Over at “The Garden of Forking Paths”:http://gfp.typepad.com/the_garden_of_forking_pat/ Neil Levy “has a nice counterexample to van Inwagen’s Belief in Ability Thesis”:http://gfp.typepad.com/the_garden_of_forking_pat/2005/10/a_counterexampl.html.

I don’t have much to add since I think Neil’s case is basically decisive. But I’ll note that he doesn’t really need alien superscientists to get the example to work, only time travel. (Out of the metaphysical fire into the metaphysical frying pan!) If I’m a time traveller about to meet and talk to my younger self, I’m pretty sure there’s only one thing I am metaphysically free to say, namely what I actually said. But since I don’t remember what I did say, I don’t know what that is. And since this is probably going to be important I’m certainly going to deliberate about what to say.