Counterfactual power and genuine choice

Abstract

AbstractThe article introduces a distinction between weak and strong counterfactual power and shows that as far as the metaphysical aspect of choice is concerned, T. Merricks's examples do not undermine the proposition that strong counterfactual power over a fact suffices for having a genuine choice about that fact. This is relevant to debates about logical fatalism, theological incompatibilism and nomological (determinism) incompatibilism. If strong counterfactual power is sufficient for having a choice, then in each of the main arguments for the mentioned stances, the negation of the argument's conclusion entails the negation of its key premise. It is further argued that those key premises cannot be justified by the fixity of the past because the latter holds only to the extent warranted by the asymmetry of counterfactual dependence between the past and the future. Therefore, the pastness of such facts as that propositions about our acts were true before we were born, and that God believed then that we would perform those acts, does not provide any reason to believe that we do not have a choice about those facts. Fatalists and incompatibilists assume in their arguments something that has yet to be justified.