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The author considers the modal, or ”consequence,” argument for the incompatibility of free will and determinism. He diagnoses the defects in van Inwagen's original formulation of the Beta principle before recasting and defending a variant of the argument in terms of two simpler closure principles governing unavoidability. After disputing Frankfurt's case against the Principle of Alternative Possibilities, he argues that even if one rejects an alternative possibilities condition on moral responsibility, it would be implausible to conclude that responsibility is consistent with determinism.

Anselm of Canterbury holds that in order to be free and responsible, a created agent must be able to choose a se, from himself, and this requires that he confront genuinely open options such that it is entirely up to him which option he pursues. Katherin Rogers shows that the Anselmian theory subscribes to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP). In the recent literature, the main challenge to this principle originates with Harry Frankfurt, who challenges PAP by offering counterexamples in which a “controller” sees to it that an agent does not actually confront open options. Yet, as Frankfurt supposes, even a libertarian ought to judge that the agent is free and responsible. This challenge has evoked extensive debate in the last several decades. The Anselmian version of PAP is immune to these Frankfurt-style counterexamples, and his argument can be adapted by other species of libertarian.

This chapter develops the basic metaphysics of agent causation. The author analyzes causal notions generally in terms of the notion of ’causal power’ or ’causal capacity.’ The difference between event (or broadly mechanistic) causation and agent (or personal) causation concerns the way in which causal capacities are exercised. With event causation, the capacity to generate a particular effect (in some cases, from a range of possible effects) is exercised ’as a matter of course’: having the capacity in the right circumstances directly gives rise to what is either its unique characteristic effect or one of the effects within its characteristic range. By contrast, having the properties that subserve an agent‐causal capacity doesn’t produce an effect; rather, it enables the agent to freely determine an effect (within a circumscribed range).

The Frankfurt cases motivate the notion that we should adopt an “actual-sequence” approach to moral responsibility. On this sort of view, moral responsibility does not require freedom to do otherwise; rather, it is a function of (possibly modal) characteristics of the actual sequence leading to the behavior in question. This chapter addresses a significant challenge to the actual-sequence approach; the challenge has it that we cannot extrapolate from classical Frankfurt-style cases to a conclusion about the compatibility of causal determinism and moral responsibility, since the Frankfurt-style cases feature “counterfactual interveners,” whereas causal determination is a property of the way the actual sequence unfolds.