Introduction

It is now well over a decade since John Fischer and Mark Ravizza (1998) - and before them, Jay Wallace (1994) and Daniel Dennett (1984) - defended responsibility from the threat of determinism. What these authors' compatibilist theories have in common is the idea that responsible agents are not those agents whose actions are un-caused, but rather those agents who possess certain competences or capacities. But defending responsibility from determinism is a potentially endless and largely negative enterprise - it can go on for as long as dissenting voices remain (i.e. indefinitely), and although such work strengthens the theoretical foundations of these theories, it won't necessarily build anything on top of those foundations, nor will it move these theories into new territory or explain how to apply them to practical contexts. To this end, instead of devoting more effort to the negative enterprise of building up even stronger fortifications against the ever-present threat of determinism, the papers in this volume address these more positive challenges by exploring ways in which compatibilist responsibility theory can be extended and/or applied in a range of practical contexts.