Carroll J.W., Markosian N. An Introduction to Metaphysics

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Freedom and determinism 59

If determinism is true, then our acts are the consequences of the laws of

nature and events in the remote past. But it is not up to us what went on

before we were born, and neither is it up to us what the laws of nature

are. Therefore, the consequences of these things (including our present

acts) are not up to us.

As we will see, there are at least two main ways of developing this line of

thought, giving us two distinct versions of The Consequence Argument.

one way of capturing the reasoning suggested in the above passage involves

appealing to something like the following two principles (in which ‘S’ is a

variable ranging over agents, ‘A’ is a variable ranging over actions, and ‘p’

and ‘q’ are variables ranging over propositions).

The Transfer Principle for Inability

For any agent, S, and propositions, p and q, if p is true and S is not able to

change the fact that p is true, and if q is a consequence of p and S is not

able to change the fact that q is a consequence of p, then q is true and S is

not able to change the fact that q is true.

Alternative Possibilities

S does A freely only if S could have done something other than A.

The version of The Consequence Argument that is based on these two

principles looks like this.

The “Ability” Version of The Consequence Argument

(1) If determinism is true then our actions are the consequences of the

laws of nature and events in the remote past.

(2) We’re not able to change the laws of nature.

(3) We’re not able to change events in the remote past.

(4) If our actions are the consequences of the laws of nature and events

in the remote past, if we’re not able to change the laws of nature, and

if we’re also not able to change events in the remote past, then we’re

never able to do anything other than what we in fact do.

In An Essay on Free Will, van Inwagen develops three different, detailed versions of The

Consequence Argument. Neither of the two arguments presented below is meant to

be identical to any of van Inwagen’s three detailed versions. rather, the two argu-

ments presented here are meant to represent two fairly intuitive ways of capturing

the general idea behind all three of van Inwagen’s versions.

Variations on Alternative Possibilities have been much discussed in the literature

ever since the publication of Harry Frankfurt’s “Alternate Possibilities and Moral

responsibility” (in which he discusses [and rejects] a version of that principle

An Introduction to Metaphysics60

(5) If we’re never able to do anything other than what we in fact do, then

we never act freely.

________________________

(6) If determinism is true, then we never act freely.

Premise (1) of this argument merely mentions an indisputable consequence

of determinism (given the assumption that the universe is old enough for

there to be a remote past, that is). The rationale for premise (2) is that we

are powerless when it comes to changing anything about laws of nature;

and the rationale for premise (3) is, similarly, that there is nothing any of

us can do to change the past. Meanwhile, the rationale for premise (4) is

The Transfer Principle for Inability (the idea being that our powerlessness

to alter the laws and the past events “transfers” to the actions that are

entailed by them, rendering us equally powerless to avoid those actions);

and the rationale for premise (5) is Alternative Possibilities.

There are two main Compatibilist objections that can be raised against

this argument. The ﬁrst involves attacking premise (4) and The Transfer

Principle for Inability. Here is the idea. Suppose a Compatibilist grants

the antecedent of premise (4); that is, suppose he or she grants (i) that

our actions are the consequences of the laws of nature and events in the

remote past, (ii) that we’re not able to change the laws of nature, and (iii)

that we’re also not able to change events in the remote past. But suppose

our Compatibilist still wants to deny the consequent of premise (4). In

other words, suppose he or she wants to insist that we are sometimes able

to do things other than what we in fact do. Then what our Compatibilist

will need is a plausible account of ability according to which one can be

able to do a thing even though it is a deterministic matter that one will

not do that thing. And it turns out that it is not difﬁcult to ﬁnd such an

account of ability. Here is one.

The Conditional Analysis of Ability

S is able to do A =df if S were to try to do A then S would succeed at

doing A.

according to which the ability to do otherwise is a necessary condition for moral

responsibility).

This account of ability is discussed by John Martin Fischer in the Introduction to

his Moral Responsibility. (Fischer does not defend The Conditional Analysis of Ability,

and in fact that account faces some potentially serious difﬁculties, which we will

here overlook. The point for present purposes is merely that there are more or less

Freedom and determinism 61

For example, this analysis yields the result that in our earlier case, in

which you found a wallet but did not return it to its owner, you were

never theless able to return the wallet, since it is true that if you had tried

to return the wallet, then you would have succeeded. Moreover, this result

is consistent with it having been a deterministic matter all along that you

were not going to return the wallet.

Notice that our Compatibilist can make this move without having to say

either that we are able to change the laws of nature or that we are able

to change the past. The Compatibilist who endorses something like The

Conditional Analysis of Ability need not (and in fact should not) say that if

you had tried to change the laws of nature (or the past) then you would have

succeeded. All our Compatibilist is committed to is the claim that if you had

tried to return the wallet then you would have succeeded at doing that.

Perhaps the Incompatibilist will press our Compatibilist at this point

by asking what would have happened if you had tried to return the wallet

(and succeeded at doing so). Wouldn’t that have resulted in a change in

either the laws of nature or else the past (given what the Compatibilist is

granting about how the past and the laws entail that you will not return

the wallet)?

If the Incompatibilist does ask such a thing, then our Compatibilist

ought to reply that you trying to return the wallet (and succeeding at doing

so) would not have resulted in you changing either the laws or the past. For

although (given what the Compatibilist is granting) the nearest possible

worlds in which you try to return the wallet are worlds with different laws

or different pasts (or both) from the actual laws and past, it is still not the

case in any of those possible worlds that you change the laws or the past.

We will leave it to the reader to decide whether he or she accepts our

imagined Compatibilist’s objection to premise (4) of The ‘Ability’ Version

of The Consequence Argument, and we will turn now to the second main

objection to that argument available to the Compatibilist, which involves

attacking premise (5). recall the premise and the principle on which it

was based.

plaus ible accounts of ability according to which a person can be able to do a thing

even though it is a deterministic matter that he or she will not do that thing.)

For an example of this approach see lewis, “Are We Free to Break the laws?” For

more on the idea that the semantics for counterfactual conditionals involve refer-

ence to possible worlds, see 4.2.

An Introduction to Metaphysics62

(5) If we’re never able to do anything other than what we in fact do, then

we never act freely.

Alternative Possibilities

S does A freely only if S could have done something other than A.

Harry Frankfurt and others have argued that the principle and the

premise of the argument are both false.

And they have based their case

on examples like the following.

A Frankfurt-style Example

Franny and Zoe are partners in crime. Franny is worried that Zoe will

back out of their assassination plot at the last minute, so she resolves

to use her extraordinary powers (of hypnosis or direct-nervous-system

control or whatever) if necessary to ensure that Zoe will go through with

the plan no matter what. When the time comes, Zoe ends up choosing to

go ahead with the assassination, so that Franny does not have to use her

extraordinary powers after all.

The idea is that Zoe is morally responsible for what she does in this case,

even though it is also true that she could not have done otherwise. And

the further idea is that this shows that the ability to do otherwise is not a

neces sary condition for moral responsibility (and hence not a necessary con-

dition for freedom) after all. Such claims by Compatibilists have sparked a

great deal of discussion about whether these putative counterexamples to

Alternative Possibilities are genuine counterexamples to that principle.

We turn now to a second version of The Consequence Argument that is

designed to get around the Frankfurt-style objection to premise (5) of the

above version. This second version of the argument involves appealing to

something like the following two principles.

The Transfer Principle for Lack of Control

For any agent, S, and propositions, p and q, if p is true and S has no control

over whether p is true, and if q is a consequence of p and S has no control

over that, then q is true and S has no control over whether q is true.

The Necessity of Control for Freedom

S does A freely only if S has some control over A.

See, for example, Frankfurt, “Alternate Possibilities and Moral responsibility.”

The Transfer Principle for lack of Control is closely related to the inference rule that

van Inwagen calls “rule (β)”. See van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will, p. 94.

Freedom and determinism 63

Consideration of these two principles leads to the following version of The

Consequence Argument.

The “Control” Version of The Consequence Argument

(1) If determinism is true then our actions are the consequences of the

laws of nature and events in the remote past.

(2) We have no control over the laws of nature.

(3) We have no control over events in the remote past.

(4) If our actions are the consequences of the laws of nature and events in

the remote past, if we have no control over the laws of nature, and if

we also have no control over events in the remote past, then we have no

control over our actions.

(5) If we have no control over our actions, then we never act freely.

________________________

(6) If determinism is true, then we never act freely.

The rationales for the ﬁrst three premises are the same as before. Meanwhile,

the rationale for premise (4) is The Transfer Principle for lack of Control.

The idea is that our powerlessness to exert any control over the laws or

the past “transfers” to the actions that are entailed by them, rendering us

equally powerless to exert any control over those actions.

And the ration-

ale for premise (5) is The Necessity of Control for Freedom. (For surely hav-

ing some control over our actions is a necessary condition for freedom.)

We saw above that one possible objection to The “Ability” Version of The

Consequence Argument involved appealing to Frankfurt-style examples as

a reason for rejecting the ﬁfth premise of the argument and denying the

principle – Alternative Possibilities – on which that premise was based. But

it does not appear that anything like this kind of move will work in the

present case. For it is one thing to say that Zoe is responsible for her action

(and hence is acting freely), even though she could not have done other-

wise; but it would be quite a different matter to say that Zoe is responsible

for her action (and hence is acting freely), even though she had no control

The Transfer Principle for lack of Control also supports the following, slightly

weaker claim: if our actions are the consequences of the laws of nature and events in

the remote past, if we have no control over whether that is so, if we have no control over

the laws of nature, and if we also have no control over events in the remote past, then

we have no control over our actions. This claim is slightly weaker than premise (4) of

the argument because its antecedent is slightly stronger than the antecedent of that

premise. And the slightly weaker claim would serve just as well in the argument.

An Introduction to Metaphysics64

whatsoever over her action. For even in a Frankfurt case, the agent (who is

after all not actually affected by the villain-in-waiting) seems to have a

great deal of control over her action. In fact, that’s exactly why we want to

say that Zoe, in the above example, is responsible for her action!

To put the point a slightly d ifferent way: even if Frankf urt-style examples

are indeed counterexamples to Alternative Possibilities, they do not seem to

pose any threat to The Necessity of Control for Freedom. So the ﬁrst thing

to notice about The “Control” Version of The Consequence Argument is

that, even taking into account the possibility of Frankfurt-style examples,

there does not seem to be a plausible objection to premise (5).

What about rejecting premise (4)? recall that that premise is a

conditional.

(4) If our actions are the consequences of the laws of nature and events in

the remote past, if we have no control over the laws of nature, and if

we also have no control over events in the remote past, then we have

no control over our actions.

To reject the premise, then, one must say each of the following three

things: (i) our actions are the consequences of the laws of nature and

events in the remote past; (ii) we have no control over either the laws of

nature or events in the remote past; and (iii) we nevertheless do have some

control over our actions. And to make all three of these claims, one must

deny The Transfer Principle for lack of Control.

The Compatibilist who denies this principle will typically say something

like the following. “In order for you to have control over an action you per-

form, your action must satisfy various conditions, such as being caused by

volitions within you and not being subject to any unusual constraints. But

when these conditions are properly spelled out, it becomes clear that their

satisfaction is consistent with your action being a consequence of things

(like the laws of nature and past events) that are not under your control.”

3.7 Simple Indeterminism

So far we have focused on what Incompatibilists think free actions can-

not be like. (They cannot be completely determined by laws of nature and

events in the remote past.) But the Incompatibilist also needs a positive

account of free actions. For it is not enough just to say that if the world is

Freedom and determinism 65

indeterministic, then we are free. If determinism is the threat to freedom

that the Incompatibilist thinks it is, then the mere existence of one or

two undetermined events in some remote corner of the universe will not

be sufﬁcient to make us free. What is needed by Incompatibilists is an

account of exactly how indeterministic events play a role in the actions of

ours that are performed freely. Not only that: they also need a plausible

account of when we are and when we are not morally responsible for our

actions.

A natural starting point in the search for such an account is to say that

it is precisely at the moment of acting that the indeterminism must “kick

in” in order for an agent to be free and morally responsible. In order to

capture this idea more precisely, the following deﬁnition will come in

handy:

event E is undetermined =df it is not the case that there is some time, t,

such that (i) t is earlier than the time of E and (ii) the conjunction of any

proposition expressing the state of the world at t with the laws of nature

entails that E will occur.

Here is a view that captures the idea that our free actions must be

undetermined in this way:

Simple Indeterminism

(i) There are some undetermined actions. (ii) An action is free if and only if

it is undetermined. (iii) Agents are in general morally responsible for their

own undetermined actions.

Although Simple Indeterminism is a natural way to try to capture the

basic Incompatibilist intuition, it is open to what seems like a pretty dev-

astating objection. Suppose you buy an ice cream cone; but as soon as the

cone is handed to you, your body suddenly moves in an indeterministic

way, and the result is that (very much to your alarm and chagrin) you

throw the cone – ice cream and all – right back at your friendly server.

Why the words ‘in general’ in the third tenet? Mainly because acting freely and

being morally responsible for your actions are not the same thing. Freedom is a

necessary condition for moral responsibility, but it is surely not a sufﬁcient condi-

tion. other conditions that must also be satisﬁed in order for an agent to be morally

respon sible for an action no doubt include such things as being conscious, having

a sense of oneself as an agent, possessing moral concepts, and having the ability to

form intentions.

An Introduction to Metaphysics66

According to Simple Indeterminism, you are acting freely in this

example, since your action is undetermined, and you are also morally

responsible for your action.

But it doesn’t seem like you really are mor-

ally responsible for what you do in this case. After all, you did not try to

throw the ice cream back at the server; you did not know that you were

going to do that; and you did not even want to do that.

Here is a principle to bolster the claim that you are not morally respon-

sible for your action in this case:

Pure Chance

If an event is undetermined, then no one is responsible for that event.

The main idea behind Pure Chance is that when an event is undetermined,

its occurrence is like a cosmic roll of the dice. If the universe’s history

were rewound to a time just before that event and then allowed to unfold

again, with the same laws of nature and the same past, the undetermined

event might happen again, and it might not. And the factor that would

determine whether the event in question happened again, during the

replay, would be pure chance. In particular, no action by any agent would

be responsible for things going one way rather than another.

Notice that it won’t do at this point for the Simple Indeterminist to say

that in the ice cream example you are not morally responsible because you

neither tried nor wanted to do what you in fact did. For one thing, we often

take people to be morally responsible for accidentally behaving in certain

ways (as when someone carelessly causes a car accident, for example), even

though we know that the agents in question neither intend nor want to

do the things they do. And for another thing, there is simply no getting

around the fact that Simple Indeterminism, given the way it is stated, is

committed to you being responsible for your action in the ice cream case.

Assuming the story is told in a suitable way, that is, so that whatever other conditions

besides freedom are required for moral responsibility are also satisﬁed.

Perhaps it will be thought that a case like the following is a counterexample to Pure

Chance: Tim pushes a button to make it an indeterministic but very, very probable

matter that a certain bomb will go off, and the bomb then detonates. According to

the principle, Tim is not responsible for the explosion, but it seems like he really is.

A defender of Pure Chance can plausibly reply to this objection, however, by insist-

ing that what Tim is responsible for is pushing the button, which (given the circum-

stances) is a very bad thing to do, regardless of whether the bomb goes off or not.

Freedom and determinism 67

For the view says nothing about either trying or wanting to perform the

action that you end up performing.

There is nevertheless a possible reply to this objection to Simple

Indeterminism. Maybe the Simple Indeterminist can say that Pure Chance

is false. Maybe you are morally responsible for throwing your ice cream

after all. Maybe (the Simple Indeterminist can say) you should not have

put yourself in a situation in which it was physically possible (even if tre-

mendously unlikely) that you would throw your ice cream like that; and

maybe, since you did put yourself in such a situation, you are morally

responsible for what ended up happening.

Unfortunately for the Simple Indeterminist, however, there is a powerful

counter to this reply to the objection. According to Simple Indeterminism,

you are acting freely, and hence can be morally responsible, only in cases in

which the actions you perform are not made physically necessary before-

hand. So, according to Simple Indeterminism, if you had managed to make

it physically necessary that you would receive your ice cream nicely (with-

out throwing it back, but with a polite “Thank you!”), then you would not

have been doing so freely, and would then not have been morally respon-

sible (and hence would not have deserved any credit) for doing so. In other

words, Simple Indeterminism requires that when you act freely (and are

morally responsible for your actions), you act in an indeterministic way. So

it would be contrary to the entire program of the Simple Indeterminist to

say that you ought not to put yourself in situations in which your behavior

will be undeter mined. That would be tantamount to saying that you ought

not to behave in such a way that you will be morally responsible for your

behavior.

3.8 Volitional Indeterminism

Perhaps we went wrong in placing the indeterminism in the causal his-

tory of a free action right at the moment of action. Perhaps what the

Incompatibilist Indeterminist needs to say is that free actions are the

results of real decisions by their agents, but decisions that are themselves

undetermined. Here is a new deﬁnition that will be useful in capturing

such a view:

A is a volition =df A is a mental act of choosing or willing.

An Introduction to Metaphysics68

And here is one way to formulate the view:

Volitional Indeterminism

(i) Some actions are caused by undetermined volitions within their agents.

(ii) An action is free if and only if either (a) it is itself an undetermined

volition, or (b) it is caused by an undetermined volition within its agent.

(iii) Agents are in general morally responsible for their own undetermined

volitions, and for actions they perform that are caused by such volitions.

It should be clear that Volitional Indeterminism is an improvement over

Simple Indeterminism, since it yields what seems to be the correct result

in the above ice-cream case (namely, that you are not morally responsible

for spontaneously throwing your ice cream).

But Volitional Indeterminism is nevertheless open to objection. Here

is another example. You again buy an ice-cream cone; but this time, as

soon as the cone is handed to you, your mind suddenly behaves in an

indeterministic way: for no reason at all, and despite the fact that doing

so goes completely against your character, you suddenly decide to throw

the ice-cream cone right back at your friendly server. As soon as this

undeter mined decision is made, you regret it, and immediately change

your mind – you realize that you do not want to throw your ice-cream cone

(not at the vendor or anywhere else). But it is too late: your undetermined

vol ition has already resulted in a signal being sent to the relevant muscles,

and before you can get another message back out to your arm and hand,

the ice cream (cone and all) is ﬂying toward your startled server.

Now, according to Volitional Indeterminism, you are acting freely in

this case, and are morally responsible for your action. But there are good

reasons to think that you are not in fact morally responsible for throw-

ing your ice-cream even in this example. The main problem is that it just

seems like a random act on your part, since it resulted from a random vol-

ition within you. But in order to make the problem more speciﬁc, consider

the following two principles, one old and one new:

Pure Chance

If an event is undetermined, then no one is responsible for that event.

The Transfer Principle for Non-Responsibility

If S is not responsible for e

, and e

makes e

physically necessary, then S is

not responsible for e

each of these principles is independently plausible. But together they

entail that you are not responsible for throwing your ice cream in our