RELIGION AND MORALITY 327of the actor at all. Whether a person acts, and if so in what matter, is
rendered in fact inevitable. The incompatibilist is ill-served by joining the
compatibilist in accepting this view of what action is.
Consider, then, a different incompatibilist move:
Move 4: If Ann interferes, it is Ann, not Mary, who is doing the
deciding – Ann decides that Mary shall not send the
letter, and perhaps also that it shall seem to Mary that
Mary has decided this. But if Ann interferes then Mary
has not decided this. She has made no decision at all if
Ann interferes. Nonetheless, even if Ann will interfere if
Mary, uninterfered with, does not choose not to send the
letter, if Mary does so choose then (i) she could have
refrained from so choosing on her own, and so (ii) the
principle (PA*) is true of Mary’s choosing that she will
not send the letter.
The ideas behind Move 4 bear examination. Move 4 makes no reference to
Mary causing her choices; it speaks only of Mary choosing. This apparently
small difference is nonetheless important for reasons worth discussing.
As above, let the whole past package be the whole truth about the
past, plus correct statements of the laws of logic and the laws of nature.
An action, then, regarding which Jane has categorical freedom is an
action that it is logically consistent with the whole past package that she
perform, and logically consistent with the whole past package that she
refrain from performing. Let the almost whole present story be the
whole truth about the present, plus correct statements of the laws of
logic and the laws of nature, except the truth about whether Jane
performs or refrains from performing the action in question; this story
must, of course, be logically compatible with the whole past package.
But it is also the case that if Jane’s performing an action is in her power,
then Jane’s performing, and Jane’s refraining from performing, that
action is logically compatible with the almost whole story about the
present. A definition of in her power along these lines, then, can be put
as follows:
(IHP*) Jane has it in her power to perform action A only if her doing
so does not require that she make false some truth about
the past or the present, some law of logic, or some law of
nature; Jane has it in her power to refrain from
performing action A only if her doing so does not require
that she make some truth about the past or the present,
some law of nature, or some law of logic false.^19