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  1. Frankfurt cases: the fine-grained response revisited.Justin A. Capes & Philip Swenson - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (4):967-981.
    Frankfurt cases are supposed to provide us with counterexamples to the principle of alternative possibilities. Among the most well known responses to these cases is what John Fischer has dubbed the flicker of freedom strategy. Here we revisit a version of this strategy, which we refer to as the fine-grained response. Although a number of philosophers, including some who are otherwise unsympathetic to Frankfurt’s argument, have dismissed the fine grained response, we believe there is a good deal to be said (...)
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  • Incompatibilism and Prudential Obligation.Ishtiyaque Haji - 2010 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 40 (3):385-410.
    Take determinism to be the thesis that for any instant, there is exactly one physically possible future, and understand incompatibilism regarding responsibility to be the view that determinism is incompatible with moral responsibility. Of the many different arguments that have been advanced for this view, the crux of a relatively traditional one is this: If determinism is true, then we lack alternatives. If we lack alternatives, then we can't be morally responsible for any of our behavior. Therefore, if determinism is (...)
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  • Blocking Blockage.Ken Levy - 2016 - Philosophia 44 (2):565-583.
    The Blockage Argument is designed to improve upon Harry Frankfurt’s famous argument against the Principle of Alternative Possibilities by removing the counterfactual intervener altogether. If the argument worked, then it would prove in a way that Frankfurt’s argument does not that moral responsibility does not require any alternative possibilities whatsoever, not even the weakest “flicker of freedom”. -/- Some philosophers have rejected the Blockage Argument solely on the basis of their intuition that the inability to do otherwise is incompatible with (...)
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  • If Anyone Should Be an Agent-Causalist, then Everyone Should Be an Agent-Causalist.Christopher Evan Franklin - 2016 - Mind 125 (500):1101-1131.
    Nearly all defences of the agent-causal theory of free will portray the theory as a distinctively libertarian one — a theory that only libertarians have reason to accept. According to what I call ‘the standard argument for the agent-causal theory of free will’, the reason to embrace agent-causal libertarianism is that libertarians can solve the problem of enhanced control only if they furnish agents with the agent-causal power. In this way it is assumed that there is only reason to accept (...)
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  • Best feasible worlds: divine freedom and Leibniz’s Lapse.Justin Mooney - 2015 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 77 (3):219-229.
    William L. Rowe’s argument against divine freedom has drawn considerable attention from theist philosophers. One reply to Rowe’s argument that has emerged in the recent literature appeals to modified accounts of libertarian freedom which have the result that God may be free even if he necessarily actualizes the best possible world. Though in many ways attractive, this approach appears to lead to the damning consequence of modal collapse i.e., that the actual world is the only possible world. But appearances can (...)
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  • Coercion and libertarianism: a reply to Gordon Barnes.S. Olsaretti - 2013 - Analysis 73 (2):295-299.
    Libertarians oppose coercion and champion a free-market society. Are these two commitments, as libertarians claim, wholly consistent with one another, or is there, by contrast, a tension between them? This paper defends the latter view. Replying to an article by Gordon Barnes, the paper casts doubts on the success of an argument aimed at establishing that, while coercion is justice-disrupting, all non-coercive but forced transactions that occur in a free market are justice-preserving.
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  • Fischer against the dilemma defence: the defence prevails.David Widerker & Stewart Goetz - 2013 - Analysis 73 (2):283-295.
    In a recent paper, John Fischer develops a new argument against the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) based on a deterministic scenario. Fischer uses this result (i) to rebut the Dilemma Defense - a well-known incompatibilist response to Frankfurt-type counterexamples to PAP; and (ii) to maintain that: If causal determinism rules out moral responsibility, it is not just in virtue of eliminating alternative possibilities. In this article, we argue that Fischer's new argument against PAP fails, thus leaving points (i) and (...)
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  • Agnosticism about moral responsibility.Jeremy Byrd - 2010 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 40 (3):411-432.
    Traditionally, incompatibilism has rested on two theses. First, the familiar Principle of Alternative Possibilities says that we cannot be morally responsible for what we do unless we could have done otherwise. Accepting this principle, incompatibilists have then argued that there is no room for such alternative possibilities in a deterministic world. Recently, however, a number of philosophers have argued that incompatibilism about moral responsibility can be defended independently of these traditional theses (Ginet 2005: 604-8; McKenna 2001; Stump 1999: 322-4, 2000 (...)
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  • Compatibilism and Moral Claimancy: An Intermediate Path to Appropriate Blame.Seth Shabo - 2012 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 84 (1):158-186.
    In this paper, I explore a new approach to the problem of determinism and moral responsibility. This approach involves asking when someone has a compelling claim to exemption against other members of the moral community. I argue that it is sometimes fair to reject such claims, even when the agent doesn’t deserve, in the sense of basic desert, to be blamed for her conduct. In particular, when an agent’s conduct reveals that her commitment to comply with the standards of the (...)
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  • Uncompromising source incompatibilism.Seth Shabo - 2010 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 80 (2):349-383.
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  • Causal History Matters, but Not for Individuation.Kevin Timpe - 2009 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 39 (1):77-91.
    In ‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,’ Harry Frankfurt introduces a scenario aimed at showing that the having of alternative possibilities is not required for moral responsibility. According to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP), an agent is morally responsible for her action only if she could have done otherwise; Frankfurt thinks his scenario shows that PAP is, in fact, false. Frankfurt thinks that the denial of PAP gives credence to compatibilism, the thesis that an agent could both be causally determined (...)
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  • Reflections on the Incompatibilist’s Direct Argument.Ishtiyaque Haji - 2008 - Erkenntnis 68 (1):1 - 19.
    The Direct Argument for the incompatibility of determinism and moral responsibility is so christened because this argument allegedly circumvents any appeal to the principle of alternate possibilities – a person is morally responsible for doing something only if he could have avoided doing it – to secure incompatibilism. In this paper, I first summarize Peter van Inwagen’s version of the Direct Argument. I then comment on David Widerker’s recent responses to the argument. Finally, I cast doubt on the argument by (...)
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  • Flickers of Freedom, Action Individuation, and the Transfer of Moral Responsibility.Zachary Adam Akin - 2024 - The Journal of Ethics 28 (3).
    According to one recently popular “flicker of freedom” style response to Frankfurt-style arguments against the Principle of Alternative Possibilities—the “Triple O” flicker strategy—agents in Frankfurt-style cases are really or most fundamentally morally responsible for performing an action (A-ing) on their own, but not for A-ing simpliciter. This essay has two related aims. First, I offer an interpretation of the Triple O strategy which insulates it against an objection raised by Carolina Sartorio in “Flickers of Freedom and Moral Luck.” Second, I (...)
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  • Responsibility Internalism and Responsibility for AI.Huzeyfe Demirtas - 2023 - Dissertation, Syracuse University
    I argue for responsibility internalism. That is, moral responsibility (i.e., accountability, or being apt for praise or blame) depends only on factors internal to agents. Employing this view, I also argue that no one is responsible for what AI does but this isn’t morally problematic in a way that counts against developing or using AI. Responsibility is grounded in three potential conditions: the control (or freedom) condition, the epistemic (or awareness) condition, and the causal responsibility condition (or consequences). I argue (...)
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  • Libertarian Freedom in an Eternalist World?Ben Page - 2022 - In Anna Marmodoro, Christopher Austin & Andrea Roselli (eds.), Powers, Time and Free Will. Springer. pp. 83-94.
    My students sometimes worry that if eternalism is true then they can’t have libertarian freedom. They aren’t alone, as this sentiment is also expressed, albeit typically briefly, by various philosophers. However, somewhat surprisingly, those working within the free will literature have largely had nothing to say about libertarianism’s relationship to time, with this also being similar in the case of those working in the philosophy of time, apart from some work which has mainly focused on nonlibertarian views of freedom. In (...)
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  • Free Will and the Moral Vice Explanation of Hell's Finality.Robert J. Hartman - 2023 - Religious Studies 59 (4):714-728.
    According to the Free Will Explanation of a traditional view of hell, human freedom explains why some people are in hell. It also explains hell’s punishment and finality: persons in hell have freely developed moral vices that are their own punishment and that make repentance psychologically impossible. So, even though God continues to desire reconciliation with persons in hell, damned persons do not want reconciliation with God. But this moral vice explanation of hell’s finality is implausible. I argue that God (...)
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  • Grounding and the luck objection to agent-causal libertarianism.Joel Archer - 2022 - Philosophical Studies 179 (5):1763-1775.
    Many philosophers think there is a luck problem confronting libertarian models of free will. If free actions are undetermined, then it seems to be a matter of chance or luck that they occur—so the objection goes. Agent-causal libertarians have responded to this objection by asserting that free actions, in their essence, involve a direct causal relation between agents and the events they cause. So, free actions are not lucky after all. Not everyone, however, is convinced by this response. Al Mele (...)
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  • Anne Conway's Atemporal Account of Agency.Hope Sample - 2022 - Ergo 9:47-69.
    This paper aims to resolve an unremarked-upon tension between Anne Conway’s commitment to the moral responsibility of created beings, or creatures, and her commitment to emanative, constant creation. Emanation causation has an atemporal aspect according to which God’s act of will coexists with its effect. There is no before or after, or past or future in God’s causal contribution. Additionally, Conway’s constant creation picture has it that all times are determined via divine emanation. Creaturely agency, by contrast, is fundamentally temporal, (...)
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  • The Prejudice of Freedom: an Application of Kripke’s Notion of a Prejudice to our Understanding of Free Will.James Cain - 2021 - Acta Analytica 36 (3):323-339.
    This essay reframes salient issues in discussions of free will using conceptual apparatus developed in the works of Saul Kripke, with particular attention paid to his little-discussed technical notion of a prejudice. I begin by focusing on how various forms of modality (metaphysical, epistemic, and conceptual) underlie alternate forms of compatibilism and discuss why it is important to avoid conflating these forms of compatibilism. The concept of a prejudice is then introduced. We consider the semantic role of prejudices, in particular (...)
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  • Moral Responsibility, Alternative Possibilities, and Acting on One’s Own.Bradford Stockdale - 2022 - The Journal of Ethics 26 (1):27-40.
    Frankfurt-style cases (FSCs) have famously served as counterexamples to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP). The fine-grained version of the flicker defense has become one of the most popular responses to FSCs. Proponents of this defense argue that there is an alternative available to all agents in FSCs such that the cases do not show that PAP is false. Specifically, the agents could have done otherwise than decide on their own, and this available alternative is robust enough to ground moral (...)
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  • Flickers of Freedom and Moral Luck.Carolina Sartorio - 2019 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 43 (1):93-105.
    Midwest Studies In Philosophy, EarlyView.
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  • Indirectly Free Actions, Libertarianism, and Resultant Moral Luck.Robert J. Hartman - 2020 - Erkenntnis 85 (6):1417-1436.
    Martin Luther affirms his theological position by saying “Here I stand. I can do no other.” Supposing that Luther’s claim is true, he lacks alternative possibilities at the moment of choice. Even so, many libertarians have the intuition that he is morally responsible for his action. One way to make sense of this intuition is to assert that Luther’s action is indirectly free, because his action inherits its freedom and moral responsibility from earlier actions when he had alternative possibilities and (...)
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  • Taking Responsibility for Ourselves: A Kierkegaardian Account of the Freedom-Relevant Conditions Necessary for the Cultivation of Character.Paul E. Carron - 2011 - Dissertation, Baylor University
    What are the freedom-relevant conditions necessary for someone to be a morally responsible person? I examine several key authors beginning with Harry Frankfurt that have contributed to this debate in recent years, and then look back to the writings or Søren Kierkegaard to provide a solution to the debate. In this project I investigate the claims of semi-compatibilism and argue that while its proponents have identified a fundamental question concerning free will and moral responsibility—namely, that the agential properties necessary for (...)
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  • The impertinence of Frankfurt-style argument.Daniel James Speak - 2007 - Philosophical Quarterly 57 (226):76-95.
    Discussions of the principle of alternative possibilities have largely ignored the limits of what Frankfurt-style counter-examples can show. Rather than challenging the coherence of the cases, I argue that even if they are taken to demonstrate the falsity of the principle, they cannot advance the compatibilist cause. For a forceful incompatibilist argument can be constructed from the Frankfurtian premise that agents in Frankfurtian circumstances would have done what they did even if they could have done something else. This 'counterfactual stability' (...)
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  • Frankfurt cases and overdetermination.Eric Funkhouser - 2009 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 39 (3):pp. 341-369.
    In traditional Frankfurt cases some conditions that make an outcome unavoidable fail to bring about that outcome. These are cases of causal preemption. I defend this interpretation of traditional Frankfurt cases, and its application to free will, against a dilemma raised by various libertarians. But I go on to argue that Frankfurt cases involving gen- uine causal overdetermination are even more effective at achieving the compatibilist’s purposes. Such cases avoid the “flicker of freedom” debate and better display the central disagreement (...)
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  • The Dialectic Role of the Flickers of Freedom.Kevin Timpe - 2006 - Philosophical Studies 131 (2):337-368.
    One well-known incompatibilist response to Frankfurt-style counterexamples is the ‘flicker-of-freedom strategy’. The flicker strategy claims that even in a Frankfurt-style counterexample, there are still morally relevant alternative possibilities. In the present paper, I differentiate between two distinct understandings of the flicker strategy, as the failure to differentiate these two versions has led some philosophers to argue at cross-purposes. I also explore the respective dialectic roles that the two versions of the flicker strategy play in the debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists. (...)
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  • Moral Responsibility Without Libertarianism.Lynne Rudder Baker - 2006 - Noûs 40 (2):307-330.
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  • The Flicker of Freedom: A Reply to Stump.Justin A. Capes - 2014 - The Journal of Ethics 18 (4):427-435.
    In a fascinating article in The Journal of Ethics, Eleonore Stump contends that while the flicker of freedom defense is the best available strategy for defending the principle of alternative possibilities against the threat posed to that principle by the Frankfurt cases, the defense is ultimately unsuccessful. In this article I identify a number of difficulties with Stump’s criticism of the flicker strategy. Along the way, I also clarify various nuances of the strategy that often get overlooked, and I highlight (...)
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  • A critique of Frankfurt-libertarianism.Kevin Timpe - 2006 - Philosophia 34 (2):189-202.
    Most libertarians think that some version of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) is true. A number of libertarians, which I call ‘Frankfurt-libertarians,’ think that they need not embrace any version of PAP. In this paper, I examine the writings of one such Frankfurt-libertarian, Eleonore Stump, for her evaluation of the impact of Frankfurt-style counterexamples (FSCs) to PAP. I show how, contrary to her own claims, Stump does need a PAP-like principle for her account of free action. I briefly argue (...)
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  • Active control, agent-causation and free action.Ishtiyaque Haji - 2004 - Philosophical Explorations 7 (2):131-148.
    Key elements of Randolph Clarke's libertarian account of freedom that requires both agent-causation and non-deterministic event-causation in the production of free action is assessed with an eye toward determining whether agent-causal accounts can accommodate the truth of judgments of moral obligation.
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  • Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom: A Libertarian Approach.Daniel Shay - unknown
    Philosophers and theologians alike have debated endlessly over the relationship between divine sovereignty and human freedom. Too often, in these debates, human freedom is either denied altogether or reduced to a compatibilist notion. Many people fear that granting humans too much freedom would destroy God's sovereignty. However, the purpose of granting humans freedom is not to elevate the creature over the Creator; rather to uphold both moral responsibility and God's justice. Any theory that preserves God's sovereignty at the expense of (...)
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  • Flickers of freedom and modes of action: A reply to Timpe.Seth Shabo - 2007 - Philosophia 35 (1):63-74.
    In recent years, many incompatibilists have come to reject the traditional association of moral responsibility with alternative possibilities. Kevin Timpe argues that one such incompatibilist, Eleonore Stump, ultimately fails in her bid to sever this link. While she may have succeeded in dissociating responsibility from the freedom to perform a different action, he argues, she ends up reinforcing a related link, between responsibility and the freedom to act under a different mode. In this paper, I argue that Timpe’s response to (...)
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  • Freedom, obligation, and responsibility: Prospects for a unifying theory.Ishtiyaque Haji - 2005 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 29 (1):106-125.
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  • Flickers of Freedom, Action Individuation, and the Transfer of Moral Responsibility.Zachary Adam Akin - 2024 - The Journal of Ethics 28 (3):1-22.
    According to one recently popular “flicker of freedom” style response to Frankfurt-style arguments against the Principle of Alternative Possibilities—the “Triple O” flicker strategy—agents in Frankfurt-style cases are really or most fundamentally morally responsible for performing an action (A-ing) on their own, but not for A-ing simpliciter. This essay has two related aims. First, I offer an interpretation of the Triple O strategy which insulates it against an objection raised by Carolina Sartorio in “Flickers of Freedom and Moral Luck.” Second, I (...)
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  • Pereboom’s Frankfurt case and derivative culpability.Nadine Elzein - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 166 (3):553-573.
    Pereboom has formulated a Frankfurt-style counterexample in which an agent is alleged to be responsible despite the fact that there are only non-robust alternatives present (Pereboom, Moral responsibility and alternative possibilities: essays on the importance of alternative possibilities, 2003; Phil Explor 12(2):109–118, 2009). I support Widerker’s objection to Pereboom’s Tax Evasion 2 example (Widerker, J Phil 103(4):163–187, 2006) (which rests on the worry that the agent in this example is derivatively culpable as opposed to directly responsible) against Pereboom’s recent counterarguments (...)
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  • Blameworthiness, non-robust alternatives, and the principle of alternative expectations.David Widerker - 2005 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 29 (1):292–306.
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  • It wasn’t up to Jones: unavoidable actions and intensional contexts in Frankfurt examples.Seth Shabo - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 169 (3):379-399.
    In saying that it was up to someone whether or not she acted as she did, we are attributing a distinctive sort of power to her. Understanding such power attributions is of broad importance for contemporary discussions of free will. Yet the ‘is up to…whether’ locution and its cognates have largely escaped close examination. This article aims to elucidate one of its unnoticed features, namely that such power attributions introduce intensional contexts, something that is easily overlooked because the sentences that (...)
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  • Frankfurt-Style Counterexamples and the Importance of Alternative Possibilities.Nadine Elzein - 2017 - Acta Analytica 32 (2):169-191.
    Proponents of modern Frankfurt-Style Counterexamples generally accept that we cannot construct successful FSCs in which there are no alternative possibilities present. But they maintain that we can construct successful FSCs in which there are no morally significant alternatives present and that such examples succeed in breaking any conceptual link between alternative possibilities and free will. I argue that it is not possible to construct an FSC that succeeds even in this weaker sense. In cases where any alternatives are clearly insignificant, (...)
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  • A defense of Frankfurt-friendly libertarianism.David Widerker - 2009 - Philosophical Explorations 12 (2):87 – 108.
    Elsewhere, I proposed a libertarian-based account of freedom and moral blameworthiness which like Harry Frankfurt's 1969 account rejects the principle of alternative possibilities (which I call, Frankfurt-friendly libertarianism). In this paper I develop this account further (a) by responding to an important objection to it raised by Carlos Moya; (b) by exploring the question why, if unavoidability per se does not exonerate from blame, the Frankfurt-friendly libertarian is justified in exculpating an agent under determinism; (c) by arguing that some main (...)
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  • (1 other version)Disenabling Levy's Frankfurt-style enabling cases.Ishtiyaque Haji & Michael Mckenna - 2011 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 92 (3):400-414.
    Recently, Neil Levy has proposed that an agent can acquire freedom-relevant agential abilities by virtue of the conditions in which she finds herself, and in this way, can be thought of as partially constituted by those conditions. This can be so even if the agent is completely ignorant of the relevant environmental conditions, and even if these conditions play no causal role in what the agent does. Drawing upon these resources, Levy argues that Frankfurt-style examples are not cogent. In this (...)
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  • Frankfurt Cases, Alternate Possibilities, and Prior Signs.Greg Janzen - 2013 - Erkenntnis 78 (5):1037-1049.
    In his seminal paper ‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility’, Harry Frankfurt argues against the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP)—the principle that persons are morally responsible for what they have done only if they could have done otherwise—by presenting a case in which, apparently, a person is morally responsible for what he has done even though, due to the presence of a counterfactual intervener, he could not have done otherwise. According to a compelling (yet relatively under-discussed) response to Frankfurt’s attack on (...)
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