It is contrasted with the Alternative Sequences that result from Alternative Possibilities. Arguments for incompatibilism that consider alternative possibilities are called Indirect Arguments.

Microscopic objects, on the other hand, show the probabilistic consequences of indeterminism, due to quantum mechanics. These probabilistic effects usually average out in large objects, leading to the illusion of strict causal physical determinism, including the powerful and very productive idea of deterministic laws of nature.

Agnosticism ignores the great asymmetry between determinism and indeterminism. Determinism is congenial to claims that freedom consists of following the laws of nature and that God has foreknowledge of our actions. Indeterminism is much more difficult to reconcile with a responsible freedom, since it has such negative implications - randomness, chance, uncertainty, and contingency - leading to the randomness objection to free will.

Note that alternative possibilities should not be interpreted as probabilities for actions. This is a mistake made by many prominent philosophers who assume that indeterminism makes chance the direct cause of action.

Alternative Sequences are contrasted with the Actual Sequence that leads up to the current moment of deliberation and decision. The term is used in Frankfurt-style cases and John Fischer's Semicompatibilism.

The first is the great asymmetry between determinism and indeterminism in the standard argument against free will. Determinism is much easier to reconcile with the will than is indeterminism (pure chance).

Susan Wolf has pointed out the strange asymmetry between praise and blame. Those opposed to punishment for retributive reasons (as opposed to practical consequentialist reasons) are often in favor of praise for good deeds. This reflects the ancient Platonic view that we are responsible only for the good we do. Our errors we blame on our ignorance, which is, unfortunately, no excuse before the law.

Like the term authentic, autonomy suggests that we are the author of our actions, that our actions are "up to us."

It is the libertarian condition that the agent has alternative possibilities for action.

Although Strawson is agnostic and says his argument works whether determinism or indeterminism is true, his denial of any causa sui effectively cancels indeterminism and the Basic Argument resembles the Consequence Argument.

Quantum indeterminacy produces uncaused causes. There is still a causal chain, but it no longer permits complete predictability. Events are now merely probable, no longer certain, though the probability can be arbitrarily close to certainty. Most macroscopic events are, for practical purposes, as predictable as perfect determinism would have allowed. Nevertheless, a break in the causal chain is a requirement for free will.

Chance has historically been seen as a negative idea, associated with gambling, for example. Chance has been regarded as atheistic, since it appears to deny Foreknowledge.

Classical compatibilists are determinists. Immanuel Kant called compatibilism a "wretched subterfuge." William James called compatibilists "soft determinists," evading the fact of their "antipathy to chance." Some modern compatibilists avoid the determinist label, claiming to be agnostic about the "truth" of determinism or indeterminism.

Semicompatibilists argue for the compatibilism of moral responsibility and determinism (or indeterminism).

Consequentialism also decribes theories of punishment that are justified because of the consequences, e.g., the deterrence of a certain crime, as opposed to a retributivist theory, that punishes because the agent simply deserves the blame.

Some (e.g, Harry Frankfurt) say control is found in a hierarchy of desires. Some (e.g, John Fischer) say control is being "responsive to reasons." Fischer divides control into "guidance control" and "regulative control," the latter involving alternative possibilities.

Determinism undermines control, as do various manipulation schemes including behavioral conditioning, hypnosis, brainwashing, and the like, as well as physiological problems like addictions, obsessions, and other mental disorders. External coercion denies even the freedom claimed by classical compatibilism.

In Frankfurt-style cases, hypothetical interveners exert control over decisions if and only if the actions appear to be ones the intervener does not want.

When freedom depends on the existence of viable alternative possibilities, an agent with greater intelligence, education, or experience is qualitatively more free because she is more likely to generate workable options, more ways to do otherwise. More alternatives mean more freedom.

Note that even determinists appear to believe they have alternative courses of action when they deliberate. That is, they must practically consider that their alternatives are undetermined before their choice is made, and that they are free to choose any of them. If the agent knew with certainty that only one alternative existed, she could no longer deliberate.

Robert Kane and Richard Double call this "dual rational control," suggesting that it may be impossible to act rationally in two different ways, given the same reasons to act. It is also called the "plurality condition" when there are many alternative possibilities for action.

It is closely related to epistemic probability, which says there is no real (or ontological) chance. There is only human ignorance about the complete details that would allow us to predict the future exactly. Religious thinkers credit this to our finite minds, whereas the infinite mind of God has complete foreknowledge.

Ths conclusion is "There is but one possible future, and it is determined at each moment by the Fixed Past and the (deterministic) Laws of Nature."

G. E. Moore and others say that "could have done otherwise" simply means "if the agent had chosen to, he could have done otherwise." This obviously would have been a different past, one of the alternative possibilities.

Note that Frankfurt assumes that alternative possibilities do in fact exist, or there would be nothing for his hypothetical intervening demon to block. Since information about the agent's decision does not exist until she makes her decision, Frankfurt's hypothetical intervening demon (much like the similar Laplacian demon or God's foreknowledge) does not exist. This is the Information Objection to Frankfurt-style examples.

John Locke encouraged the separation of the adjective free, which describes deliberation, from the (adequate) determination of the will.

Aristotle, ever sensible, decided that there was no present truth or falsity to a future contingent statement. He denied that the truth of a proposition is a necessary truth, and thus denied Logical Determinism. Indeed, contingency means that the event depends on the future, and so does its truth.

Many Stoics appear to have regarded the truth of future contingent statements as predetermining all future events. But Chrysippus denied necessity even as he affirmed fate and physical causal determinism.

Modern philosophers (especially J. Łukasiewicz) have developed a three-valued logic to handle such statements, but not with complete success.

Hard incompatibilists deny both free will and moral responsibility. They call free will an "illusion" and some call for revisionism. William James called such thinkers "hard determinists." Derk Pereboom coined the new term for those who are agnostic and deny free will and moral responsibility whether determinism is true or not.

Frankfurt says moral responsibility requires a first-order desire with which the agent "identifies," which means she has a second-order desire that is consistent with the first-order desire that moves her to action.

Illusionists are often revisionists calling for an end to retributive punishment.

Today many incompatibilists declare themselves agnostic about the "truth" of determinism and say the incompatibilities extend to indeterminism as well.

Derk Pereboom coined "hard incompatibilists" to describe agnostics who deny both free will and moral responsibility. They call free will an "illusion" and some call for revisionism.

The traditional argument for incompatibilism assumes alternative possibilities and the ability to do otherwise. The Consequence Argument and Direct Argument do not.

The intervener needs a "prior sign" of the causal chain. Such a sign is an event that leads causally to the decision, and thus Frankfurt examples "beg the question" by assuming determinism. Information about the agent's decision does not exist until she makes her decision (the ontological Information Objection), so Frankfurt's hypothetical intervening demon (much like the similar Laplacian demon or God's foreknowledge) can not exist.

The idea appears often in determinist/compatibilist accounts of whether an agent could have done otherwise. "One could only have done otherwise if either the Fixed Past or the Laws of Nature had been different," goes the argument. The Fixed Past refers primarily to the obvious fact that past events are not changeable.

The usual conclusion is "There is but one possible future, and it is determined at each moment by the Fixed Past and the (deterministic) Laws of Nature."

However, the real Laws of Nature, beginning with the most fundamental laws of physics, are indeterministic and probabilistic, reflecting the availability of alternative possibilities..

We are often held responsible for actions that were intended as good, but that had bad consequences. Similarly, we occasionally are praised for actions that were either neutral or possibly blameworthy, but which had good consequences.

In a deterministic world, it is hard to see how we can be held responsible for any of our actions. Counterintuitively, semicompatibilist philosophers hold that whether determinism or indeterminism is true, we can still have moral responsibility.

At the other end of the spectrum, some libertarians are critical of any free will model that involves chance, because the apparent randomness of outcomes would make such free will unintelligible, because it would be a matter of luck.

Unfortunately, much of what happens in the real world contains a good deal of luck, giving rise to many of the moral dilemmas that lead to moral skepticism.

Whether determinist, compatibilist, semicompatibilist, or libertarian, it seems unreasonable to hold persons responsible for the unintended consequences of their actions, good or bad. In many moral and legal systems, it the person's intentions that matter first and foremost.

And in any case, actions need not have moral consequences to be free, that would commit the ethical fallacy of restricting free decisions to moral decisions.

The Manipulation Argument is only meant to enhance the intuition of lost control, in order to support the Consequence Argument and similar Determinism Objections in the standard argument against free will. Derk Pereboom's Four-Case Argument is a well-known example of a Manipulation Argument.

Van Inwagen named the Mind Argument for the journal Mind, where most of the ranodmness objections were published, especially R. E. Hobart's 1934 classic "Free Will As Involving Determination And Inconceivable Without It."

This proposition is true. (contingent)
If it is true, it cannot be false. (contingent)
If it cannot be false, then it is true and necessarily true (modal fallacy).

Mele feels that randomness anywhere in the causal chain leads to his Luck Objection, a variation on the standard Randomness Objection.

Note that Hume the Naturalist had no problem "Deriving Ought from Is" - something shown logically impossible by Hume the Skeptic.

Note that moral skepticism tends to lead to relativism and moral nihilism in the absence of objective values.

Naturalists tend to be revisionists on retributive punishment.

Assuming that free will is restricted to morally responsible agents is an example of the Ethical Fallacy. One way of seeing the continuous nature between animals and humans is to recognize that animals, like children, have a will and freedom of action, they just lack moral responsibility.

Moore's ethical non-naturalism resembles David Hume"s denial that "ought" (human ethics) can be derived from "is" (nature).

Note the conflict with Naturalists for whom natural behaviors are moral behaviors, and "un-natural" behaviors are bad.

The existence of real ontological chance is often denied by those who claim that randomness and probability are merely the result of human ignorance. Chance, they say is an epistemic problem, not an ontological one.

Ted Honderich is "dismayed" because the truth of determinism requires that we give up "origination" with its promise of an open future. For him, limiting freedom to classical compatibilist voluntarism means we are not the authors of our own actions. They are not up to us.

Moore's naturalistic fallacy similarly denies that ethical rules can depend on natural facts.

PAP: A person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise.

The Principle of Bivalence is also the basis for Logical Determinism, in which the present truth of a statement implies its truth in the future.

The astronomer David Layzer analyzes questions of free will in terms of many possible worlds.

It is a bit ironic that philosophers, who are skeptical about our ability to obtain knowledge of the real external world, are optimistic about many posible worlds.

Deterministic Laws of Nature guarantee we could predict the future, if only we had all the information needed. Laplace's demon, a supreme intelligence, could know the future, as God foreknows it, if he knew the positions and velocities of all the particles in the universe.

Today we know that the Laws of Nature are not deterministic. Not only are they probabilistic, but irreducibly random, due to the underlying quantum mechanics that has replaced classical mechanics as the proper description of the universe's fundamental particles.

The laws become arbitrarily close to certain in the limit of large numbers of particles (billiard balls, planets), leading to the illusion of perfectly deterministic laws.

Probability is the explanation for alternative possibilities and unpredictable "uncaused" causes (causa sui) that are the "free" part of "free will."

Quantum mechanics has replaced classical mechanics as the proper description of the universe's fundamental particles. But note that in the limit of macroscopic objects with large numbers of particles, the quantum laws correspond exactly to (i.e., become the same as) the classical laws. This is Neils Bohr's correspondence principle.

Deterministic Laws of Nature have been replaced with probabilistic laws. Quantum events can start new "causal chains" with events that are unpredictable from prior events, self-caused events that are causa sui.

Quantum phenomena are behind the generation of alternative possibilities that are the "free" part of "free will."

Indeterminism is a greater threat to moral responsibility than determinism, since it is associated with many negative ideas, such as chance. Nevertheless, many philosophers declare themselves agnostic on this objection to free will. The randomness objection is the core idea behind Peter van Inwagen's Mind Argument.

Susan Wolf has pointed out the strange asymmetry between praise and blame. Those opposed to punishment for retributive reasons (as opposed to practical consequentialist reasons) are often in favor of praise for good deeds. This reflects the ancient Platonic view that we are responsible only for the good we do. Our errors we blame on our ignorance, which is, unfortunately, no excuse before the law.

p, and no one has, or ever had, any choice about that. If p then q, and no one has, or ever had, any choice about that. Hence, q, and no one has, or ever had, any choice about that.

Classical compatibilists are determinists. Semicompatibilists avoid the determinist label, claiming to be agnostic about the "truth" of determinism or indeterminism. Semicompatibilism grew out of the apparent success of Harry Frankfurt's attacks on the Principle of Alternate Possibilities.

Hard incompatibilists deny this indeterminism. By contrast, Leeway Incompatibilism depends on the ability to do otherwise in "alternative sequences."

If determinism is "true" all our actions are determined and we lack free will and moral responsibility. If indeterminism is "true" all our actions are random and we are equally unfree and not responsible.

A subtle combination of randomness and adequate determinism is required for a two-stage model of free will.

1. If determinism is true, no agent could have avoided acting as she did act - could have done otherwise.
2. An agent is only responsible for actions if she could have done otherwise (the Principle of Alternative Possibilities).
3. Thus, if determinism is true, no agent is morally responsible.

Agent causal libertarians insist that our actions begin with something inside our minds. (Aristotle had also said some actions begin ἐφ' ἡμῖν - "in us".) They describe this variously as non-occurent causation, contra-causal freedom, metaphysical freedom, a causa sui, or simply non-causal freedom.

If our actions are not "up to us," if we feel they "happen to us," then we cannot feel morally responsible for them.

Mortimer Adler and Robert Kane call this self-realization, contrasting it with the libertarian positive freedom of self-determination. Honderich calls it voluntariness, contrasting it with the libertarian freedom of origination, without which, he says, we are not the authors of our own actions.