ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the most significant influences on contemporary debates about free will, the Consequence Argument for incompatibilism. It begins by assessing the dispute between classical compatibilists and classical incompatibilists regarding the ability to do otherwise as it stood in the early 1960s, prior to the introduction of the Consequence Argument. The chapter gives a first pass at setting out a relatively accessible formulation of the Consequence Argument. It examines the rule of inference at work in the argument. The chapter also consider some of the most interesting recent disputes regarding its soundness. The soundness of the Consequence Argument has been contested in various ways; here it focuses on the most influential challenges. The version of the Consequence Argument has been considered as, a modal version, invokes a compelling pattern of inference applied to modal propositions about what is power necessary. As applied to true propositions, power necessity concerns a person's powerlessness to affect their truth.
