 How is Dennett's compatibilist picture different from the ones that came before? I think it's so much richer. So, I mean, the determinism in its traditional form, the problem of free will, was a confrontation between what at the time the fundamental physical theory was, which was classical mechanics that tells you that you can derive every fact about the future if you knew the initial state of the universe, with our immediate kind of first personal experience of agency.