ABSTRACT
For many compatibilists, perhaps most compatibilists, the right sort of alternatives for free will are what are termed conditional alternatives. ey are conditional alternatives since they depend upon certain counter factual conditionals being true. A counterfactual conditional is a type of statement that indicates what would be the case if the conditions that led to a certain state of aairs had been dierent. For such compatibilists, an agent had an alternative open to him if, had the causal circumstances been slightly dierent (such that he would have wanted to decide otherwise), he would have decided otherwise (because there would have been nothing to prevent him from realizing that want). Mark ornton is one such compatibilist:
e sense in which I can choose otherwise than I do, if I have free will, seems quite dierent from the sense in which I cannot choose otherwise than I do, if determinism is true. In particular, saying that we can choose otherwise than we do is compatible with saying that we would choose otherwise only if there were some dierent causal factor operating; and saying that we would choose otherwise only if there were some different causal factor operating is compatible with determinism.
