Seven Views of Contemporary Compatibilism 187determinism. While this might be welcome news to the likes of Henry Kissinger or
Bill Cosby, most would take it as an unwelcome result and treat it as grounds to
think that something was awry with the reasoning leading to this asymmetry. So
Wolf and Nelkin face two questions. First, in the context of blameworthy conduct,
is their case for the compatibility of determinism and leeway freedom convincing?
Second, is the ability they identify in the context of praiseworthiness, requiring
only source freedom, immune to the arguments for source incompatibilism?
To assess Wolf ’s and Nelkin’s arguments for the compatibility of determin-
ism and leeway freedom, it will be instructive to consider a challenge to their
thesis that blameworthiness requires leeway freedom (see, e.g., Fischer and
Ravizza, 1998: 59–60). The challenge should be familiar by now. Take any
ordinary case that would satisfy Wolf or Nelkin of an agent who is blameworthy
for performing an act. Grant that in doing so some abilities bearing on her
agency and her exercising of it play a grounding role in her being blameworthy.
Now inject this case into the context of a Frankfurt example. Recall the one we
drew upon in Chapter 5:
A neuroscientist, Black, wants Jones to perform a certain action. Black is
prepared to go to considerable lengths to get his way, but he prefers to avoid
showing his hand unnecessarily. So he waits until Jones is about to make up
his mind what to do, and he does nothing unless it is clear to him (Black is
an excellent judge of such things) that Jones is going to decide to do some-
thing other than what he wants him to do. If it were to become clear that
Jones is going to decide to do something else, Black would take effective
steps to ensure that Jones decides to do what he wants him to do, by directly
manipulating the relevant processes in Jones’s brain. As it turns out, Black
never has to show his hand because Jones, for reasons of his own, decides to
perform the very action Black wants him to perform. (Sartorio, 2016)A lesson defenders of Frankfurt’s argument wish to draw from examples like
this is that an agent can act freely and be responsible for what she does even if
she is unable to act otherwise. Hence, whatever sort of freedom plays a ground-
ing role in an agent’s being morally responsible for what she does, it is not one
that involves the ability to do otherwise. Since any candidate case of blamewor-
thy action on a view like Wolf ’s or Nelkin’s is a candidate for being “Frank-
furted,” it appears that they are wrong that blameworthiness requires leeway
freedom. Hence, they should instead accept a symmetrical source compatibilist
view of the freedom conditions for moral responsibility.
Nelkin offers a thoughtful reply to this challenge. Key to her view, as we saw
in Section 5.5, is the interference- free conception of ability. Setting it out helps
make clear her proposed account of leeway freedom. On Nelkin’s view, follow-
ing Wolf (1990: 110), a blameworthy agent has an ability to X:
if (i) the agent possesses the capacities, skills, talent, knowledge and so on
which are necessary for X-ing, and (ii) nothing interferes with or prevents