Three Source Incompatibilist Arguments 149As with the Basic Leeway Argument, BSI is also open to resistance from com-
patibilists. Compatibilists, after all, will offer their own variations on what
counts as being an adequate source of one’s own agency. Hence, just as an argu-
ment like the Consequence Argument served as a resource to aid in supporting
BLI, source incompatibilists need some argumentative resources to supplement
BSI. The remainder of this chapter will be devoted to considering three distinct
arguments for source incompatibilism. In each case, one can see how the argu-
ment lends support to BSI.
The first argument we will consider is the Ultimacy Argument for Incompati-
bilism, which aims to establish as a condition on free and morally responsible
actions that they ultimately originate from exercises of one’s own agency and
not in causal conditions external to her. The second argument, the Direct Argu-
ment for Incompatibilism, is designed to show that under the assumption of
determinism, non- responsibility for the remote past and the laws of nature trans-
fers through to non- responsibility for what one does. The third argument, the
Manipulation Argument for Incompatibilism, contends that causal determination
is no different in any relevant respect from a form of manipulation that clearly
undermines an agent’s freedom and moral responsibility.
7.2. The Ultimacy Argument for Incompatibilism
In this section, we will consider two ways of formulating an Ultimacy Argu-
ment. In either form, the argument is most frequently cast not in terms of free
will but instead in terms of moral responsibility. It is natural to understand the
force of the argument in terms of problems for the freedom condition(s) for
moral responsibility. Accordingly, we will take some interpretive liberties here
by casting versions of the argument in terms of the freedom required for moral
responsibility.
We’ll begin by formulating what an incompatibilist advocate of the Ultimacy
Argument takes ultimacy to be. Note that there are relatively familiar folk con-
ceptions of what it is for a person to be the initiator of a course of action and
what it is for her to shape herself. These notions might be used to develop a
characterization of ultimate sourcehood. We often look to identify one person
rather than another as the one who initiated some course of action or some event.
“Whose idea was this?” often expresses our interest here. And there is also the
familiar expression of being a “self- made” person, perhaps as someone who
“picked herself up by her own bootstraps,” as the saying goes. These folk con-
ceptions are not themselves clearly incompatibilist notions. Still, one can see
how they might capture some sense of identifying a person as the ultimate source
by contrast with courses of action or ways of acquiring character that are out of
an agent’s control in some uncontroversial sense. Call this the folk notion of ulti-
macy. Such a notion falls short of what the incompatibilist seeks in the ultimacy
argument.
For a precise specification of what the incompatibilist does seek, consider
what would credibly be involved in an agent’s performing a free act. Agents do