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  1. Frankfurt Cases and Alternate Deontic Categories.Samuel Kahn - 2023 - Dialogue 62 (3):539-552.
    In Harry Frankfurt’s seminal “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,” he advances an argument against the Principle of Alternate Possibilities: if an agent is responsible for performing some action, then she is able to do otherwise. However, almost all of the Frankfurt cases in this literature involve impermissible actions. In this article, I argue that the failure to consider other deontic categories exposes a deep problem, one that threatens either to upend much current moral theorizing or to upend the relevance of (...)
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  • Explaining Free Will by Rational Abilities.Frank Hofmann - 2022 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 25 (2):283-297.
    In this paper I present an account of the rational abilities that make our decisions free. Following the lead of new dispositionalists, a leeway account of free decisions is developed, and the rational abilities that ground our abilities to decide otherwise are described in detail. A main result will be that the best account of the relevant rational abilities makes them two-way abilities: abilities to decide to do or not to do x in accordance with one’s apparent reasons. Dispositionalism about (...)
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  • Frankfurt-Style Cases and Moral Responsibility: A Methodological Reflection.Koji Ota - 2021 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 29 (3):295-319.
    Frankfurt-Style Cases (FSCs) seem to elicit the intuitive judgment that an agent is morally responsible despite being unable to act otherwise, which is supposed to falsify the Principle of Alternative Possibility (PAP). Recent empirical studies have shown that the inclination toward this intuitive judgment is shared among people, which seems to reinforce the argument against the PAP. However, some scholars have argued for Descriptive Anti-Intuitionism (DAI) — intuitive judgments have never played an evidential role in philosophy — and thus denied (...)
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  • A Problem for Frankfurt Examples.Samuel J. M. Kahn - 2021 - Southwest Philosophy Review 37 (1):159-167.
    In this paper I intend to raise a problem for so-called Frankfurt examples. I begin by describing the examples and what they are used for. Then I describe the problem.
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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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  • Folk intuitions and the conditional ability to do otherwise.Thomas Nadelhoffer, Siyuan Yin & Rose Graves - 2020 - Philosophical Psychology 33 (7):968-996.
    In a series of pre-registered studies, we explored (a) the difference between people’s intuitions about indeterministic scenarios and their intuitions about deterministic scenarios, (b) the difference between people’s intuitions about indeterministic scenarios and their intuitions about neurodeterministic scenarios (that is, scenarios where the determinism is described at the neurological level), (c) the difference between people’s intuitions about neutral scenarios (e.g., walking a dog in the park) and their intuitions about negatively valenced scenarios (e.g., murdering a stranger), and (d) the difference (...)
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  • Minds, Brains, and Desert: On the relevance of neuroscience for retributive punishment.Alva Stråge - 2019 - Dissertation, University of Gothenburg
    It is a common idea, and an element in many legal systems, that people can deserve punishment when they commit criminal (or immoral) actions. A standard philosophical objection to this retributivist idea about punishment is that if human choices and actions are determined by previous events and the laws of nature, then we are not free in the sense required to be morally responsible for our actions, and therefore cannot deserve blame or punishment. It has recently been suggested that this (...)
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  • Dos versiones de la contraposición entre naturaleza y libre albedrío.Manuel Pérez Otero - 2018 - Manuscrito 41 (2):89-110.
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  • Alternate Possibilities and Moral Asymmetry.Daniel Avi Coren - 2018 - Acta Analytica 33 (2):145-159.
    Harry Frankfurt Journal of Philosophy, 66, 829–39 famously attacked what he called the principle of alternate possibilities. PAP states that being able to do otherwise is necessary for moral responsibility. He gave counterexamples to PAP known since then as “Frankfurt cases.” This paper sidesteps the enormous literature on Frankfurt cases while preserving some of our salient pretheoretical intuitions about the relation between alternate possibilities and moral responsibility. In particular, I introduce, explain, and defend a principle that has so far been (...)
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  • Freedom, Foreknowledge, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities.Kadri Vihvelin - 2000 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 30 (1):1-23.
    The traditional debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists was based on the assumption that if determinism deprives us of free will and moral responsibility, it does so by making it true that we can never do other than what we actually do. All parties to the debate took for granted the truth of a claim now widely known as "the principle of alternate possibilities": someone is morally responsible only if he could have done otherwise. In a famous paper, Harry Frankfurt argued (...)
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  • The Metaphysical Irrelevance of the Compatibilism Debate (and, More Generally, of Conceptual Analysis).Mark Balaguer - 2010 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 47 (1):1-24.
    It is argued here that the question of whether compatibilism is true is irrelevant to metaphysical questions about the nature of human decision‐making processes—for example, the question of whether or not humans have free will—except in a very trivial and metaphysically uninteresting way. In addition, it is argued that two other questions—namely, the conceptual‐analysis question of what free will is and the question that asks which kinds of freedom are required for moral responsibility—are also essentially irrelevant to metaphysical questions about (...)
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  • Fischer’s Deterministic Frankfurt-Style Argument.Yishai Cohen - 2017 - Erkenntnis 82 (1):121-140.
    According to the Dilemma Defense, it is question-begging against the incompatibilist defender of the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP) to assume that the agent in a deterministic Frankfurt-style case (FSC) cannot do otherwise in light of causal determinism, but is nevertheless morally responsible. As a result, Fischer (Philos Rev 119:315–336, 2010; Analysis 73:489–496, 2013) attempts to undermine PAP in a different manner via a deterministic FSC. More specifically, Fischer attempts to show that if causal determinism rules out an agent’s moral (...)
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  • The Principle of Alternate Possibilities as Sufficient but not Necessary for Moral Responsibility: A way to Avoid the Frankfurt Counter-Example.Garry Young - 2016 - Philosophia 44 (3):961-969.
    The aim of this paper is to present a version of the principle of alternate possibilities which is not susceptible to the Frankfurt-style counter-example. I argue that PAP does not need to be endorsed as a necessary condition for moral responsibility and, in fact, presenting PAP as a sufficient condition maintains its usefulness as a maxim for moral accountability whilst avoiding Frankfurt-style counter-examples. In addition, I provide a further sufficient condition for moral responsibility – the twin world condition – and (...)
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  • Leeway Compatibilism and Frankfurt‐Style Cases.Yishai Cohen - 2016 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 5 (2):89-98.
    The new dispositionalists defend the position that an agent in a deterministic Frankfurt-style case has the ability to do otherwise, where that ability is the one at issue in the principle of alternative possibilities. Focusing specifically on Kadri Vihvelin's proposal, I argue against this position by showing that it is incompatible with the existence of structurally similar cases to FSCs in which a preemptive intervener bestows an agent with an ability.
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  • I Ought, Therefore I Can.Peter B. M. Vranas - 2007 - Philosophical Studies 136 (2):167-216.
    I defend the following version of the ought-implies-can principle: (OIC) by virtue of conceptual necessity, an agent at a given time has an (objective, pro tanto) obligation to do only what the agent at that time has the ability and opportunity to do. In short, obligations correspond to ability plus opportunity. My argument has three premises: (1) obligations correspond to reasons for action; (2) reasons for action correspond to potential actions; (3) potential actions correspond to ability plus opportunity. In the (...)
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  • Rescuing PAP from Widerker's Brain-Malfunction Case.Greg Janzen - 2015 - Journal of Cognition and Neuroethics 3 (2):1-22.
    According to the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP), a person is morally responsible for what she has done only if she could have done otherwise. David Widerker, a prominent and long-time defender of this principle against Harry Frankfurt’s famous attack on it, has recently had an unexpected about-face: PAP, Widerker now contends, is (probably) false. His rejection of PAP is a result, in large part, of his coming to believe that there are conceptually possible scenarios, what he calls ‘IRR-situations,’ in (...)
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  • (1 other version)Libertarian Free Will and CNC Manipulation.Stefaan E. Cuypers Ishtiyaque Haji - 2001 - Dialectica 55 (3):221-239.
    An agent who is the victim of covert and nonconstraining control is unaware of being controlled and controllers get their way by manipulating the victims so that they willingly do what the controllers desire. Our primary objective is to argue that if cases of CNC manipulation undermine compatibilist accounts of the sort of control required for moral responsibility, they also undermine various agent‐causal and non‐agent‐causal libertarian accounts as well.
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  • (1 other version)Precis of Derk Perebooms Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life.Gregg D. Caruso - 2014 - Science Religion and Culture 1 (3):178-201.
    Derk Perebooms Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life (2014) provides the most lively and comprehensive defense of free will skepticism in the literature. It contains a reworked and expanded version of the view he first developed in Living without Free Will (2001). Important objections to the early book are answered, some slight modifications are introduced, and the overall account is significantly embellished—for example, Pereboom proposes a new account of rational deliberation consistent with the belief that one’s actions are causally (...)
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  • Everyone thinks that an ability to do otherwise is necessary for free will and moral responsibility.Christopher Evan Franklin - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (8):2091-2107.
    Seemingly one of the most prominent issues that divide theorists about free will and moral responsibility concerns whether the ability to do otherwise is necessary for freedom and responsibility. I defend two claims in this paper. First, that this appearance is illusory: everyone thinks an ability to do otherwise is necessary for freedom and responsibility. The central issue is not whether the ability to do otherwise is necessary for freedom and responsibility but which abilities to do otherwise are necessary. Second, (...)
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  • Vihvelin and Fischer on ‘Pre-decisional’ Intervention.Simon Kittle - 2014 - Philosophia 42 (4):987-997.
    Vihvelin argues that Frankfurt-style cases should be divided into two kinds, according to when the trigger for the intention takes place: either prior to the agent's choice or after it. Most agree that only the former, which I call pre-decisional intervention, stands a chance of removing all of an agent's alternatives. Vihvelin notes that both sides in the dispute over whether there is a successful case of pre-decisional intervention assume that if there is a successful case, then it will be (...)
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  • Deterministic Frankfurt cases.David Palmer - 2014 - Synthese 191 (16):3847-3864.
    According to the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP), people are morally responsible for what they do only if they could have done otherwise. Over the last few decades, this principle has dominated discussions of free will and moral responsibility. One important strand of this discussion concerns the Frankfurt-type cases or Frankfurt cases, originally developed by Frankfurt (J Philos 66:829–839, 1969), which are alleged counterexamples to PAP. One way in which proponents of PAP have responded to these purported counterexamples is by (...)
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  • The Kane-Widerker Objection to Frankfurt Examples.James Cain - 2014 - Philosophia 42 (4):949-957.
    I will argue that the Kane-Widerker objection to Frankfurt examples is much weaker than is generally recognized. The Kane-Widerker objection holds that proponents of Frankfurt examples beg the question against incompatibilist accounts of free and responsible action by constructing examples that tacitly assume a compatibilist account of moral responsibility; that is, they assume that one can have non-derivative responsibility for choices that were not undetermined prior to their occurrence. The notion of an event, E, being ‘undetermined prior to its occurrence’ (...)
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  • Three Recent Frankfurt Cases.Robert Lockie - 2014 - Philosophia 42 (4):1005-1032.
    Three recent ‘state of the art’ Frankfurt cases are responded to: Widerker’s Brain-Malfunction-W case and Pereboom’s Tax Evasion cases (2 & 3). These cases are intended by their authors to resurrect the neo-Frankfurt project of overturning the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) in the teeth of the widespread acceptance of some combination of the WKG (Widerker-Kane-Ginet) dilemma, the Flicker of Freedom strategy and the revised PAP response (‘Principle of Alternative Blame’, ‘Principle of Alternative Expectations’). The three neo-Frankfurt cases of Pereboom (...)
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  • (1 other version)Los contraejemplos tipo-Frankfurt y un dilema para la "DEFENSA-W".Carlos G. Patarroyo G. - 2013 - Eidos: Revista de Filosofía de la Universidad Del Norte 19:56-80.
    Una crítica a los contraejemplos tipo-Frankfurt, presentada por David Widerker y conocida como la "Defensa-W", ha persistido a través de los años como uno de los retos más difíciles que estos han de enfrentar. En este texto defiendo los contraejemplos tipo-Frankfurt de este ataque de Widerker presentando un dilema en el que su premisa fundamental, el Principio de expectativas alternativas, se ve envuelta: o bien la plausibilidad de este principio depende de la máxima kantiana "deber" implica "poder", lo cual haría (...)
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  • Avoiding and Alternate Possibilities.Ezio Di Nucci - 2014 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 17 (5):1001-1007.
    Greg Janzen has recently criticised my defence of Frankfurt’s counterexample to the Principle of Alternate Possibilities by arguing that Jones avoids killing Smith in the counterfactual scenario. Janzen’s argument consists in introducing a new thought-experiment which is supposed to be analogous to Frankfurt’s and where the agent is supposed to avoid A-ing. Here I argue that Janzen’s argument fails on two counts, because his new scenario is not analogous to Frankfurt’s and because the agent in his new scenario does not (...)
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  • A Frankfurt Example to End All Frankfurt Examples.James Cain - 2014 - Philosophia 42 (1):83-93.
    Frankfurt examples are frequently used in arguments designed to show that agents lacking alternatives, or lacking ‘regulative control’ over their actions, can be morally responsible for what they do. I will maintain that Frankfurt examples can be constructed that undermine those very arguments when applied to actions for which the agent bears fundamental responsibility.
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  • From Volitionalism to the Dual Aspect Theory of Action.Joshua Stuchlik - 2013 - Philosophia 41 (3):867-886.
    Volitionalism is a theory of action motivated by certain shortcomings in the standard causal theory of action. However, volitionalism is vulnerable to the objection that it distorts the phenomenology of embodied agency. Arguments for volitionalism typically proceed by attempting to establish three claims: (1) that whenever an agent acts, she tries or wills to act, (2) that it is possible for volitions to occur even in the absence of bodily movement, and (3) that in cases of successful bodily actions the (...)
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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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  • Agency without Avoidability: Defusing a New Threat to Frankfurt’s Counterexample Strategy1.Seth Shabo - 2011 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 41 (4):505-522.
    In this paper, I examine a new line of response to Frankfurt’s challenge to the traditional association of moral responsibility with the ability to do otherwise. According to this response, Frankfurt’s counterexample strategy fails, not in light of the conditions for moral responsibility per se, but in view of the conditions for action. Specifically, it is claimed, a piece of behavior counts as an action only if it is within the agent’s power to avoid performing it. In so far as (...)
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  • Free will skepticism and personhood as a desert base.Benjamin Vilhauer - 2009 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 39 (3):pp. 489-511.
    In contemporary free will theory, a significant number of philosophers are once again taking seriously the possibility that human beings do not have free will, and are therefore not morally responsible for their actions. Free will theorists commonly assume that giving up the belief that human beings are morally responsible implies giving up all our beliefs about desert. But the consequences of giving up the belief that we are morally responsible are not quite this dramatic. Giving up the belief that (...)
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  • Recent work on free will and moral responsibility.Neil Levy & Michael McKenna - 2009 - Philosophy Compass 4 (1):96-133.
    In this article we survey six recent developments in the philosophical literature on free will and moral responsibility: (1) Harry Frankfurt's argument that moral responsibility does not require the freedom to do otherwise; (2) the heightened focus upon the source of free actions; (3) the debate over whether moral responsibility is an essentially historical concept; (4) recent compatibilist attempts to resurrect the thesis that moral responsibility requires the freedom to do otherwise; (5) the role of the control condition in free (...)
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  • Moral responsibility.Andrew Eshleman - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    When a person performs or fails to perform a morally significant action, we sometimes think that a particular kind of response is warranted. Praise and blame are perhaps the most obvious forms this reaction might take. For example, one who encounters a car accident may be regarded as worthy of praise for having saved a child from inside the burning car, or alternatively, one may be regarded as worthy of blame for not having used one's mobile phone to call for (...)
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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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  • The (near) necessity of alternate possibilities for moral responsibility.Richard M. Glatz - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 139 (2):257-272.
    Harry Frankfurt has famously criticized the principle of alternate possibilities—the principle that an agent is morally responsible for performing some action only if able to have done otherwise than to perform it—on the grounds that it is possible for an agent to be morally responsible for performing an action that is inevitable for the agent when the reasons for which the agent lacks alternate possibilities are not the reasons for which the agent has acted. I argue that an incompatibilist about (...)
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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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  • Indeterminism and Frankfurt‐type examples.Ishtiyaque Haji - 1999 - Philosophical Explorations 2 (1):42-58.
    I assess Robert Kane's view that global Frankfurt-type cases don't show that freedom to do otherwise is never required for moral responsibility. I first adumbrate Kane's indeterminist account of free will.This will help us grasp Kane's notion of ultimate responsibility, and his claim that in a global Frankfurt-type case, the counterfactual intervener could not control all of the relevant agent's actions in the Frankfurt manner, and some of those actions would be such that the agent could have done otherwise. Appealing (...)
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  • Choice, moral responsibility and alternative possibilities.Vivienne Brown - 2006 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 9 (3):265-288.
    Is choice necessary for moral responsibility? And does choice imply alternative possibilities of some significant sort? This paper will relate these questions to the argument initiated by Harry Frankfurt that alternative possibilities are not required for moral responsibility, and to John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza's extension of that argument in terms of guidance control in a causally determined world. I argue that attending to Frankfurt's core conceptual distinction between the circumstances that make an action unavoidable and those that bring (...)
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  • Moral alternatives, physical determinism & Frankfurt-style counterexamples.Nadine Elzein - 2022 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 65 (10):1231-1249.
    ABSTRACT Agents in Frankfurt-style counterexamples only appear to be responsible insofar as they act willingly in the actual sequence, but would need to be manipulated against their will into forming the relevant intention in the alternative sequence. This difference appears ineliminable and unavoidably morally significant. ‘Neo-Frankfurtians’ concede that the sequences must be physically differentiated, but deny their moral differentiation. In contrast, I explore whether the alternatives could be physically undifferentiated, despite their moral difference. The reason there is an ineliminable moral (...)
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  • Androids, Oracles and Free Will.Maria Sekatskaya - 2021 - Kriterion – Journal of Philosophy 35 (4):359-378.
    Claims about freedom and predestination are ubiquitous in movies, novels, and myths. These claims touch upon the philosophical problem of the compatibility of free will and determination. In order to make an informed judgment about whether these claims are true, it is helpful to know what philosophers have to say about free will. However, philosophical discussions are usually absent in popular culture. It is perhaps no wonder, since free will is a topic that has been discussed for millennia. Consequently, these (...)
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  • When is an alternative possibility robust?Simon Kittle - 2019 - European Journal of Philosophy 27 (1):199-210.
    According to some, free will requires alternative possibilities. But not any old alternative possibility will do. Sometimes, being able to bring about an alternative does not bestow any control on an agent. In order to bestow control, and so be directly relevant qua alternative to grounding the agent's moral responsibility, alternatives need to be robust. Here, I investigate the nature of robust alternatives. I argue that Derk Pereboom's latest robustness criterion is too strong, and I suggest a different criterion based (...)
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  • Robustness and up-to-us-ness.Simon Kittle - 2017 - Disputatio 9 (44):35-57.
    Frankfurt-style cases purport to show that an agent can be morally responsible for an action despite not having any alternatives. Some critics have responded by highlighting various alternatives that remain in the cases presented, while Frankfurtians have objected that such alternatives are typically not capable of grounding responsibility. In this essay I address the recent suggestion by Seth Shabo that only alternatives associated with the ‘up to us’ locution ground moral responsibility. I distinguish a number of kinds of ability, suggest (...)
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  • On Young’s Version of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities.Daniel Coren - 2017 - Philosophia 45 (2):585-594.
    Harry Frankfurt (1969) famously gave cases in which an agent lacks alternate possibilities and yet seems morally responsible. Such cases purportedly falsify the Principle of Alternate Possibilities, which states that the ability to do otherwise is necessary for moral responsibility. There is an enormous body of literature debating whether or not Frankfurt cases and their variants do in fact falsify PAP. In order to sidestep Frankfurt cases altogether, Garry Young (2016) argues for a different version of PAP, namely, PAP, on (...)
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  • Abortion, Property, and Liberty.William Simkulet - 2016 - The Journal of Ethics 20 (4):373-383.
    In “Abortion and Ownership” John Martin Fischer argues that in Judith Jarvis Thomson’s violinist case you have a moral obligation not to unplug yourself from the violinist. Fischer comes to this conclusion by comparing the case with Joel Feinberg’s cabin case, in which he contends a stranger is justified in using your cabin to stay alive. I argue that the relevant difference between these cases is that while the stranger’s right to life trumps your right to property in the cabin (...)
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  • Fischer on the Fragilist Account of Alternative Possibilities.Huiyuhl Yi - 2013 - Dialogue 52 (4):1-14.
    One response to the Frankfurtian attack on the Principle of Alternate Possibilities is to advert to the observation that the agent’s actual action (or the particular event resulting from that action) is numerically distinct from the corresponding action (or the resultant event) he would have generated in the relevant counterfactual scenario. Since this response is based on taking actions and events to be fragile, I shall call it the fragilist account of alternative possibilities. This paper addresses an anti-fragilist argument delivered (...)
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  • Fischer-style Compatibilism.Michael Garnett - 2013 - Analysis 73 (2):387-397.
    This is a critical review essay on John Martin Fischer's Deep Control: Essays on Free Will and Value.
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  • Do judgments about freedom and responsibility depend on who you are? Personality differences in intuitions about compatibilism and incompatibilism.Adam Feltz & Edward T. Cokely - 2009 - Consciousness and Cognition 18 (1):342-350.
    Recently, there has been an increased interest in folk intuitions about freedom and moral responsibility from both philosophers and psychologists. We aim to extend our understanding of folk intuitions about freedom and moral responsibility using an individual differences approach. Building off previous research suggesting that there are systematic differences in folks’ philosophically relevant intuitions, we present new data indicating that the personality trait extraversion predicts, to a significant extent, those who have compatibilist versus incompatibilist intuitions. We argue that identifying groups (...)
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  • Where Frankfurt and Strawson meet.Michael McKenna - 2005 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 29 (1):163-180.
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  • A Dilemma for Buffered Alternatives.Matthew Paskell - forthcoming - Journal of Moral Philosophy:1-26.
    Frankfurt-style cases challenge the intuitively plausible “Principle of Alternative Possibilities” (pap), which claims that moral responsibility requires the ability to do otherwise. Most such cases have familiar responses by defenders of the pap, most notably the “dilemma defense” levied against traditional Frankfurt-style cases. However, one particular style – buffered alternatives cases – are even more challenging. The ingenuity of these cases lies in the introduction of a necessary-but-not-sufficient condition for doing otherwise, which acts as a buffer between the agent and (...)
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  • Flickering the W‐Defense.Michael Robinson - 2023 - Philosophical Issues 33 (1):198-210.
    One way to defend the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) against Frankfurt‐style cases is to challenge the claim that agents in these scenarios are genuinely morally responsible for what they do. Alternatively, one can grant that agents are morally responsible for what they do in these cases but resist the idea that they could not have done otherwise. This latter strategy is known as the flicker defense of PAP. In an argument he calls the W‐Defense, David Widerker adopts the former (...)
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  • The Frankfurt-style cases: extinguishing the flickers of freedom.John Martin Fischer - 2022 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 65 (9):1185-1209.
    ABSTRACT The Frankfurt-style Counterexamples to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities have been controversial. I sketch some of the major moves in the debates surrounding the FSCs, and I seek to provide an answer to a big challenge: the indeterministic horn of the ‘dilemma defense’. Given indeterminism, it is unclear how Black can know with certainty what Jones will choose and do in the future; this leaves at least some open alternatives for Jones. I adopt the strategy of positing God in (...)
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