Three Source Incompatibilist Arguments 1753 Source compatibilists include Harry Frankfurt (1971), John Martin Fischer (1994),
John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza (1998), Ishtiyaque Haji (1998), Michael
McKenna (2013), and Carolina Sartorio (2016). Source incompatibilists include
David Hunt (2000, 2005), Derk Pereboom (2000, 2001, 2014), Seth Shabo (2010a,
2011), and Eleonore Stump (1990, 1996).
4 Leeway compatibilists include Bernard Berofsky (1987, 2012), Joseph Campbell
(1997, 2007), Daniel Dennett (1984, 2003), Michael Fara (1998), Terry Horgan
(1979, 1985, 2015), Edward Nahmias (2011), Dana Nelkin (2008, 2011), Michael
Smith (2003), and Kadri Vihvelin (2004, 2013). Leeway incompatibilists include
Randolph Clarke (1993, 2003), Carl Ginet (1966, 1990), Robert Kane (1985, 1996),
Peter van Inwagen (1983), Timothy O’Connor (2000), and David Widerker (1995,
2003).
5 Thanks to Carolina Sartorio for pointing this out. Some might wish to quibble here by
arguing about the essential conditions for act- identity, maintaining that an act as the
product of Frankfurtian ensuring conditions could not be numerically identical with
one that was the upshot of a free agent’s own unimpeded exercising of her agency.
This might be a viable alternative argumentative strategy, but we instead offer a
simpler and more elegant proposal that avoids these complications.
6 For a similar proposal see Sartorio (2016).
7 In this and the next three paragraphs, we draw heavily from McKenna (2008d:
189–91).
8 Recall, as we explained earlier (Section 2.1), impossibilism is the thesis that it is not
metaphysically possible for anyone to have free will regardless of whether determin-
ism is true or false.
9 See also Mele (1995: 222).
10 This version of the Ultimacy Argument is very close to, or maybe can be thought of
as being basically identical with, the Basic Source Incompatibilist Argument (BSI).
11 For an attempt to advance the latter compatibilist response to an incompatibilist
version of the Ultimacy Argument, see McKenna (2008d, 2014).
12 Another familiar name for the argument is the Transfer of Nonresponsibility
Argument.
13 Nevertheless, we wish to note here that the argument’s plausibility strongly suggests
that if the argument goes through and nonresponsibility for past facts and laws “trans-
fers through” to nonresponsibility for what one does, it is implicitly due to the under-
mining of some freedom or control condition on moral responsibility. This
observation is consistent with van Inwagen’s main motivation for constructing this
argument, which was more precisely to avoid questions about the compatibility of
determinism and a particular candidate condition for moral responsibility: the ability
to do otherwise. Van Inwagen discharged a distinct argument for that incompatibility
by way of the Consequence Argument (discussed in Chapter 4). And his main motiva-
tion for the Direct Argument was to circumvent those who might be convinced (mis-
guidedly to his mind) that Frankfurt’s argument (discussed in Chapter 5) was sound
and so the ability do to otherwise is not necessary for moral responsibility. Those who
were so convinced would, when considering the issue of moral responsibility, be
unmoved by the Consequence Argument even granting it was sound. All of this,
however, is consistent with thinking that if determinism is incompatible with moral
responsibility, it is grounded in some freedom or control condition for moral respons-
ibility other than a (contested) ability- to-do- otherwise condition.