Seven Views of Contemporary Compatibilism 199Some would think that if this were so, it would be unfair to sanction such an
agent by way of a blaming response. What seems to be needed, then, for Wallace
to defeat such worries about charges of unfairness is further development,
beyond an appeal to any general capacity, of the sort of source freedom actually
exercised by a morally responsible agent in acting as she does when she does
wrong. A source compatibilist might contend that some covert ways of generat-
ing an agent’s action (as in certain manipulation cases) are incompatible with
freedom, while other deterministic casual histories are not. This is how a histor-
ical compatibilist would argue. Or a source compatibilist might contend that
such histories are sufficient for freedom even given the covert causes. This is the
route a nonhistorical compatibilist would take.
It is worth considering, in light of the worry raised in the last paragraph,
where Wallace stands on manipulation cases and the historical versus nonhistori-
cal approach to theorizing responsibility (see Section 8.1). He does address
manipulation cases, but under the rubric of systematic behavior control or condi-
tioning (1994: 155). His principle of distinguishing those exempt from morally
responsible agency is informed exclusively by whether the persons in question
are incapacitated to understand and comply with the demands of moral obliga-
tions. Therefore, it looks as if Wallace is committed to a nonhistorical position,
although he never discusses the debate in these terms. To the extent that any
nonhistorical position is susceptible to manipulation cases of the sort sketched
above (Section 8.1), it seems that Wallace’s is as well. Hence, he must adopt that
same style of response as Frankfurt’s: It doesn’t matter how an agent comes to
be the way she is, so long as relevant freedom conditions are satisfied at the time
she acts.
8.9. Russell’s Strawsonian- Inspired Critical Compatibilism
In Freedom and Moral Sentiment (1995), and then in a series of more recent
papers (e.g., 2000, 2002b, 2004, 2013), Paul Russell advances a form of compat-
ibilism that places emphasis on a capacity for moral sense. This capacity enables
free and morally responsible agents to appreciate and be responsive to the moral
sentiments, and most notably the reactive attitudes central to Strawson’s com-
patibilist project. Here is Russell’s pithy formulation of, as he explicitly labels it,
the condition of moral sense:
The responsible agent must be able to feel and understand moral sentiments
and reactive attitudes. (2004: 203)Recall that the crucial element in Strawson’s account of being morally respons-
ible is understood in terms of the quality of a person’s will (Section 6.3). But a
critical examination of Strawson’s compatibilist proposal (e.g., Russell, 1992;
Watson, 1987) revealed that Strawson needed to provide some credible explana-
tion of the salient capacities that bear on competent participation in adult