A number of authors have suggested implicitly that the question of whether an agent is free to perform a particular action is a purely empirical matter, but that the idea of an agent having an overall degree of freedom is nevertheless a value-laden one. This leads to grave problems of interpersonal comparability of degrees of freedom, and to an implausible account of the relationship between freedom and other goods. Only on a purely empirical account of interpersonal comparisons of overall freedom can these problems be overcome consistently with the demands of contemporary welfare economics and liberal theories of justice.
