Compatibilism, Sourcehood, and Manipulation Arguments

Abstract

As we saw in Chapter 3, the Consequence Argument appeals directly to the claim that acting freely requires the ability to do otherwise. As we saw in §§1.1 and 1.5, a second way of motivating incompatibilism focuses instead on the notion of ‘sourcehood’ or ‘buck-stopping’. The general idea here is that if determinism is true, then the buck can’t stop with the agent, because the inexorable chain of deterministic causes and effects passes right through the agent and out the other side, back to a time before they – or indeed their parents or grandparents – were even born. In other words, if agents are determined to act as they do by factors that are, ultimately, outside their control, then they cannot act freely; and, of course, if determinism is true, then agents are so determined.