ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that causal determinism is the doctrine that for any given time, a complete statement of the temporally nonrelational facts about that time, together with a complete statement of the laws of nature, entails every truth as to what happens after that time. Actualism and absolutist possibilism share an absolute conception of actuality: there is a unique world that is the actual world. The chapter presents a version of an argument for the incompatibility of causal determinism and the possession of genuinely open alternative possibilities—freedom to do otherwise. It is interesting to note that a parallel "New Compatibilist" strategy seems to apply to the argument for the incompatibility of God's foreknowledge and human freedom to do otherwise. Some philosophers have contended not only that the Conditional Version of the Argument for Incompatibilism is invalid but that all valid arguments for incompatibilism depend, either explicitly or implicitly, on a certain modal principle: the "Principle of the Transfer of Powerlessness".
