58 Classical Compatibilism and Incompatibilism
The conditional analysis of “could have done otherwise” attempted to analyze
any assertion that an agent could have done otherwise as a conditional assertion
reporting what an agent would have done under certain counterfactual conditions
(conditions different from the specific ones that actually led to her acting as she
did). The counterfactual conditions involved variations on what a free agent
wanted (or chose, willed, decided) to do at the time of her free action. Suppose
that an agent freely performed act X. According to the classical compatibilist
analysis, to say that, at the time of acting, she could have performed distinct
action Y rather than X is just to say that, had she wanted (chosen, willed, or
decided) to do Y at that time, then she would have done Y. Her ability to have
done otherwise than X at the time at which she acted is captured by such a
counter factual truth.
Notice that against this formulation the incompatibilist can press essentially
the same objection mentioned above. Given that a determined agent is deter-
mined at the time of action to have the wants that she does have, how is it helpful
to state what she would have done had she had different wants than the wants
that she did have? For one thing, given the truth of determinism, at the time at
which she acted, she could have had no other wants than the wants that her
causal history determined her to have. How is this counterfactual ability more
than a hollow freedom? How is this analysis supposed to answer the incompati-
bilist’s objection?
Before considering the compatibilist answer to this incompatibilist challenge,
it is worth pointing out that, if the relevant “could have done otherwise” state-
ments are rightly interpreted as counterfactual conditionals, then it is clear that
they do not conflict with the truth of determinism. This is so for two reasons.
First, determinism is a thesis about what future will unfold given a specific past,
for example, given specific past wants. Determinism does not deny that, with a
different past, a different future would unfold. Hence, it does not deny that,
along with other conditions of the state of the world at a time, different wants
would causally determine an agent to act other than the way she acted in the
actual world.
Second, causal determinism is a thesis that invokes natural laws, laws that
specify general causal patterns, regularities, or structures confirmed by the
history of the natural world. These patterns include more in their scope than
merely truths about what does happen. They also include truths about what is
causally possible, which involve truths about what would happen under varying
conditions. Consider a simple causal law specifying that salt dissolves in water
under certain conditions. Note that a natural law that specifies a regularity in the
interaction of salt and water is just as applicable to salt that is not currently
placed in water as it is to salt that is so placed. The salt in one’s salt shaker, for
instance, is such that if it were placed in water, then it would dissolve. That truth
is in turn indicative of the salt’s disposition to respond in certain ways to certain
causal factors. Similarly, to the extent that a statement of an agent’s ability to do
otherwise can be analyzed as a counterfactual conditional about what an agent
would have done under different conditions, it is indicative of dispositions of