Compatibilism

Comme sceptique, Hume est souvent considéré comme réduisant la causalité à une fiction ou croyance naturelle sans garantie. Nous ne percevons jamais les liens qui unissent les causes aux effets et nous contenterions de les projeter sur les événements. Dans un tel cadre, il semblerait logique que la nécessité ne soit elle aussi qu'une fiction et que tout ce qui concerne le domaine factuel soit contingent. Pourtant, ce n'est pas le cas et Hume défend aussi, en plus du scepticisme, une position positivement et explicitement nécessitariste. Chaque être humain serait selon Hume un nécessitariste naturel : nous usons de raisonnements causaux pour comprendre tous les phénomènes, y compris ceux qui se rapportent à l'esprit et aux états mentaux. Ici, nous montrerons que la position générale de Hume est cohérente, que les choses de fait n'impliquent pas contingence et que la nécessité n'implique pas l'absence de liberté.

Aquinas’s discussion of free-will admits of causal influences. In reconciling freedom and causation, libertarians and compatibilists interpret Aquinas differently. I argue that Aquinas is loosely compatibilist and his model benefits from the additional consideration of the principle of sufficient reason.
Aquinas explains that freedom includes the ability to do otherwise. Why does an agent choose otherwise? To answer, I will (1) first map Aquinas’s philosophy of mind and explain how Aquinas’s model narrows the discussion to one particular ambiguity concerning how the ability to choose otherwise relates to causation. (2) Second, I show that Aquinas’s answer leaves a gap in the discussion that allows for both libertarian and compatibilist interpretations, each requiring a supplemental consideration. (3) Third, I propose that Aquinas’s gap may be filled with the principle of sufficient reason as the best explanation of the relationship between causality and freedom.

ABSTRACT: A systematic reconstruction of Chrysippus’ theory of causes, grounded on the Stoic tenets that causes are bodies, that they are relative, and that all causation can ultimately be traced back to the one ‘active principle’ which pervades all things. I argue that Chrysippus neither developed a finished taxonomy of causes, nor intended to do so, and that he did not have a set of technical terms for mutually exclusive classes of causes. Rather, the various adjectives which he used for causes had the function of describing or explaining particular features of certain causes in particular philosophical contexts. I challenge the sometimes assumed close connection of Chrysippus’ notion of causation with explanation. I show that the standard view that the distinction between proximate and auxiliary causes and perfect and principal causes corresponds to the distinction between internal and external determining factors is not born out by the evidence, and argue that causes of the two types were not thought to co-operate, but rather conceived of as alternatives.

In order to find a convincing position in the ‘free will’ debate, two sorts of determinism are distinguished. The merits of encompassing determinism, which is determinism as it is usually understood, and individual determinism, which focuses on the agent, are brought to the fore. The existence of encompassing determinism cannot conclusively be proven, but it may be demonstrated, on the basis of individual determinism, that actions come about in a determined way, leaving no room for ‘free will’. In order to facilitate the discussion, recent scientific developments in such diverse fields as, e.g., quantum mechanics and neuropsychology are incorporated. Balancing the arguments, I aspire to a consistent and nuanced viewpoint, not eschewing divergent conclusions.

This review article explores a new indispensable reference work on the reception of
Augustine. It offers an overview of its content, structure, and methodology, as well as
a critical assessment of its overall contribution to the study of Augustine. Goethe once
remarked that, in the world, there are just a few voices, yet so many echoes. Augustine
is definitely among the ‘few voices’, which have provoked all manner of friendly and
unfriendly echoes. It is particularly important to realize that, apart from explicit
citations and references in western literature, Augustine has also profoundly shaped
medieval and modern culture through the subtle dissemination of his ideas into various
spheres of life. This reference work not only provides a description of the current state
of the reception of Augustine, but also adds the new results of the diligent work of the
contributing researchers and identifies several topics that still need to be investigated.

The belief that Aristotle opposes potency (dunamis) to actuality (energeia or entelecheia) has gone mostly untested. This essay defines and distinguishes forms of the Opposition Hypothesis—the Actualization, Privation, and Modal—examining the texts and arguments adduced to support them. Using Aristotle's own account of opposition, the texts appear instead to show that potency and actuality are compatible, while arguments for their opposition produce intractable problems. Notably, Aristotle's refutation of the Megarian Identity Hypothesis applies with equal or greater force to the Opposition Hypothesis. For Aristotle, then, potency and actuality are compatible.

In this précis I provide a detailed summary of the arguments in Derk Pereboom's Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life— including his disappearing agent objection (ch.2), his argument against agent-causal libertarianism (ch.3), his four-case argument (ch.4), and his defense of opti- mistic skepticism (ch.5-8). My goal is simply to present Pereboom’s arguments in a clear and concise manner. Providing a comprehensive summary of Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life, without any additional commentary or critical comments, will allow readers to evaluate Pereboom’s arguments for themselves. It will also allow the articles to follow in this book symposium—those by John Martin Fisher, Dana Nelkin, and Derk Pereboom—to provide their comments without having to summarize the arguments in full. Readers can then refer back to this précis for additional clarification or details on any particular argument.

There is a concern that causal determinism might render free-will impossible. I compare some different perspectives, namely Compatibilism, Incompatibilism, Libertarianism, and Hard Determinism, and conclude that Hard Determinism is correct—we lack free-will. To further bolster the case, I consider the work of Libet, who has found neuropsychological evidence that our brains non-consciously cause our actions, prior to our being aware of it. Thus we are also not choosing consciously. I then consider Dennett’s work on the role of the conscious self. I defend his model—of a fragmented self—which could not cause our actions. Finally I argue that many things that free-will purportedly provides, eg., justification for the penal system and reactive attitudes, can be reconstructed without free-will. I then end with some speculations about why people still want free-will.

Derk Pereboom has advanced a four-case manipulation argument that, he claims, undermines both libertarian accounts of free action not committed to agent-causation and compatibilist accounts of such action. The first two cases are meant to be ones in which the key agent is not responsible for his actions owing to his being manipulated. We first consider a “hard-line” response to this argument that denies that the agent is not morally responsible in these cases. We argue that this response invites a dialectically uncharitable reading of the argument. We then propose an alternative interpretation; it affirms that, at least prima facie, the manipulated agent in the first two cases is not responsible. Finally, we question Pereboom’s rationale for why the manipulation in these cases subverts responsibility.

Freedom or control of how we act is often understood as a kind of power - a power to determine for ourselves how we act. Is freedom so conceived possible, and what kind of power must it be? The paper argues that power takes many forms, of which ordinary causation is only one; and that if freedom is indeed a kind of power, it cannot be ordinary causation. Scepticism about the reality of freedom as a power can take two forms. One, found in Hume, assumes incompatibilism, and concludes from incompatibilism that freedom cannot exist, as indistinguishable from chance. But another scepticism, found in Hobbes, assumes instead that the only possible form of power is ordinary causation, concluding that freedom cannot for this reason exist as a form of power. This scepticism is more profound - it is in fact presupposed by Hume's scepticism - and far more interesting, just because freedom cannot plausibly be modelled as ordinary causation.

V magistrskem delu obravnavam vprašanje (ne)možnosti metafizične svobode in moralne odgovornosti, in sicer s posebnim ozirom na zloglasni argument filozofa Galena Strawsona. Analizo pričnem z orisom povezave med svobodo, moralno odgovornostjo in dejavnikovo zmožnostjo, da nad samim seboj in svojim delovanjem izkazuje relevantno vrsto nadzora. Razmejim med tremi pomembnimi vprašanji, ki obkrožajo filozofsko razpravo o svobodi: »Vprašanjem možnosti«, »Vprašanjem obstoja« in »Vprašanjem združljivosti«. Sledi kratek očrt (sodobne) razprave, zlasti z vidika teh vprašanj. Nato ponudim nekaj dodatnih terminoloških pojasnil in natančneje opredelim nekatere osrednje pojme dela, kot so »kompatibilizem«, »inkompatibilizem«, »libertarizem«, »imposibilizem«, »determinizem« in »moralna odgovornost«. V središče razpravljanja postavim svobodo, ki je potrebna za moralno odgovornost v smislu »osnovne«, nepragmatično pojmovane zaslužnosti. Sledi predstavitev Strawsonovega »osnovnega argumenta« (OA), k...

In “Do Souls Exist,” I articulated the reasons most philosophers deny the existence of souls.  (According to the infamous PhilPapers survey, only 27% of philosophers accept a soul-like non-physical view of mind. ) I also explored the consequences of the soul’s non-existence and claimed that, although most are exaggerated, one concern seems legitimate: the non-existence of the soul threatens free will. However, I suggested, free will is threatened in so many other ways that the non-existence of the soul really isn’t the problem. If we could resolve these other threats, the non-existence of the soul wouldn’t really stand in the way of believing in free will. So, to see why, let me know articulate these threats and show why the majority of philosophers believe that free will, as most people conceive of it, is an illusion—and why some even reject less popular understandings of freewill that could save it.

The problem of free will and determinism is something that has been discussed for a long time by scholars, but it has survived to be one of the hottest philosophical issues discussed today. Reflecting the group's position on the assignment of the previous Metaphysics course, this article is structured as an analysis as well as a theoretical deepening of the problems of free will and determinism. This paper has an inclination to the position of definitional compatibilism with the central focus of issue lies in the freedom contained in free will. This paper opens with an introduction in which there is a formulation of the problem, followed by methodology, a discussion that contains a glimpse of the history of free will and determinism, the definitions of both and the positions of incompatibilism, compatibilism, and critics on them, before it closed with a conclusion from the writer.

In response to the claim that our sense of will is illusory, some philosophers have called for a better understanding of the phenomenology of agency. Although I am broadly sympathetic with the tenor of this response, I question whether the positive-theoretic blueprint it promotes truly heralds a tenable undertaking. Marshaling a Schopenhauerian insight, I examine the possibility that agency might not be amenable to phenomenological description. Framing this thesis in terms of Charles S. Peirce’s semiotic framework, I suggest a way to integrate the idea of streaming experiences with that of bodily strivings, which, owing to their primitive structure, can never be represented.

The idea that the future is already determined is known in philosophy as determinism. There are various definitions of determinism available; but in this paper, I shall use the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy definition, which is 'the metaphysical thesis that the facts of the past, in conjunction with the laws of nature, entail every truth about the future' (McKenna, 2009:1.3). This idea presents a difficult problem for the concept of free will: how can we make free choices if all our actions are determined by the facts of the past and the laws of nature? A related but distinct question is: how can we be held morally responsible for our actions if we have no free will? Undesirable consequences like these are not sufficient reasons for declaring determinism to be false; but they can act (and have influenced many philosophers) as a powerful motivator towards resolving the apparent conflict between determinism and free will.

As posições paradoxais assumidas por Nietzsche acerca do livre-arbítrio é uma questão espinhosa, provocando tensões entre os seus estudiosos que mantém candente o debate: afinal, Nietzsche deve ser considerado um compatibilista ou um fatalista? Na Genealogia da moral, o filósofo argumenta que a doutrina do livre-arbítrio nada mais é do que uma invenção da moralidade escrava para atender à sua necessidade de crença no “‘sujeito’ indiferente e livre para escolher” (GM I:13). Não obstante, em seguida, Nietzsche apresenta a figura enigmática do indivíduo soberano: “senhor do livre-arbítrio” que detém o “privilégio extraordinário da responsabilidade” (GM II:2). O problema, contudo, toma proporções ainda mais amplas e complexas quando se coteja passagens de diferentes obras do filósofo, onde, por vezes, ele parece afirmar uma noção positiva da liberdade da vontade, enquanto que, em outros trechos, rejeita categoricamente o livre-arbítrio e, consequentemente, a responsabilidade moral do agente. Neste texto sobre a questão do livre-arbítrio, propomos trazer à baila a visão de dois representantes da recepção anglo-saxônica contemporânea de Nietzsche: Ken Gemes, da Birkbeck, University of London, e Brian Leiter, da University of Chicago.

Many philosophers tend to defend the view that there is a significant relation between the problem of determinism / indeterminism and the problem of free will. The belief that there exists such a significant relation is supported by our intuitions; however, in this thesis, I defend just the opposite view: free will has no significant dependence on the deterministic or indeterministic character of causal relations. In the same way, I propose that the question, whether or not determinism is true, cannot be answered based on observations about the problem of free will.
I believe that the genuine question whose answer would illuminate the darkness surrounding free will is whether or not will supervenes on anything other than itself. Therefore, in order to decide whether or not we are free, the question we should ask is “Does will supervene upon something other than itself?” Moreover, I defend the position that no matter whether the world is deterministic or indeterministic, if physicalism is true, i.e. if properties of free will supervene upon physical properties, then we cannot enjoy genuine freedom.
The position of the thesis has some important ethical implications: If we cannot be genuinely free, we cannot be genuinely responsible for our actions either. This implies that retributive and admirative desires towards other persons are rationally untenable. I defend the view that only practical attitudes like reinforcement and punishment or isolation and inclusion are rationally tenable.

Galen Strawson is certainly one of the most original contemporary philosophers. And he has—perhaps as every original philosopher has—given rise to many controversies. The theories he defends, such as panpsychism or the conception of sesmets—extremely short-lived selves—may indeed prompt an ‘incredulous stare’ (as Peter van Inwagen once observed) and are usually rejected by philosophical orthodoxy. But this, often too hasty, criticism causes Strawson to express his views even more boldly; it is not surprising, then, that his thinking might be seen as lifelong training in philosophical rebellion. It is for that very reason that Things That Bother Me is so important. It enables one to understand that his motives are in fact quite the opposite: Strawson turns out to be
a humanist, concerned with the sempiternal questions that strike every clever man.

Libertarian incompatibilists are known to argue for their conception of freedom of the will by appealing to introspective awareness of their own agency. However in attempting to articulate how such awareness provides evidence of the ability to do otherwise, these libertarians sometimes suggest that paradigmatically free decisions are "close-call" decisions made as a result of "torn" deliberation. In this paper I argue that libertarians have misidentified the appropriate paradigm cases of free decision, and I recommend refocusing the debate away from our experience of practical decision-making to our experience of choices made in the process of cognitive management—i.e., our introspective awareness of our rational agency. Having sketched this alternative account of the phenomenology of agency, I conclude by examining the compatibilist account of agentive experience offered by Terry Horgan, and suggest it is not the best explanation of all of the relevant evidence about how we experience and make judgments about our freedom.

Philosophers know a great deal about how reasoning can go wrong but very little about what can go wrong with the conclusions that philosophers try to establish by their reasonings.  It is Stove’s great merit that he tackles the latter problem directly, though a certain dogmatism in his approach and a contemptuous attitude towards the ‘great’ philosophers have almost certainly led to a neglect of his work.

This paper inquires into the appropriateness of the label ‘neo-positivist’ that he applies to his own position and considers his view that there are probably, but not certainly, innumerable ways in which a philosophical claim can be wrong, mistaken, untrue, absurd even.  An attempt is made to relate our lack of knowledge here to the Chomsky/McGinn thesis that there may be kinds of problem with which the human intellect is just not equipped to deal.

Event-causal libertarians maintain that an agent’s settling of whether certain states-of-affairs obtain on a particular occasion can be reduced to the causing of events (e.g., bodily motions, coming to a resolution) by certain mental events or states, such as certain desires, beliefs and/or intentions.  Agent-causal libertarians disagree.  A common critique against event-causal libertarian accounts is that the agent’s role of settling matters is left unfilled and the agent “disappears” from such accounts—a problem known as the disappearing agent problem.  Recently, Christopher Franklin (2014) has argued that an “enriched” event-causal account can overcome this problem.  Franklin, however, doesn’t consider whether, as Derk Pereboom (2015) argues, the agent as decider of “torn decisions” disappears from even enriched accounts.  As I show here, Franklin’s enriched account takes some modifying if it is to overcome Pereboom’s torn decision problem—a special case of the disappearing agent problem.  However, as I also show, there is a more fundamental problem facing event-causal libertarian accounts.  It is implausible that an agent qua event or state simultaneously settles whether and how she intervenes.  The upshot is that events and/or states lack an ability essential to completely fulfilling an agent’s role qua settler.  This isn’t a problem for agent-causal accounts like the one offered by Helen Steward (2012) because in as much as an agent qua substance settles whether her body moves in certain ways on certain occasions she simultaneously settles whether and how she intervenes.  As a consequence, event-causal libertarians face a dilemma, or rather several, that agent-causal libertarians do not.  This may ultimately be explained by the irreducibility of causation by agents to causation by events.

Wittgenstein's notion of passing from 'disguised' to 'patent' nonsense is problematic once one realises that nonsense can have no logical properties.  I ask whether anything has yet been demonstrated to to be disguised nonsense.  No philosophical thesis (something that has been seriously offered as a truth) has, but even invented examples turn out to be controversial.  An example from elementary algebra however does seem to show how someone could unwittingly treat as sense what was in fact nonsense.  But, although the case genuinely deserves to be called one of disguised nonsense, there is still a crucial difference from what a case of philosophical nonsense would have to be.

Questo articolo prende in esame la teoria psicanalitica della libertà del volere. Nella cornice degli antichi e recenti dibattiti sul libero arbitrio, la concezione freudiana è stata per lo più vista come una posizione di negazione della libertà: naturalizzando lo psichico, avrebbe posto il soggetto in un orizzonte determinista, legandolo indissolubilmente a leggi di natura. In linea con molte delle odierne posizioni che ritengono necessario assumere un approccio riduzionista del comportamento umano, si è dato a volte per scontato che una visione scientifica del libero arbitrio debba essere di stampo neuroscientifico, ma vi sono fenomeni che per quanto emergano da eventi fisici, non possono essere descritti solamente in termini fisici. Evitando il materialismo radicale, tendente a rintracciare nel cervello ogni aspetto della mente umana, la teoria di Freud è sì determinista, ma giunge a una forma di compatibilismo e delinea una pratica in grado di accrescere il libero arbitrio.

Determined but possibly free: freedom of will in psychoanalytic theory.
This article examines the psychoanalytical theory of the freedom of will. In the context of ancient and recent debates about free will Freudian thinking has mostly been seen as a position of the denial of freedom. Naturalizing the psychic would have placed the subject on a deterministic horizon, indissolubly binding it to the laws of nature. Consistent with many of the current positions, which consider it necessary to opt for a reductionist approach to human behaviour, it has often been taken for granted that a scientific point of view of free will should be considered within a neuroscientific context. However even though certain phenomena arise out of physical events, they cannot be solely considered in physical terms. Avoiding the radical materialism, which tends to trace every single aspect of the human mind in the brain, Freudian theory is deterministic but it achieves a model of compatibility and outlines a practice able to increase free will.

Three points of view on the problem of the answerability of philosophical questions are developed:
a) the traditional view that the questions are perfectly genuine but just very difficult;
b) what I call the 'nonsensicalist' view, characteristic of logical positivists and Wittgensteinians, that they are largely meaningless pseudo-problems;
c) the 'mysterian' or transcendental naturalist view that they are genuine problems but ones that our intellects are unequipped, or at least very ill-equipped, to handle.

A philosophy masters dissertation for Birkbeck College London. I argue that Fischer’s arguments fail, partly as a result of Cohen’s attack, but also from internal weaknesses of their own, and I will also explain how the protagonists in the present discussion (Goetz, Fischer, Cohen) show a lack of clarity about the question of overdetermination: the question of whether or not the total amount of sufficient cause for an effect can exceed 100%.

Nietzsche is mostly known for denying moral responsibility on account of lack of libertarian free will, thus betraying an incompatibilist approach to moral responsibility. In this paper, however, I focus on a different, less familiar argument by Nietzsche which I interpret as a critique of a compatibilist conception of moral responsibility. The critique shows why punishment and our moral sanctions in general are morally unjustified by the compatibilist’s own lights. In addition, I articulate what I call Nietzsche’s explanatory challenge, which challenges the compatibilist to explain the performance of an immoral action without appealing to conditions that would exempt or excuse the wrongdoer or otherwise relieve him or her from responsibility and would thus make punishing the wrongdoer morally unjustified. By drawing on the work of R. Jay Wallace, I reconstruct Nietzsche’s anti-compatibilist argument and defend it against four possible objections.

There are certain 'hard cases' of weakness of will that seem to occur, indeed to be common, but are very difficult to give a non-paradoxical account of.  It is just not clear how they are possible.  This paper is largely an attempt to get them in focus.  What conditions must such weak-willed actions satisfy?  In what sense must they be intentional, for example?  And must the weak-willed agent thinks his action objectively worse than some alternative action open to him?  And must that alternative action actually be open to him?  The paper concludes by considering the condition that a clear case of weakness of will must be in certain sense non-procrastinatory and this turns out to be particularly difficult to satisfy.  Other explanations, ones that do not postulate weakness of will (though they may involve paradoxes of their own), always seem to be available.

Contra the dominant readings, Hieronymi—refusing to sideline concerns of metaphysics for the impasse of normativity—argues that the core of Strawson's argument in "Freedom and Resentment" rests on an implicit and overlooked metaphysics of morals grounded in social naturalism, focusing her discussion on Strawson's conception of objective attitudes. The objective attitude deals with exemption, rather than excuse. This distinction is critical to Strawson's picture of responsibility: In addition to our personal reactive attitudes are their impersonal or vicarious analogues. There are two such cases: first, cases where we suspend or modify reactive attitudes due to error about the quality of the will. In these cases of excuse, we might include an actor who we learn was innocently ignorant, or whose behavior was an accident, and so we see that he or she really meant no harm. Consequently, we exculpate the injury in question. In cases of excuse, we are mistaken about the quality of the actor's will and, thus, our reactive attitude changes, but the moral demands stay. However, one might view other people as equipped with mental attributes and as people about whom one is disposed not to indulge in with those reactive attitudes of resentment, approbation, and so on; this involves viewing others objectively. We encounter these scenarios in the case of small children, people suffering from dementia, or those with forms of other serious mental illness. This second category involves exemption: Rather than reacting with the corresponding reactive attitudes, we view those actors—who lack the capacities required to fit into the usual system tolerably well—objectively, thereby exempting them from the usual demands of ordinary interpersonal relating.

Many Christians often confuse the term ‘providence’ with ‘provision’ by defining the former as the latter, revealing its obscurity even among believers. While surely providence encompasses provision, providence involves much more as it connects God’s works from creation to eschatological new creation. Unlike the term ‘sovereignty’, providence gives a sense of comfort to many Christians for many centuries as it implies God’s loving and relational character in addition to God being in control. However, Christians have particularly disagreed over the extent of contribution by God and humankind, especially when it comes to evil and misfortune. Hence, this paper aims to evaluate a synthesis of Paul Helm’s four models of providence as a workable model for understanding providence.

El Argumento Básico de Strawson es de los más fuertes contra la responsabilidad moral en filosofía de la acción. Uno debería ser responsable de su personalidad para ser responsable moralmente de sus acciones, pero entonces nadie sería jamás responsable. En este artículo critico los intentos ortodoxos de solución al reto escéptico de Strawson y muestro cómo comparten con el Argumento una misma noción teológica heredada de agente-mónada. Una propuesta de solución pasa por una nueva concepción de sujeto. The Strawson’s Basic Argument is the stronger against moral responsibility in Philosophy of action. One should be responsible of his identity to be moral responsible of his actions, but then nobody could be never responsible. In this article I criticize orthodox solutions to Strawson’s sceptical challenge and show how they share with the Argument the same theological notion of monadical agent. A new solution needs a new conception of agent..

Compatibilist accounts of free will and moral responsibility seem susceptible to the problem of manipulation. Powerful manipulators might induce elements into a person's psychology in such a way that deterministically produces action. The manipulators might also ensure that the person meets some compatibilist sufficient conditions for moral responsibility. The manipulated agent seems intuitively not morally responsible despite meeting the compatibilist sufficient conditions. Thus these conditions are deemed to be not sufficient for moral responsibility.
One way to respond is to point out that there is an important sense in which the induced elements that the agent acts upon are not her own. This response is important for two reasons. First manipulation cases feature largely in arguments for incompatibilism. By proposing ownership conditions, compatibilists provide a way of answering incompatibilists. Second, manipulation cases have been used to argue that moral responsibility is essentially historical. Ownership conditions have been used to cash out in just what sense this is so. In this paper I will consider the relational account of ownership provided by Ishtiyaque Haji and Stephaan Cuypers. I argue that their proposal is problematic for two reasons. First I provide cases in which it yields counterintuitive results. Secondly, and more importantly, I argue that part of their account, initial authenticity, is vacuous. I then consider two ways of repairing their account.

Paul Russell's The Limits of Free Will is more than the sum of its parts. Among other things, Limits offers readers a comprehensive look at Russell's attack on the problematically idealized assumptions of the contemporary free will debate. This idealization, he argues, distorts the reality of our human predicament. Herein I pose a dilemma for Russell's position, critical compatibilism. The dilemma illuminates the tension between Russell's critical and compatibilist commitments. The problem is not obviously insurmountable, and as a compatibilist who is sympathetic to the view, my aim is to spark further discussion.