Compatibilism: A Reply to Shaw

In 'Compatibilism: A Reply to Richard Foley' (Mind, October I979), Daniel Shaw argues against my attempt in 'Compatibilism' (Mind, July I978) to give a compatibilistic explication of the ability to do otherwise. Shaw rightly points out that I try to avoid the force of John Wisdom's devil example, in which it is imagined that a devil is fixing our desires, likes and values, both their content and intensity. However, Shaw wrongly argues that a simple extension of Widsom's example is sufficient to undermine my attempt. Shaw asks us 'to imagine not only that a devil is fixing our desires, likes and values . . . but also that he is fixing our desires, likes and values concerning our desires, likes and values . . .'. In such a world, Shaw claims, a person may very well satisfy my conditions of freedom even though 'it would be just as true of such a world as of the world Foley describes' that we would be merely puppets of this devil. However, on the most natural interpretation of Shaw's example, it is false that a person would satisfy the conditions contained in my explication of freedom. My explication requires that if a person S does x freely at t, he must have been able at some prior time to alter his desires, etc. in such a way that he would have been rationally induced to will something other than x at t. But presumably the devil in Shaw's example is willing and able to act to insure the falsity of the counterfactual element here. In other words, the devil in Shaw's example presumably is able and willing to interfere (continuously if need be) in order to insure that people have the desires, etc. he wants them to have. But if so, in Shaw's world it is false that S at a time prior to t was able to alter his desires, etc. in such a way that he would have been rationally induced to will something other than x at t. To see why this is so, suppose at some time prior to t, S did a. Moreover, suppose that in my sense of 'able' S at that time was able to do b instead. Suppose finally that if there were no devil in the world in question, S's doing b would have led to his having significantly different desires at t and as a result also to his not willing x at t. But by Shaw's hypothesis, there is a devil in the world he is imagining and the devil is able and willing to fix S's desires in a certain way. Thus, if S had done b instead of a at the prior time, the devil would have taken appropriate counter-actions to insure that S have exactly the same desires that he in fact has at t. In other words, Shaw's world is most naturally interpreted as a world in which the devil is able and willing to tinker constantly with people's desires, and under this interpretation Shaw's world is also a world in which people do not satisfy my conception of freedom. Hence, Shaw's argument fails. On the other hand, if we interpret Shaw's example in a different way, so that the devil fixes S's desires, etc. and also fixes S's desires concerning what he desires and then withdraws, refusing to engage in any more tinkering, it is far from clear that Shaw's example can constitute a counterexample to my view. In particular, it is far from clear that a person in such