Three Source Incompatibilist Arguments 159which one set of independently existing causally sufficient conditions (for
example, an erosion) ensure a subsequent event also ensured by some dis-
tinct set of independently existing sufficient conditions (i.e., Betty’s action).
Assuming determinism, the pertinent facts (consisting in the deterministic
order of things) are not independent of an agent’s reasons for action, they
constitute them! Therefore, at a deterministic world involving a typical case
regarding a judgment of moral responsibility, the case is relevantly like a
one- path, not a two- path case. (McKenna 2001: 45)Both McKenna and Stump thus propose a suitable revision to Transfer NR to
one- path cases. Here is an informal statement of such a principle, which should
suffice for present purposes:
If a person is not responsible for a certain fact, and if this fact identifies at
some particular time the sole causal antecedent of the path to the bringing
about of a further fact, and if the person is not responsible for any part of the
path between the two facts, then the person is not responsible for the further
fact either.^16Call this Transfer NR- Revised (TNR- R). Will TNR- R or some similar variation
suffice to aid in advancing a defensible version of the Direct Argument? Fischer
(2004: 200–1) has replied by suggesting that we might be able to identify even
in one single causal path two sets of properties or processes, one of which is
responsibility- conferring even if the other is only at best controversially (as the
incompatibilist would see it) not responsibility conferring. Hence, we could
thereby generate counterexamples even to TNR- R. But this way of resisting the
Direct Argument hinges upon delicate issues about how one set of properties that
are responsibility- conferring might be superimposed upon the set in virtue of
which an action is ensured as an upshot of determinism’s truth. Can we really
think of the actual instantiation of the (allegedly) responsibility- conferring prop-
erties in a deterministic case as distinct from the properties in virtue of which an
act is determined? This is not clear (McKenna, 2008c: 366–7). Fischer’s reply
seems to rely on presuppositions that are too esoteric when weighed against the
apparent intuitive appeal expressed in TNR- R of the idea that a person is not
responsible for something if she is not responsible for the only path that results
in its coming about.
Fischer, however, offers a distinct reply to efforts to restrict a version of TNR
to one- path cases. Such efforts, he charges, appear to be question- begging against
the compatibilist because they do not “employ a principle that is broadly appeal-
ing” (2004: 203). Is this a fair charge? Perhaps it is. We will explore this charge,
but if it is question- begging, and if it does not employ a principle that is broadly
appealing, it is hard to see how that it would be so. To explain, recall that van
Inwagen claimed that the initial appeal of TNR was due to the fact that it seemed
to be confirmed by examples like Snakebite, and there are numerous others that
one might cite as well. Another van Inwagen offered went basically as follows: