1. There is, then, a subtle, but serious, distortion in the following passage of Nagel′s critique of Strawson: When we first consider the possibility that all human actions may be determined by heredity and environment,it threatens to defuse our reactive attitudes as effectively as does the information that a particular action was caused by the effects of a drugdespite all the differences between the two suppositions. Thomas Nagel, The View From Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press,1986) 125. For an illuminating discussion of such moves see Lars Hertzberg, ‘Blame and Causality’, Mind, vol. 84, 1975, 500–15.
2. P. F. Strawson, op. cit., 80. It may be in the same spirit that Simone Weil writes: 'We must always consider men in power as dangerous things. We must keep out of their way as much as we can without losing our selfrespect. And if one day we are driven, under pain of cowardice, to go andbreak ourselves against their power, we must consider ourselves as vanquished by the nature of things and not by men. One can be in a prison cell and in chains, but one can also be smitten with blindness or paralysis. There is no difference.' Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963) 143.
3. Tooley Michael, Causation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987),239–42.
4. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953) 178.
5. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, L. A. Selby-Bigge (ed.) (Oxford University Press 1978),221.