222 Mesh, Reasons-Responsive, Leeway Theories
conditions of reasons-responsiveness along these lines—while also explaining
receptivity and reactivity features in ways that resemble Fischer and Ravizza’s
approach (Brink and Nelkin, 2013). For those convinced by Nelkin’s rejection of
Frankfurt’s argument and her defense of leeway freedom, this looks to be a
viable way to advance a reasons- responsive theory.
An alternative strategy (McKenna, 2013; Sartorio, 2016) argues that an agent-
based reasons- responsive theory is after all consistent with Frankfurt examples.
This would require showing, contrary to what Fischer and Ravizza contend, that
agents in Frankfurt examples (rather than their mechanisms of action) are
reasons- responsive. We will turn to those strategies below.
9.8.3. Counterfactuals and their Relevance to Source Freedom
One intriguing recent debate concerns a dispute between source compatibilists
like Fischer and Ravizza, who rely only upon source freedom, and contemporary
leeway compatibilists such as Michael Smith (2003), Kadri Vihvelin (2004), and
Michael Fara (2008), who argue that the freedom to do otherwise is required for
moral responsibility. (We will consider Vihvelin’s view in a later section.) An
especially contested topic concerns the status of the sorts of counterfactuals
Fischer and Ravizza employ to analyze the reasons- responsiveness of a mech-
anism. On their view, to test a mechanism for reasons- responsiveness in Frank-
furt examples, we go to possible worlds in which the intervener is not present
and ask whether, supposing sufficient reasons to do otherwise were put to the
agent and the pertinent mechanism were operative, the agent would respond dif-
ferently. These leeway compatibilists, however, contend that the truth of such
counterfactuals confirm that an agent acting freely in a Frankfurt example is able
to do otherwise.^15 They argue that the counterfactual intervention merely func-
tions as a would- be mask of that ability, and an ability or disposition being
merely counterfactually masked allows the ability to persist. In a Frankfurt
example, were the agent about to do otherwise, the intervention would occur, at
which time the agent would be prevented from exercising the ability to do other-
wise and may even be correctly said to lose it. But when the agent is acting as
she does, and the intervener remains dormant, that agent retains the ability to act
otherwise, and thus has leeway freedom.^16
Randolph Clarke (2008) argues that although there may be such general abil-
ities an agent in a Frankfurt example retains, there is another key capacity she
lacks. While the agent may retain the general ability to do otherwise, due to the
presence of the intervener it is not up to her to exercise this ability. The salient
question, then, is what is really at stake in this dispute—is it an agent’s having a
general ability to do otherwise, or its being up to the agent in a context to exer-
cise such an ability? (We touched on this briefly in our chapter on Frankfurt’s
argument—Section 5.5.)