This kind of reply takes issue with the compatibilist version of ‘could not have done otherwise’. It is all very well, it points out, to say that someone would have done otherwise if he or she had chosen differently. But suppose they were set so that they could not have chosen differently. Suppose at the time of acting, their choosing modules were locked into place by mini-Martians, or chemicals, or whatever. What then? The compatibilist we have so far shrugs the question off—he is not interested in how the subjects got to be as they are, only whether the outcome is good or bad. The objector
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