to the analysis, when Danielle
picked up the black Lab, she was able to pick up the blonde
Lab, even though, due to her psychological condition, she was
not able to do so in the relevant respect. Hence, the analysis
yields the wrong result.

The classical compatibilist attempt to answer an incompatibilist
objection stemming from the Garden of Forking Paths model has failed.
Even if an unencumbered agent does what she wants, if she is
determined, at least as the incompatibilist maintains, she could not
have done otherwise. Since, as the objection goes, freedom of will
requires freedom involving alternative possibilities, classical
compatibilist freedom falls.

It should be pointed out that the classical compatibilists'
failure to prove that ‘could have done otherwise’
statements are compatible with determinism does not amount to
a proof that ‘could have done otherwise’ statements are
incompatible with determinism. So the incompatibilists'
compelling counterexamples to the analysis (such as the one involving
Danielle and the blond haired puppy) do not alone prove that
determinism is incompatible with the freedom to do otherwise.

Despite this qualification, given the classical compatibilists'
failure, they had no reply to the Classical Incompatibilist Argument.
What the classical compatibilists attempted to do by way of their
conditional analysis was deny the truth of the second premise: If
determinism is true, no one can do otherwise. But, given their failure,
it was incumbent upon them to respond to the argument in some manner.
It is only dialectically fair to acknowledge that determinism does pose
a prima facie threat to free will when free will is understood
in terms of the Garden of Forking Paths model. The Classical
Incompatibilist Argument is merely a codification of this natural
thought. In light of the failure of the classical compatibilists'
conditional analysis, the burden of proof rests squarely on the
compatibilists. How can the freedom to do otherwise be reconciled with
determinism? As we’ll see below, contemporary compatibilists
attempt to speak to this issue.

Before we can get to the new developments in contemporary
compatibilist theories, we much first appreciate their immediate
historical antecedents. In the 1960s, three major contributions
to the free will debate radically altered it. One was an
incompatibilist argument that put crisply the intuition that a
determined agent lacks control over alternatives. This argument, first
developed by Carl Ginet, came to be known as the Consequence
Argument (Ginet, 1966). Another contribution was Harry Frankfurt's
argument against the Principle of Alternative Possibilities
(PAP), a principle stating that an agent is morally responsible for
what she does only if she can do otherwise (Frankfurt, 1969).
Frankfurt's argument turned upon an example in which, an agent
apparently cannot do otherwise, but is nevertheless morally
responsible. Finally, P.F. Strawson defended compatibilism by inviting
both compatibilists and incompatibilists to attend more carefully to
the central role of interpersonal relationships and the reactive
attitudes in understanding the concept of moral responsibility
(Strawson, 1962). According to Strawson, the threat determinism
allegedly poses to free will and moral responsibility is defused once
the place of the reactive attitudes is properly appreciated. Each of
these contributions changed dramatically the way that the free will
problem is addressed in contemporary discussions. No account of free
will, compatibilist or incompatibilist, is advanced today without
taking into account at least one (if not more) of these three
pieces.

This argument invokes a compelling pattern of inference regarding
claims about what is power necessary for a person. Power
necessity, as applied to true propositions (or facts), concerns what is
not within a person's power. Or, put differently, it concerns
facts that a person does not have power over. To say that a person
does not have power over a fact is to say that she cannot act in such a
way that the fact would not obtain. To illustrate, no person has
power over the truths of mathematics. That is, no person can act in
such a way that the truths of mathematics would be
false.[16]
Hence, the truths of mathematics are, for any person, power
necessities.

The intuitive pattern of inference applied to these claims is simply
that if a person has no power over a certain fact, and if she also has
no power over the further fact that the original fact has some other
fact as a consequence, then she also has no power over the consequent
fact. Powerlessness, it seems, transfers from one fact to consequences
of it. For example, if poker-playing Diamond Jim, who is holding only
two pairs, has no power over the fact that Calamity Sam draws a
straight flush, and if a straight flush beats two pairs (and assuming
Jim has no power to alter this fact), then it follows that Jim has no
power over the fact that Sam's straight flush beats Jim's two pairs.
This general pattern of inference is applied to the thesis of
determinism to yield a powerful argument for incompatibilism. The
argument requires the assumption that determinism is true, and that the
facts of the past and the laws of nature are fixed. Given these
assumptions, here is a rough, non-technical sketch of the
argument:[17]

No one has power over the facts of the past and the laws of
nature.

No one has power over the fact that the facts of the past and the
laws of nature entail every fact of the future (i.e., determinism is
true).

Therefore, no one has power over the facts of the future.

According to the Consequence Argument, if determinism is
true, it appears that no person has any power to alter how her own
future will unfold.

This argument shook compatibilism, and rightly so. The classical
compatibilists' failure to analyze statements of an agent's abilities
in terms of counterfactual conditionals (see section 3.3) left the
compatibilists with no perspicuous retort to the crucial second premise
of the Classical Incompatibilist Argument (see section 2.1). And the
Consequence Argument provides powerful support for this
argument’s second premise. If, according to the Argument,
determinism implies that the future will unfold in only one way, and if
no one has any power to alter its unfolding in that particular way,
then it seems that no one can do other than she does. It is fair to say
that the Consequence Argument earned the incompatibilists the
dialectical advantage. The burden of proof was placed upon the
compatibilists, at least to show what was wrong with the Consequence
Argument, and better yet, to provide some positive account of the
ability to do otherwise. So even though many compatibilists
are committed to thinking that the Consequence Argument is unsound, it
nevertheless set the agenda for many contemporary compatibilist
theories of free will and moral responsibility.

As suggested above (section 4.1), one compatibilist strategy is to
sidestep the debate over the truth of the second premise of the
Classical Incompatibilist Argument as set out in section 2.1: If
determinism is true, no one can do otherwise. An alternative strategy
is to attack the first premise of the Classical Incompatibilist
Argument: If a person acts of her own free will, then she could have
done otherwise. This compatibilist response turns away from the Garden
of Forking Paths model of control and seeks to ground an agent’s
control over his action in other features of his or her agency. In his
seminal 1969 paper, “Moral Responsibility and Alternate
Possibilities,” Harry Frankfurt developed an argument that gave
compatibilists the resources to argue in just this way. Frankfurt's
argument was directed against the Principle of Alternative
Possibilities (PAP):

PAP: A person is morally responsible for what she does do
only if she can do otherwise.

Central to Frankfurt's attack on PAP is a type of example in which
an agent is morally responsible, but could not, at the time of the
pertinent action, do otherwise. Here is a close approximation to the
example Frankfurt presented in his original paper:

Jones has resolved to shoot Smith. Black has learned of Jones's plan
and wants Jones to shoot Smith. But Black would prefer that Jones shoot
Smith on his own. However, concerned that Jones might waver in his
resolve to shoot Smith, Black secretly arranges things so that, if
Jones should show any sign at all that he will not shoot Smith
(something Black has the resources to detect), Black will be able to
manipulate Jones in such a way that Jones will shoot Smith. As things
transpire, Jones follows through with his plans and shoots Smith for
his own reasons. No one else in any way threatened or coerced Jones,
offered Jones a bribe, or even suggested that he shoot Smith. Jones
shot Smith under his own steam. Black never intervened.

In this example, Jones shot Smith on his own, and did so
unencumbered — did so freely. But, given Black's presence in the
scenario, Jones could not have done otherwise than shoot Smith. Hence,
we have a counterexample to PAP.

If Frankfurt's argument against PAP is correct, the free will debate
has been systematically miscast through much of the history of
philosophy. If determinism threatens free will and moral
responsibility, it is not because it is incompatible with the
ability to do otherwise. Even if determinism is incompatible
with a sort of freedom involving the ability to do otherwise, it is
not the kind of freedom required for moral responsibility.

Perhaps not surprisingly, an enormous (and intricate) literature has
emerged around the success of Frankfurt's argument and, in particular,
around the example Frankfurt offered as contrary to
PAP.[18]
The debate is very much alive, and no clear victor has emerged (in the
way that the incompatibilists can rightly claim to have laid to rest
the compatibilists' conditional analysis strategy (see section 3.3)).
Regardless, what is most relevant to this essay is that Frankfurt's
argument inspired many compatibilists to begin thinking about accounts
of freedom or control that unabashedly turn away from a Garden of
Forking Paths model.

In “Freedom and Resentment” (1962), P.F. Strawson broke
ranks with the classical compatibilists. Strawson developed three
distinct arguments for compatibilism, arguments quite different from
those the classical compatibilists endorsed. But more valuable than his
arguments was his general theory of what moral responsibility is, and
hence, what is at stake in arguing about it. Strawson held that both
the incompatibilists and the compatibilists had misconstrued the nature
of moral responsibility. Each disputant, Strawson suggested, advanced
arguments in support of or against a distorted simulacrum of the real
deal.

To understand moral responsibility properly, Strawson invited his
reader to consider the reactive attitudes one has towards another when
she recognizes in another's conduct an attitude of ill will. The
reactions that flow naturally from witnessing ill will are themselves
attitudes that are directed at the perpetrator's intentions or
attitudes. When a perpetrator wrongs a person, she, the wronged party,
typically has a personal reactive attitude of resentment. When the
perpetrator wrongs another, some third party, the natural reactive
attitude is moral indignation, or disapprobation, which amounts to a
“vicarious analogue” of resentment felt on behalf of the
wronged party. When one is oneself the wronging party, reflecting upon
or coming to realize the wrong done to another, the natural reactive
attitude is guilt.

Strawson wanted contestants to the free will debate to see more
clearly than they had that excusing a person — electing not to
hold her morally responsible — involves more than some objective
judgment that she did not do such and such, or did not intend so and
so, and therefore does not merit some treatment or other. It involves a
suspension or withdrawal of certain morally reactive attitudes,
attitudes involving emotional responses. On Strawson's view, what it is
to hold a person morally responsible for wrong conduct is
nothing more than the propensity towards, or the sustaining of, a
morally reactive attitude of disapprobation. Crucially, the
disapprobation is in response to the perceived attitude of ill will or
culpable motive in the conduct of the person being held responsible.
Hence, Strawson explains, posing the question of whether the entire
framework of moral responsibility should be given up as irrational (if
it were discovered that determinism is true) is tantamount to posing
the question of whether persons in the interpersonal community —
that is, in real life — should forswear having reactive attitudes
towards persons who wrong others, and who sometimes do so
intentionally. Strawson invites us to see that the morally reactive
attitudes that are the constitutive basis of our moral responsibility
practices, as well as the interpersonal relations and expectations that
give structure to these attitudes, are deeply interwoven into human
life. These attitudes, relations and expectations are so much an
expression of natural, basic features of our social lives — of
their emotional textures — that it is practically inconceivable
to imagine how they could be given up.

As set out in section 4, three major contributions in the 1960s
profoundly altered the face of compatibilism: the incompatibilists'
Consequence Argument (section 4.1), Frankfurt's attack on the Principle
of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) (section 4.2), and Strawson's focus
upon the reactive attitudes (section 4.3). Each instigated major
developments in contemporary debates about free will. Every account of
compatibilism in the contemporary literature is shaped in some way by
at least one of these influences. This section will focus upon six of
the most significant contemporary compatibilist positions. Those
wishing to learn about cutting edge work can read the supplement on
Compatibilism: The State of the Art.

Before considering any particular contemporary compatibilist
position, it is worth calling attention to one important distinction.
Some contemporary compatibilist strategies attempt to capture freedom
in terms of alternative possibilities; others do not. Frankfurt (1971)
drew a distinction between acting with a will that is free and
acting of one's own free will, the former requiring
alternative possibilities, the latter not requiring them. But a more
useful bit of terminology was introduced by John Martin Fischer (1982,
1994). As Fischer has it, an agent with regulative control
can, so to speak, regulate between different alternatives. An agent
with guidance control guides or brings about her conduct even
if she has no other alternatives to the course she takes.

As Fischer points out, an agent could possess both guidance and
regulative control, but the two can come apart. On a view like
Fischer's or Frankfurt's, it is only guidance control that is necessary
for moral responsibility. Frankfurt's attack on PAP (see section 4.2)
prompted many contemporary compatibilists to develop accounts of
compatibilist freedom that make no appeal to regulative control as
modeled on a Garden of Forking Paths. Such accounts of guidance control
fix solely on Source models of control, showing that an agent plays a
special sort of role in the actual bringing about of her freely willed
actions. Other compatibilists retained the classical compatibilist
commitment to show that determined agents are able to act with
regulative control.

The Consequence Argument (section 4.1) makes a strong case for the
incompatibility of determinism and the freedom to do otherwise.
Assuming that determinism is true, it states that:

No one has power over the facts of the past and the laws of
nature.

No one has power over the fact that the facts of the past and the
laws of nature entail every fact of the future (i.e., determinism is
true).

Therefore, no one has power over the facts of the future.

Compatibilists defending a Garden of Forking Paths model of
regulative control must show what is wrong with this powerful argument.
They also should offer some account of regulative control, one that
helps to make clear how it is possible even at a determined world. Let
us first consider three different compatibilist attempts to unseat the
Consequence Argument. Then we shall consider how some compatibilists,
the New Dispositionalists, might explain regulative control, that is,
how they might explain the freedom to do
otherwise.[19]

5.1.1 Challenging Power Necessity and the Past

Some compatibilists have argued against the first premise of the
Consequence Argument by attempting to show that a person can
act in such a way that the past would be different. Consider the
difference between a person in the present who has the ability to act
in such a way that she alters the past, as opposed to a person
who has the ability to act in such a way such that, if she did so
act, the past would have been different. Notice that the former
ability is outlandish; it would require magical powers. But the latter
ability is, at least by comparison, uncontroversial. It merely
indicates that a person who acted a certain way at a certain time
possessed abilities to act in various sorts of ways. Had she exercised
one of those abilities, and thereby acted differently, then the past
leading up to her action would have been different. To illustrate how
comparatively mild such a claim about an agent's ability and the past
might be, think about a logically similar sort of claim that is simply
about what would be required for an agent to act differently. For
example, consider the claim, IfI were dancing on the
French Riviera right now, I'd be a lot richer than I am. Certainly
this claim does not mean (at least not given my dancing skills) that if
I go to the French Riviera to dance, I will thereby be made
richer. It only means that were I to have gone there to tango, I would
have to have had a lot more cash beforehand in order to finance my
escapades. Some compatibilists (e.g., Saunders, 1968; Perry, xxxx) have
argued that incompatibilist defenders of the Consequence Argument rely
upon the outlandish notion of ability in the first premise of their
argument. But, these compatibilists maintain, the first premise is
falsified when interpreted with a milder notion of ability.

5.1.2 Challenging Power Necessity and the Laws of Nature

Other compatibilists have argued against the first premise of the
Consequence Argument by attempting to show that a person can
act in such a way that a law of nature would not obtain. As with the
distinction drawn regarding ability and the past, consider the
difference between a person who has the ability to act in such a way
that she violates a law of nature, as opposed to a person (at
a deterministic world) who has the ability to act in such a way that,
if she were to so act, some law of nature that does obtain would
not. Notice that the former ability would require magical powers.
According to the compatibilist, the latter, by contrast, would require
nothing outlandish. It merely tells us that a person who acted a
certain way at a certain time possessed abilities to act in various
sorts of ways. Had she exercised one of those abilities, and thereby
acted differently, then the laws of nature that would have entailed
what she did in that hypothetical situation would be different from the
actual laws of nature that did entail what she did actually do. This
latter ability does not assume that agents are able to violate laws of
nature; it just assumes that whatever the laws of nature are (at least
at deterministic worlds), they must be such as to entail, given the
past, what an agent will do. If an agent acts differently in some
possible world than she acts in the actual world, then some other set
of laws will be the ones that entail what she does in that world. Some
compatibilists (most notably Lewis,1981, but see also Graham, 2008 and
Pendergraft, 2011), fixing upon ability pertaining to the laws of
nature, have argued that incompatibilist defenders of the Consequence
Argument rely upon the outlandish notion of ability in the first
premise of their argument. But, these compatibilists maintain, that
first premise is falsified when interpreted with an uncontroversial
notion of ability.

5.1.3 Challenging the Inferences Based upon Power Necessity

Michael Slote (1982) attempted to refute the Consequence Argument by
showing that the inference principle upon which the argument relies is
invalid. According to Slote, one cannot draw the desired
incompatibilist-friendly conclusion even if the Consequence Argument's
premises are all true. The central point towards which Slote works is
that notions like unavoidability (or power necessity)
are sensitive to contexts in a way that only “selectively”
permits the sort of inference at work in the Consequence Argument. Let
us work with the idea of unavoidability. According to Slote, when we
say that such and such is unavoidable for a person, we have in mind
“selective” contexts in which the facts pertaining to the
unavoidability have nothing to do with that person — the facts
bypass that person's agency altogether (Slote, 1982, p.19). It is
unavoidable for me, for instance, that Caesar crossed the Rubicon, or
that most motor vehicles now run on gasoline. Nothing about my agency
— about what I can do — can alter such facts. This suggests
that unavoidability is misapplied when it concerns aspects of a
person's own agency. But notice that in the Consequence Argument
unavoidability (or power necessity) trades between a context in which
the notion is appropriately applied, and one in which, according to
Slote, it is not. In the Consequence Argument, the first premise cites
considerations that have nothing to do with a person's agency —
facts prior to her birth, and the laws of nature. It is claimed that
these facts are unavoidable for a person, but from this a conclusion is
drawn that the very actions a person performs are unavoidable for her.
And this, Slote and other compatibilists (such as Dennett, 1984a; McKay
and Johnson, 1996) have suggested, is to draw incompatibilist
conclusions illicitly from reasonable claims regarding
unavoidability.

5.1.4 Accounting for the Freedom to Do Otherwise

Suppose that one compatibilist reply or another proves that the
Consequence Argument is
unsound.[20]
This alone would not amount to a positive argument for compatibilism.
It would merely mean that one argument for the incompatibility of
determinism and regulative control is untenable. But that is consistent
with the incompatibility of determinism and regulative
control. Some argue for this incompatibility without relying upon the
assumptions at work in the Consequence Argument (Fischer, 1994; and
Ginet, 1990, 2003). Furthermore, even if the compatibilist were in a
position to discredit all current arguments for the incompatibility of
determinism and regulative control, some might argue that she would,
nevertheless, still need a positive argument demonstrating the
compatibility of determinism and regulative control. Otherwise, so the
objection might go, she would still face the intuitive conflict between
a Garden of Forking Paths model of control and the claim of
determinism. This conflict is encapsulated in the second premise of the
Classical Incompatibilist Argument: If determinism is true, no one can
do otherwise than she does (see section 2.1). Hence, it might be
contended, supposing the Consequence Argument is defeated,
compatibilists wishing to defend regulative control (such as Bernard
Berofsky, 1987, 1995, 2011; Joseph Campbell, 1997; Dana Nelkin, 2011;
and Kadhri Vihvelin, 2013) still have their work cut out for them.

5.1.5 The New Dispositionalism

Recently several compatibilists have set out to do the hard work of
giving a positive account of regulative control (e.g., Fara, 2008; M.
Smith, 2003; and Vihvelin, 2004, 2013). A first hurdle these
compatibilists must overcome is to show how their view is an
improvement over the conditional analysis of ability to do otherwise
made use of by the classical compatibilists (see section 3.3). Recall
the case of Danielle and her inability to pick up the blond puppy due
to a pathological aversion to blond dogs (section 3.4). Her aversion
made it so that she was unable even to want to touch a blond haired
dog. Yet it was true that if she wanted to, she would have. When she
“freely” picked up the black lab rather than the blond one,
she was not free to pick up the blond one. The analysis, however, had
it that she was free to pick it up, and so the analysis failed.
According to Kadri Vihvelin, the classical compatibilists made one
right move, and then a wrong one (2004, pp.434–5). The right move
was to account for pertinent agential abilities in terms of
dispositions. The wrong move, Vihvelin argues, was then to analyze
dispositions in terms of simple counterfactual conditionals, which were
then readily open to the sorts of counterexamples adumbrated here.
Given that dispositions are demonstrably compatible with determinism,
what is needed, Vihvelin contends, is a more nuanced appeal to
dispositions. Both Michael Fara and Michael Smith have also argued in
roughly the same manner. Call the view these compatibilists advance,
the new
dispositionalism.[21]

Advancing a compatibilist thesis, Fara proposes a dispositional
analysis of the ability to do otherwise. Vihvelin speaks of the ability
to do otherwise (and especially choose otherwise) in terms of a bundle
of dispositions (2004, p. 429). And Smith speaks of the rational
capacities to believe and desire otherwise (and so, presumably, do
otherwise) in terms of a “raft of possibilities” (2003,
p.27). For Fara, Vihvelin, and Smith, we assess claims about the
disposition constitutive of the ability to do otherwise, or the
dispositions in the bundle, or the possibilities in the raft, by
attending to the intrinsic properties of an agent in virtue of which
she acts when she tries (Fara, 2008, p.861), or the causal bases of the
pertinent dispositions (Vihvelin, p. 436), or the underlying structure
of a rational capacity (Smith, p. 29). How so? Fara does not say,
though it seems likely he would agree to something like the proposals
offered by Vihvelin and Smith. According to them, we hold fixed the
relevant causal base or underlying structure of an agent's disposition
to, say, wave hello to a friend, or tell the truth under interrogation,
and we consider various counterfactual conditions in which that causal
base or underlying structure operates unimpaired. Does the agent in an
appropriately rich range of such counterfactual conditions wave hello
or tell the truth? If she does, then even if in the actual world she
does not wave hello or tell the truth, she was able to do so. She had
at the time of action the pertinent agential abilities or capacities.
And this is true even if that world is determined (see, e.g., Vihvelin,
437). Why? Because there is no basis for contending that when we test
the relevant dispositions at other possible worlds, we have to restrict
the worlds to ones in which we hold fixed the past and the laws. Note
how the problems with the classical compatibilists' counterfactual
analysis are circumvented. If we are attending to the causal base of
the relevant dispositions, we can easily see how Danielle's relevant
causal base is ill-equipped for picking up blond haired dogs.

How does the new dispositionalism fare? Do we have here a compelling
positive account of the ability—and so the freedom—to do
otherwise that is compatible with determinism? One slippery matter has
to do with the way the relevant worlds are identified in the preceding
paragraph. We have to restrict our attention to possible worlds in
which the causal base of, or underlying structure for, the ability
operates unimpaired. Some will claim that this restriction is not
dialectically innocent. Consider a Frankfurt example (section 4.2).
Suppose Jones freely shoots Smith, but if he were about to do
otherwise, Black would cause Jones to do so against his (Jones's) will.
When Jones shoots Smith on his own, he does so freely and is morally
responsible, despite the fact that, due to Black's presence, he was not
free to do otherwise. Fara (2008, pp.854–5), Nelkin (2012), Smith
(2003, p. 19), and Vihvelin (2000, 2004, pp.445–8, 2013) say
otherwise. They say Jones could have done otherwise, was able to do
otherwise, and was free to do otherwise when he shot Smith on his own.
Why? Roughly, because if we fix on the underlying causal structure
implicated in Smith's shooting Jones on his own, and if we go only to
other worlds in which that causal structure operates unimpeded, we will
rule out worlds in which the counterfactual intervener Black is at
play. Then we will be able to specify a range of true counterfactuals
in which an agent had some reason, for instance, to do otherwise, and
she did otherwise. The delicate question here, one which I will not
attempt to resolve, is whether in accounting for the freedom to do
otherwise the new dispositionalists are entitled to restrict
attention only to worlds in which the relevant casual base operates
unimpeded. Other compatibilists, most notably, John Martin Fischer
(1994), and Fischer and Mark Ravizza (1998) (see section 5.5 below),
have appealed to similar restrictions. But in doing so, they only mean
to explain the nature of the freedom or control exhibited in how the
agent did act—that is, her guidance control. In striking contrast
to how the new dispositionalists reason, they do not think they are
thereby entitled to claim that an agent in a Frankfurt example is free
to do otherwise. So it is possible that what the new dispositionalists
have identified with the pertinent counterfactuals they fix upon is not
the freedom to do otherwise, but instead, a freedom located in what an
agent does do (which is a matter of guidance control, not regulative
control). This, at least, is how compatibilists like Fischer and
Ravizza would reason. [For a lively debate over just this issue, see
the exchange between Fischer (2008) and Vihvelin (2008).]

Perhaps the most widely recognized form of contemporary
compatibilism is Harry Frankfurt's hierarchical mesh theory (1971).
Frankfurt's theory can be seen as a development of classical
compatibilist attempts to understand freedom in terms of an
agent’s unencumbered ability to get what she wants (see Section
3.1.). More precisely, Frankfurt explains freely willed
action in terms of actions that issue from desires that suitably mesh
with hierarchically ordered elements of a person's psychology. The key
idea is that a person who acts of her own free will acts from desires
that are nested within more encompassing elements of her self. Hence,
Frankfurt develops a Source model of control to explain how it is that,
when a freely willing agent acts, her actions emanate from her
rather than from something
foreign.[22]

5.2.1 Higher-Order Desires and the Nature of Persons

Frankfurt distinguishes between first-order and second-order
desires. This serves as the basis for his hierarchical account. The
former desires have as their objects actions, such as eating a slice of
cheesecake, taking in a movie, or gyrating one's hips to the sweet
sounds of B. B. King. The latter are desires about desires. They have
as their objects, desires of the first-order, such as the desire to
have the motivation to exercise daily (something that, regrettably, too
many of us lack): “If only I wanted to go to the gym
today, then it would be easy for me to get my tail off this
couch!”

Amongst the first-order desires that a person has, some are ones
that do not move her to action, such as one's (unsatisfied)
desire to say to her boss what she knows that she should not. Other
first-order desires, however, do move a person to action, such
as one's (satisfied) desire to follow through on her boss's request.
Frankfurt identifies an agent's will with her effective
first-order desire, the one moving a person, as Frankfurt puts it,
“all the way to action” (1971, p.
84).[23]

Frankfurt also distinguishes between different sorts of second-order
desires. Some are merely desires to have first-order desires, but
not that those first-order desires would comprise her will.
Frankfurt uses the example of a psychotherapist who wishes to
experience a desire for narcotics so as to understand a patient better.
The therapist has no wish that this desire be effective in leading her
to action (1971, pp.84–5). She wants to know what it is like to
feel the craving for the drug; she has no wish to take it. On the other
hand, other second-order desires that a person has are desires for
effective first-order desires, desires that would comprise her
will, and would thereby be effective in moving her all the way to
action. For instance, the dieter who is constantly frustrated by her
sugar cravings might desire a more effective desire for health, one
that would be more effective in guiding her eating habits than it often
is. These second-order desires Frankfurt calls second-order
volitions. There is no theoretical limit to how highly-ordered
one's desires might be. The dieter in the above example might develop a
third-order desire for her second-order desire (regarding her desire
for health) not to play such a dominant role in her daily
deliberations. Other things, she might reason, are of more importance
in life than concerning herself with her dietary motivations.

According to Frankfurt, a distinctive feature of personhood is that
only a person has second-order volitions. Only a person wants to be
moved by different desires and motives from the ones that move her.
Frankfurt calls agents who have no second-order volitions
wantons. Persons care about which desires lead them to action.
Wantons do not. They are passive bystanders to their wills (1971, p.
89).

5.2.2 Frankfurt's Hierarchical Theory of Free Will

Frankfurt uses the examples of three different sorts of addicts to
illustrate his concept of free will. Consider first the wanton
addict. She has conflicting first-order desires. She desires both
to take the drug to which she is addicted, as well as not to take the
drug. But the wanton addict has no higher-order volition regarding
which of her first-order desires wins out. She is passive with regard
to the battle of desires taking place within her. The unwilling
addict, like the wanton addict, has both a first-order desire to
take the drug, and a first-order desire not to take the drug. But,
unlike the wanton addict, the unwilling addict also has a second-order
volition that her first-order desire to take the drug not be her
will. This is the basis for her unwillingness. Regrettably, her
irresistible addictive desire to take the drug constitutes her will.
Finally, consider the case of the willing addict. The willing
addict, like both the wanton and the unwilling addict, has conflicting
first-order desires as regards taking the drug to which she is
addicted. But the willing addict, by way of a second-order volition,
embraces her addictive first-order desire to take the drug. She wants
to be as she is and act as she does.

It is now easy to illustrate Frankfurt's hierarchical theory of free
will. The wanton is not a person, and so is not a candidate for freely
willed action. The unwilling addict does not take the drug of her own
free will since her will conflicts at a higher level with what she
wishes it to be. The willing addict, however, takes the drug of her own
free will since her will meshes with what she wishes it to be.
Frankurt's theory can now be set out as follows:

One acts of her own free will if and only if her action issues from
the will she wants.

It might seem strange that Frankfurt's willing addict acts of her
own free will since, due to her addiction, she could not do otherwise.
But recall (sections 4.2 and 5.1), Frankfurt does not believe that
freedom involving alternative possibilities is required for moral
responsibility. Frankfurt instead believes that the freedom pertinent
to moral responsibility concerns what an agent does do and her actual
basis for doing it. That is, Frankfurt believes that it is guidance
control that is necessary for moral responsibility, not regulative
control. The willing addict possesses the sort of freedom required for
moral responsibility because the will leading to her action is the one
that she wishes it to be; she acts with guidance control.

Frankfurt's theory has been categorized as a Real Self
Theory (Wolf, 1990, p. 29). It is easy to see why. According to
Frankfurt, the sort of freedom needed for assessments of moral
responsibility turns crucially on whether or not the agent reveals
herself in acting as she does, or if instead her conduct is in some way
alien to her. By desiring at a hierarchically higher-order level of
reflection that one's will be a certain way (or not be a certain way),
one reveals her deeper self, not merely at the surface of her conduct,
but in terms of how she herself regards her very own motives issuing in
her conduct. When she acts of her own free will, those motives are
hers, are of her. She owns them. Hence, they reflect her true
self. When she acts, but does not act of her own free will, she
disavows her motives. They do not reflect her true self.

5.2.3 Two Problems for a Hierarchical Theory

Frankfurt's hierarchical theory has been under intense scrutiny
since he first presented his position. We shall consider here two
objections that emerge from structural aspects of it. One has to do
with its hierarchical nature. The other has to do with its relying
exclusively upon a mesh between different features of an agent's
psychology. (For a discussion of Frankfurt's attempts to respond to
these problems, see section A of the supplement, “Compatibilism:
The State of the Art”.)

Consider the hierarchical problem. According to Frankfurt,
a person facing a problem with regard to her will's freedom faces a
situation in which her first-order desires are in conflict. On
Frankfurt's theory, a person has the resources to form second-order
desires as to which of her conflicting first-order desires should move
her. By this means, an agent endorses one of the first-order desires
and, if all goes smoothly, that one becomes her will. Through this
process, she draws within the sphere of her self one sort of desire and
alienates another. Now, the problem is simply this: If a person can be
conflicted at the level of her first-order desires, she can also be
conflicted at the second, or even at higher-orders (Watson, 1975).
Hence, the problem of an agent's free will can reappear at these ever
ascending stages. If this is correct, Frankfurt's view is incomplete.
Maybe his account of free will does articulate a necessary condition
for acting of one's own free will, but it appears not to be sufficient.
It needs supplementing so as to avoid the problem of a spiraling
reoccurrence of challenges to an agent's freedom.

Next consider the mesh problem. According to Frankfurt, if
freely willed action for which an agent is morally responsible is
purely a function of the relation between an agent's will and her
second-order volitions, then it does not matter in any way how an agent
came to have that particular mesh. But cases can be constructed that
seem to suggest that it does matter how an agent came to have
a particular mesh between her first-order and her second-order desires.
(For example, see Slote, 1980; and Fischer and Ravizza, 1998,
pp.194–206). Using Frankfurt's own example of the willing addict,
suppose that the addict's second-order willingness is itself caused by
the effects of the drug use. Suppose that the drug use has impaired her
evaluations or preferences arising at a second-order of reflection on
her own mental states. Or, setting this sort of case aside, imagine
that an agent is brainwashed or manipulated through some means or
another, say by hypnosis, or by aliens zapping a person into having a
different set of psychological preferences than those that she would
otherwise have. In all of these cases—just call them
manipulation cases—Frankfurt seems committed to the view
that such agents act of their own free will and are morally responsible
so long as the appropriate psychological mesh is in place, no matter
what sort of (merely apparent) freedom and responsibility-undermining
history gave way to an agent's having that particular mesh.

5.2.4 Frankfurt versus the Source Incompatibilist

Grant that Frankfurt is correct that free will and moral
responsibility do not require regulative control. How does Frankfurt's
view stack up against Source Incompatibilism? Frankfurt develops an
account of free will out of a perceptive treatment of what it is to be
a person and how it is that a person's will permits a level of depth,
of self-awareness and reflection, that can emerge in a person's
conduct. Frankfurt's is a rich Source model of agency, one carrying
moral depth. For Frankfurt, an agent that acts of her own free will
does not merely reveal her desires in action, she reveals how she
wishes herself to be as a person.

How might Frankfurt reply to the Source Incompatibilist Argument?
Naturally, he must resist the first premise — a person acts of
her own free will only if she is its ultimate source (see section 2.2).
But how? Recall that an agent is an ultimate source of her action only
if no conditions external to her are sufficient for her action.
Determinism clearly is incompatible with this. Frankfurt's battle with
the source incompatibilist must turn on showing that his account of the
source of a person's free agency is sufficient; ultimacy is not needed.
But now, consider the manipulation cases that challenged Frankfurt's
reliance exclusively upon a mesh between different constituents in an
agent's psychology. To the extent that the manipulation cases suggest
that the mesh can arise in a freedom and responsibility-undermining
way, it seems that Frankfurt's treatment of the proper source of freely
willed action is incomplete. Frankfurt needs to show what is defective
in a mesh being brought about in these deviant manners (and how mere
determination does not share these defective features of the
manipulation cases). If he cannot, then it seems that the source
incompatibilist has the upper hand. She can say that, if one sort of
causal history giving rise to a Frankfurtian mesh can undermine an
agent's freedom and moral responsibility, then why not a deterministic
history? A deterministic history is simply a more elaborate form of
manipulation that happened to take a very long time to achieve the same
sort of result. To join issue with the source incompatibilist,
Frankfurt must either show why manipulation cases fail, or instead,
bite the bullet and accept that, on his theory, agents so manipulated
can still be free and morally responsible persons.

In her artfully crafted book, Freedom within Reason (1990),
as well as in several provocative papers (1980, 1987), Susan Wolf
develops a mesh theory between an agent's actions and values. For Wolf,
free will concerns an agent's ability to act in accord with the True
and the Good. Because the conditions of Wolf's mesh theory require an
anchor external to the agent's internal psychological states (the True
and the Good), unlike Frankfurt's, hers is not a real self theory
(1990, pp.73–76). The crucial question is not just whether an
agent reveals her deeper self in her conduct (1987); it is whether she
is able to act upon moral reasons. Hence, Wolf embraces the title,
The Reason View. A related, though importantly different
version of the Reason View has more recently been defended by Dana
Nelkin (2012).

In her effort to make free will track moral reason, Wolf (and later
Nelkin) develops an asymmetry thesis according to which praiseworthy
conduct does not require the freedom to do otherwise but blameworthy
behavior does (1980; and 1990, pp.79–81). Put in terms of
guidance and regulative control, only blameworthy conduct requires
regulative control. Guidance control is sufficient for praiseworthy
conduct. Wolf's reasoning is that, if an agent does act in accord with
the True and the Good, and if indeed she is so psychologically
determined that she cannot but act in accord with the True and the
Good, her inability to act otherwise does not threaten the sort of
freedom that morally responsible agents need. For how could her
freedom be in any way enhanced simply by adding an ability to act
irrationally? But blameworthy behavior, Wolf reasons, does
require regulative control since, if an agent acts contrary to the True
and the Good, but is so psychologically determined that she cannot act
in accord with it, then, being unable to act as reason requires, it
would be unreasonable to blame her.

Wolf's asymmetrical view differs from Frankfurt's since hers
requires regulative control somewhere. Hence, her compatibilism is open
to refutation by incompatibilist arguments designed to show that
determinism is incompatible with freedom involving alternative
possibilities.[24]
But it is unclear that Wolf should be committed to the asymmetry. Could
she preserve the central feature of her Reason View without requiring
regulative control as a condition of blameworthiness? Frankfurt-type
examples (see section 4.2) can be constructed for cases of blameworthy
action that seem to suggest that Wolf should give up the requirement of
regulative control for blameworthiness. (See Fischer and Ravizza,
1998.) This suggests that neither praiseworthiness nor
blameworthiness requires the ability to do otherwise, and so there is
no asymmetry between the conditions of apt praise and blame.

Thus, it seems that if Wolf wishes to preserve her asymmetry thesis,
she must retain some sort of Garden of Forking Paths model for the
control required of blameworthy conduct. In this case, she will need to
address the crucial premise in the Classical Incompatibilist Argument
that holds that an agent cannot do otherwise if determinism is true
(see section 2.1). This premise, supported as it is by the Consequence
Argument and near cousins of the Consequence Argument (see section
4.1), will demand of Wolf that, minimally, she show what is wrong with
arguments like the Consequence Argument, and optimally, that she offer
some positive compatibilist account of the ability to do otherwise.

Setting aside questions regarding Garden of Forking Paths freedom,
how well does Wolf's Reason View jibe with the Source model of control,
as well as the Source Incompatibilist Argument? On Wolf's view, if an
agent does act from reasons, and if her reasons are (or are susceptible
to) the True and the Good, then she as an agent is a source of conduct
that carries with it (or is able to carry with it) the stamp of moral
reason. Enough said. But what about the Source Incompatibilist
Argument, and the premise concerning ultimacy that seems to plague most
every brand of compatibilism: A person acts of her own free will only
if she is its ultimate source (see section 2.2)? Like Frankfurt's mesh
theory, Wolf's too is endangered by the thought that an agent could be
artificially manipulated in a responsibility-undermining manner into
satisfying the mesh Wolf's theory demands. And mightn't such
manipulation be no different than the manner in which a deterministic
world shapes an agent to have the psychological structure and motives
she has? Does not the prospect of manipulation cases show that without
ultimacy, an agent cannot be the proper source of her action? So it
appears that Wolf is at the same crossroads as is Frankfurt. Either she
must show what is defective in the manipulation cases so as to
distinguish agents so manipulated from the sort of proper mesh demanded
by her theory, or she must bite the same bullet and accept that these
sorts of manipulated agents, by the conditions of her theory, do act of
their own free wills and are morally responsible for their conduct.

Several compatibilists have suggested that freely willed actions
issue from volitional features of agency that are sensitive to an
appropriate range of reasons (e.g., Dennett, 1984a; Fingarette, 1972;
Gert and Duggan, 1979; Glover, 1970; MacIntyre, 1957; Neely, 1974; and
Nozick, 1981). Such reasons might speak in varying ways for or against
a course of action. Agents who are unresponsive to appropriate rational
considerations (such as compulsives or neurotics) do not act of their
own free wills. But agents who are responsive to some range of
rational considerations do. This view has been artfully refined in
recent years by John Martin Fischer (1987, and 1994), and subsequently,
Fischer and Mark Ravizza (1998). (For a more advanced discussion of
Fischer and Ravizza's view, see section B of the supplement
Compatibilism: The State of the Art.)
Many working on the topics of free will and
moral responsibility now regard Fischer's developed account to be the
gold standard for cutting edge defenses of compatibilism.

A reasons-responsiveness theory turns upon dispositional
features of an agent's relation to reasons issuing in freely willed
action. Appropriately reasons-responsive conduct is sensitive to
rational considerations. The view is not merely that an agent would
display herself in some counterfactual situations to be responsive to
reasons, but rather that her responsiveness to reasons in some
counterfactual situations is evidence that her actual conduct
itself — the causes giving rise to it —
is also in response to rational considerations. (Amendments need to be
added to accommodate cases of spur-of-the-moment, or impulsive freely
willed action).

5.4.1 Agent-Based Reasons-Responsiveness

The most natural way to understand a reasons-responsive theory is in
terms of an agent's responsiveness to reasons. To illustrate,
suppose that Frank Zappa plays the banjo of his own free will.
According to a reasons-responsive theory, his playing the banjo freely
at that time requires that if, in at least some hypothetical cases, he
had reason not to, then he would refrain from playing the banjo. For
instance, if Jimi Hendrix were to have stepped into Frank's recording
studio and asked Frank to play his electric guitar, Frank would have
wanted to make Jimi happy and thus would have gladly put his banjo
aside and picked up his electric guitar. It seems, then, that for Frank
to play the banjo of his own free will, Frank — the
agent — must have regulative control and not merely guidance
control over his playing. His freedom must consist partially in his
ability to act upon alternatives.

5.4.2 A Tension between Reasons-Responsiveness and Frankfurt Examples

Notice that, because Frankfurt examples challenge the
incompatibilists' demand for regulative control, they also challenge an
agent-based reasons-responsive theory (Fischer and Ravizza,
1998, pp. 34–41). For imagine that the benevolent demon Jerry
Garcia wants Frank to play the banjo at the relevant time. Jerry would
much prefer that Frank play the banjo on his own. But worried that
Frank might elect not to play the banjo, Jerry covertly arranges things
so as to manipulate Frank if the need arises. If Frank should show any
indication that he will not play the banjo, Jerry will manipulate Frank
so that Frank will play the banjo. Hence, when Frank does play the
banjo uninfluenced by Jerry's possible intervention, he does so of his
own free will. But he has neither regulative control, nor does he seem
to be reasons-responsive, with respect to his banjo playing. Due to
Jerry's presence, he cannot but play the banjo even if Jimi Hendrix
were to ask Frank to play his guitar.

To alleviate the tension between a reasons-responsive theory and
Frankfurt examples, Fischer argued that reasons-responsive
compatibilism can be cast in such a way that it involves only guidance
control. Consider the example with Frank, Jimi, and Jerry. Frank did
not have regulative control over his playing the banjo since Jerry's
presence ensured that Frank play the banjo even if Jimi were to ask
Frank to play his guitar. The scenario in which Jimi asks Frank not to
play his banjo is one that Frank normally would find to be a
compelling reason to refrain from his banjo playing. Hence, by his
own lights, Frank would find Jimi's request compelling.
Yet, due to Jerry's presence, Frank is not responsive to such
a weighty reason. What would be required to illustrate responsiveness
would be to subtract Jerry from the scenario. This would do the trick.
So suppose that Frank plays the banjo of his own free will, even with
Jerry passively standing by. How can it be shown that Frank's conduct
was, in some manner, reasons-responsive? How can it be shown that what
he actually did was in response to a reason? Well, if Jimi
Hendrix had asked Frank not to play the banjo but the guitar instead,
and if Jerry's presence were to be subtracted from the
situation, then Frank would respond to Jimi's request and play
the guitar and not the banjo. This shows that Frank does play the banjo
of his own free will even in the actual situation in which Jerry is
passively standing by.

5.4.3 A Mechanism-Based Reasons-Responsive Theory

Illustrating reasons-responsiveness in a Frankfurt example
does require recognizing counterfactual conditions in which an
agent acts otherwise in response to reasons. But in a Frankfurt
example, one has to subtract from those conditions the presence of the
ensuring conditions (the counterfactual intervener) designed to
guarantee that the agent not act otherwise. How can this move be
legitimate? How is it not just an arbitrary addendum to cram together
two compatibilist themes that otherwise appear to be at odds
(reasons-responsiveness and Frankfurt examples)? It is not arbitrary,
and here is why. Think about what happens in the actual scenario of a
Frankfurt example. As things unfold, the demon is inactive.
The agent acts for her own reasons. But now, focusing solely on
what the agent does in this actual scenario, and the reasons
that give her a basis for doing what she does, consider what
deliberative features of her agency played the casual role in the
actual sequence of events bringing about her action. To
capture what features of deliberative agency do play a role in the
actual causal sequence of an agent's action, not every element of the
agent seems to be involved in the process. For instance, in the example
above, in playing the banjo of his own free will, Frank might have a
large range of beliefs and desires that is entirely irrelevant to the
range that did play a causal role in his action. Frank might have
believed that chickens are both feathered and not toasters, and he
might have desired that his toenails be painted purple. But neither of
those elements of his psychological state needed to play a role in the
sorts of factors that did lead him to play the banjo. So, just fix upon
whatever constitutes that narrower range of agential characteristics
within the wider spectrum of all of the features that made up Frank
Zappa, the agent. Since it is only that narrow spectrum that we shall
now identify with the causal production of Frank's conduct, just call
it the mechanism of his action.

Once we have located the mechanism of action that is at work in the
actual causal sequence of a Frankfurt example, we can turn our
attention to understanding the dispositional features of it as
a casual mechanism. If other reasons bear upon it, then it
would be sensitive to some of those reasons. It would produce different
conduct in some reasonable range of cases. If it would, then that
very mechanism is responsive to reasons. Confirming that that very
mechanism is responsive to reasons would not merely illustrate that, in
scenarios other than the actual, the agent acts upon a mechanism
sensitive to reasons. It would also illustrate that in the Frankfurt
scenario in which the agent really does act, what
does play a role in the actual causal sequence of her action
is some feature of her agency (a mechanism) that
itself is in fact a response to a reason.

Fischer offers an actual-sequence, mechanism-based,
reasons-responsive analysis of guidance control. He maintains that
his analysis of guidance control is compatible with determinism.
According to Fischer, an agent, and the mechanism of her action, can be
entirely determined in the actual sequence of events in which she acts.
Yet the actual manner in which her mechanism responds to reasons could
be appropriately sensitive to reasons such that, if different reasons
were to bear upon it, it would respond differently, and the agent whose
mechanism it is would act differently than she does act.

5.4.4 Assessing Reasons-Responsive Compatibilism

How might a reasons-responsive approach compare with a view like
Frankfurt's hierarchical model? (See Fischer 2012 for some
discussion of this question.) To demarcate the relevant wants
issuing in freely willed conduct, Frankfurt needed to postulate a
higher order of willing into which effective desires meshed. Only then
could Frankfurt help compatibilists distinguish freedom-undermining
wants (such as those involved in compulsive conduct) from
freedom-conferring wants. Reasons-responsiveness attempts to fix this
sort of problem by different means. Instead of postulating a
hierarchical relation between different sorts of wants or desires, it
instead gives a dispositional analysis of the wants' or desires' (the
reasons') sensitivity to rational considerations. The differences might
well yield different ways of treating some cases. For example, a
willing addict would not be reasons-responsive and so would not take
the drug of her own free will according to a reasons-responsive
compatibilist. But according to Frankfurt, a willing addict does take
the drug of her own free will.

How might a mechanism-based reasons-responsive theory satisfy a
source model of control? A view such as Fischer's might be at
a disadvantage. It is possible that a reasons-responsive mechanism
could be unhitched from the agent whom it affects. So it is an open
question whether or not Fischer's compatibilist position offers as rich
an account of the source of an agent's action as does a real self view
such as Frankfurt's. Of course, if Fischer is able to advance an
ownership condition that does anchor an agent's reasons-responsive
mechanism to the agent's self, then Fischer's view will not only do the
work that Frankfurt's does in accommodating a source model of control
(linking a freely willed action to a real self), it will also do the
sort of work Wolf's does. That is, Fischer's view will then show how,
as a source of her conduct, a morally responsible agent can be tightly
linked to reasons (reasons Wolf identifies under the heading,
“the True and the Good”).

How does Fischer's view stack up against the Source Incompatibilist
Argument? The challenge Fischer faces here is the same as that faced by
Frankfurt and Wolf. The source incompatibilist maintains that it is a
necessary condition of free will that one be an ultimate source of her
action, and determinism is incompatible with one's being an ultimate
source of her action (see section 2.2). The compatibilist's task is to
show that her treatment of the source of an agent's conduct is
sufficient for free will. But the source incompatibilist will point to
manipulation cases that suggest that some causal histories giving rise
to compatibilist-friendly psychological structures, such as
reasons-responsive mechanisms, are freedom and responsibility
undermining. If so, then why is determinism any different from a
manipulation case? The burden, it seems, is on the compatibilist to
show how it is that manipulation cases differ from a normal
deterministic history. The compatibilist's only other strategy is
simply to deny that the pertinent manipulated agents are not free and
morally responsible. This problem is not lost on
reasons-responsiveness compatibilists, of course (see Fischer 2004 for
one attempt to address these issues).

Finally, it would simply be misleading not to mention Strawsonian
compatibilism amongst the views characterizing contemporary
compatibilism. The secondary literature devoted to it proves that it is
still alive and well in contemporary debate.

Several contemporary philosophers have advanced Strawsonian themes.
For instance, John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza hold that an account
of guidance control aids in providing the conditions of application for
the concept of moral responsibility, a concept that they maintain is
Strawsonian (1998, pp.1–27). Fischer and Ravizza intend their
Strawsonian theory as an amendment to Strawson's suggestion that moral
responsibility is to be associated with the reactions of those within
the moral community to members of the community. Fischer and Ravizza
advise that moral responsibility be developed by thinking in terms of
the propriety conditions for the morally reactive attitudes.
This amendment would have it that a moral community could respond to a
group of persons inappropriately, either failing to recognize persons
who are free and morally responsible agents (slaves, for example), or
instead including beings who are not (for instance, very young
children, farm animals, or the weather).

Gary Watson also explores Strawsonian compatibilism (1987). Watson
sought to elaborate upon it by thinking of our moral responsibility
practices, and in particular the morally reactive attitudes, along the
lines of a communication-based theory in which a morally responsible
agent's competence turns in some way upon being a potential
interlocutor to moral conversations between her and the moral community
in which she operates. On this view, the control condition for moral
responsibility would have to fit the capacity to communicate morally
through word and deed with members of the moral community.

Susan Wolf defends (with significant reservations) the Strawsonian
thesis that the interpersonal viewpoint (that permits access to the
morally reactive attitudes) is one that a freely willing agent cannot
give up (1981). Wolf diverges at points with Strawson's own manner of
defending this. But Wolf's central thesis is Strawsonian. A person
cannot fully forswear the point of view of the interpersonal attitudes,
and this point of view is the point of view from whence our morally
reactive attitudes gain their force and figure in our conduct.

Paul Russell (1995) has also defended a form of Strawsonian
compatibilism, the central features of which he finds anticipated in
Hume's writings on free will and moral responsibility. According to
Russell, we can learn from Hume, as Strawson did, to understand our
moral responsibility practices as fundamentally a matter of our
sentiments and our social expectations as structured and sustained by
these sentiments. Fixing on our moral natures, as we should, dispels
any presumption that determinism would somehow pose a threat to our
conceptions of freedom and moral responsibility.

One pressing question for Strawsonian compatibilism is how much
emphasis should be placed upon the point of view of those in the moral
community who hold others morally responsible. On a strong, and
radically anti-metaphysical reading, those in the moral community
determine the conditions for when a person is or is not a morally
responsible agent, as well as whether a person is or is not morally
responsible for some bit of conduct. On this view, morally responsible
agency is to be extrapolated from the practice of the members of the
moral community in holding persons morally responsible. This suggests a
compatibilist strategy according to which the freedom required for
moral responsibility derives from the normative considerations embraced
by the members of the community holding persons responsible. In its
strongest form, according to this sort of compatibilist approach, there
need be no threat to freedom or moral responsibility from
determinism since a community can construct a set of standards
for freedom and responsibility that could be satisfied even in a
determined world. Given that the conditions are constructed, they need
not be constrained by prior metaphysical questions concerning the
nature of the persons alleged to possess free will. The community will,
so to speak, settle matters of what free will is, not the underlying
nature of the person whose free will is at issue. This theme, suggested
in Strawson's famous 1962 essay, is rejected by Jay Wallace in
Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments (1994, pp.89–91,
and pp.95–103). But Wallace offers an extension of Strawson's
general strategy in terms of moral norms of fairness for holding
responsible reflected in our moral responsibility practices (1994,
pp.103–9). From these moral norms—and not from the mere
naturalistic facts that we have these practices—Wallace proceeds
to uncover the conditions required for being responsible. Wallace's
position has emerged as a serious alternative to the sorts of
approaches to the free will problem that take as their theoretical
starting point the nature of persons, or the action-theoretic
characteristics of the process issuing in freely willed action. For a
brief discussion of Wallace's proposal, see section D of the supplement
“Compatibilism: The State of the Art”.

Acknowledgments

For helpful editorial and philosophical advice on an earlier version
of this entry, Michael McKenna would like to thank Carl Ginet, Ish
Haji, Robert Kane, Sean McKeever, Al Mele, Jason Miller, Derk Pereboom,
Paul Russell, Edward Zalta, and two subject editors of The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, John Fischer and David Velleman.

The SEP would like to congratulate the National Endowment for the Humanities on its 50th anniversary and express our indebtedness for the five generous grants it awarded our project from 1997 to 2007.
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