A familiar feature of our moral responsibility practices are pleas: considerations, such as “That was an accident”, or “I didn’t know what else to do”, that attempt to get agents accused of wrongdoing off the hook. But why do these pleas have the normative force they do in fact have? Why does physical constraint excuse one from responsibility, while forgetfulness or laziness does not? I begin by laying out R. Jay Wallace’s (Responsibility and the moral sentiments, 1994 ) theory of (...) the normative force of excuses and exemptions. For each category of plea, Wallace offers a single governing moral principle that explains their normative force. The principle he identifies as governing excuses is the Principle of No Blameworthiness without Fault: an agent is blameworthy only if he has done something wrong. The principle he identifies as governing exemptions is the Principle of Reasonableness: an agent is morally accountable only if he is normatively competent. I argue that Wallace’s theory of exemptions is sound, but that his account of the normative force of excuses is problematic, in that it fails to explain the full range of excuses we offer in our practices, especially the excuses of addiction and extreme stress. I then develop a novel account of the normative force of excuses, which employs what I call the “Principle of Reasonable Opportunity,” that can explain the full range of excuses we offer and that is deeply unified with Wallace’s theory of the normative force of exemptions. An important implication of the theory I develop is that moral responsibility requires free will. (shrink)

A deterministic perspective, believing choices are a function of hereditary and environmental factors, could theoretically impact perceived moral responsibility and lead to decreased blame in judging others. However, little consistent support has been found relating individual differences in deterministic attitudes to blame/tolerance for others. Perhaps, though, providing information regarding past background hardships affecting an individual's current lifestyle could potentially mediate harsh moralistic judgments of that individual. In the two studies reported here, we further explored the relation of free will/determinism scales (...) to attitudes toward others as well as the effect of manipulating background information on the assignment of blame. As in previous research, little support was found for the relation of deterministic attitudes to tolerance toward others. However, judgments following manipulated information about hypothetical target persons supported the conclusion that target individuals are blamed less and given more sympathy if more information related to previous hardships is provided. In addition, in the second study perceived similarity to a target individual was associated with decreased blame/greater sympathy for a target with alcohol abuse problems. (shrink)

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 (...) of people who have specific and diverse intuitions about freedom and moral responsibility offers the possibility for theoretical advancement in philosophy and psychology, and may in part explain why some perennial philosophical debates have proven intractable. (shrink)

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 (...) we are morally responsible undermines many, and perhaps most, of the desert claims we are pretheoretically inclined to accept. But it does not undermine desert claims based on the sheer fact of personhood. Even in the absence of belief in moral responsibility, personhood-based desert claims require us to respect persons and their rights. So personhood-based desert claims can provide a substantial role for desert in free will skeptics' ethical theories. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are a number of different things that could be meant by the claim that a given agent 'could have done otherwise', because there are multiple ways of disambiguating the various anaphoric devices which are contained in the phrase. It goes on to suggest that on at least one of these disambiguations, the claim that a Frankfurtian agent could have done otherwise might be defensible, even given the presence of a counterfactual intervener who will ensure that (...) the agent phis. (shrink)

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 (...) determinism and moral responsibility can safely ignore so-called “Frakfurt-style cases ” and continue to argue for incompatibilism on the grounds that determinism rules out the ability to do otherwise. My argument relies on a simple—indeed, simplistic—weakening of the principle of alternate possibilities that is explicitly designed to be immune to Frankfurt -style criticism. This alternative to the principle of alternate possibilities is so simplistic that it will no doubt strike many readers as philosophically fallow. I argue that it is not. I argue that the addition of one highly plausible premise allows for the modified principle to be employed in an argument for incompatibilism that begins with the observation that determinism rules out the ability to do otherwise. On the merits of this argument I conclude that deterministic moral responsibility is impossible and that Frankfurt ’s criticism of the principle of alternate possibilities—even if successful to that end—may be safely ignored. (shrink)

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 (...) Frankfurt cases. (shrink)

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.

En su libro El libre albedrío: un estudio filosófico Carlos Moya presenta una objeción a los contraejemplos tipo-Frankfurt según la cual lo que hace que una alternativa sea robusta o no es el contexto en el que se encuentra el agente; así, alternativas que, en principio, no se verían como robustas y eximentes, pueden llegar a serlo en circunstancias especiales y los contraejemplos tipo-Frankfurt presentan, justamente, este tipo de circunstancias. En este escrito presento tres objeciones al brillante argumento de Moya. (...) En primer lugar, defiendo que no es claro que la alternativa que él considera robusta esté cumpliendo el papel de soportar, al menos en parte, la atribución de culpa del agente. En segundo lugar, retomo la respuesta que Moya ha dado a una crítica de Pereboom quien lo acusa de presuponer en el seno de su argumento al principio de posibilidades alternativas y, por ende, de caer en una petición de principio. Defiendo que la respuesta que ha dado Moya no le permite eludir la crítica de Pereboom. Finalmente, ofrezco una consideración acerca de cómo podría desarticularse la propuesta de Moya si se logra presentar un contraejemplo tipo-Frankfurt de corte determinista. (shrink)

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 (...) on the idea that what agents need to be able to do is keep open the possibility of securing their blamelessness, rather than needing to directly ensure their own blamelessness at the time of decision. (shrink)

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 (...) overlooked, namely, “the principle of doxastic moral asymmetry” : a rational agent, S, is morally responsible for an action that S performed, E, only if, when S did E, S justifiably believed either that E was closer to S’s most praiseworthy alternate possibility than it was to S’s most blameworthy alternate possibility, or that E was closer to S’s most blameworthy alternate possibility than it was to S’s most praiseworthy alternate possibility. (shrink)

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 (...) which kinds of abilities ground the truth of the ‘up to us’ locution, and outline how these distinctions apply to the indeterministic buffer cases. (shrink)

This article contends that recent attempts to construct Frankfurt-style cases (FSCs) are irrelevant to the debate over free will. The principle of alternate possibilities (PAP) states that moral responsibility requires indeterminism, or multiple possible futures. Frankfurt's original case purported to demonstrate PAP false by showing an agent can be blameworthy despite not having the ability to choose otherwise; however he admits the agent can come to that choice freely or by force, and thus has alternate possibilities. Neo-FSCs attempt to show (...) that alternate possibilities are irrelevant to explaining an agent's moral responsibility, but a successful Neo-FSC would be consistent with the truth of PAP, and thus is silent on the big metaphysical issues at the center of the free will debate. (shrink)

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 (...) which alternate possibilities are sufficient rather than necessary for moral responsibility. Young also argues for another sufficient but not necessary condition, the ‘Twin World Condition’. Only one of PAP and TWC needs to be satisfied for moral responsibility. I argue here that Young’s proposal as it stands generates too much moral responsibility. So I present versions of Young’s conditions that avoid this problem. I also argue that even with those revisions, Young’s proposal does not limit moral responsibility as effectively as PAP does. (shrink)

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 (...) responsibility, it is not in virtue of its eliminating the agent’s alternative possibilities. I contend that, once we focus upon the distinction between entailment and explanation, the incompatibilist defender of PAP can successfully rebut Fischer’s argument. I argue for this claim while granting Fischer a number of assumptions that only render a defense of PAP more difficult. Additionally, I cast doubt upon Palmer’s (Synthese 191:3847–3864, 2014) critique of Fischer’s argument, which in turn renders my defense of PAP all the more critical. (shrink)

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 (...) argue that this provides a means of justifying why the protagonist in Frankfurt-style scenarios is still felt to be morally responsible. I conclude with the claim that neither the amended PAP nor the twin world condition is necessary for the ascription of moral responsibility; rather, what is necessary is simply that one of these conditions is satisfied. (shrink)

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 (...) determined (ch.5) and develops a forward-looking theory of moral responsibility consistent with free will skepticism (ch.6). A significant contribution to the field, Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life is destined to become a classic and is essential reading for anyone interested in free will and moral responsibility. (shrink)

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, (...) I argue that we cannot determine which abilities are necessary until we have determined the nature and justification of moral responsibility. Thus, theorizing about moral responsibility ought to take pride of place in theorizing about free will. (shrink)

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 (...) a case where the agent has no alternative. Vihvelin thinks this is a mistake: agents subject to pre-decisional intervention still have alternatives, and the intricate discussion and development of ever more complex Frankfurt-style cases is beside the point. She argues for this by presenting a case, purportedly analogous to Frankfurt-style cases, where it is clear that there are alternatives available. Fischer has replied by disputing the analogy. In this paper I argue that Vihvelin is right to think the cases are analogous, but that both Fischer and Vihvelin are wrong to think that Vihvelin's parallel case is one where there are alternatives. Despite appearances, this is not the case, and I construct a Fischer-inspired argument to show this. (shrink)

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’ (...) is ambiguous. It can mean either (1) with respect to each time t prior to E’s occurrence, it is not the case that at t E’s occurrence is determined to take place, or it can mean (2) with respect to the whole collection of times prior to E’s occurrence, E’s occurrence is not determined to take place. Kane’s argument shows that (under certain constraints) if a choice is to be undetermined (in the second sense) prior to its occurrence, then a prior-sign Frankfurt example cannot be successful. But he fails to show that prior-sign Frankfurt examples cannot be constructed in which the choice is undetermined (in the first sense) prior to its occurrence, and he would need to do so in order to sustain his charge that those using Frankfurt examples beg the question against traditional incompatibilist accounts of responsibility. Widerker’s argument avoids the above problem, but at the cost of only applying to a rather restricted set of Frankfurt examples. (shrink)

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 (...) and Widerker shown to be insufficient for their intended purpose. Of central importance to any account of responsibility is that this applies at the level of the Right and not the Good. Arguments of Carlos Moya are expanded and augmented by considerations from Chisholm, Lucas, Dummett and Lockie (2003) to show that a number of severe problems remain for anyone attempting to resurrect the Frankfurt project. (shrink)

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 (...) avoid A-ing. (shrink)

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.

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 (...) relation between volition and bodily movement is causal. I defend an argument for the second of these claims from an objection by Thor Grünbaum, but I show that several volitionalist arguments for the third are not compelling. I then argue that the dual aspect theory of action provides a better account of the relationship between an agent’s volition and the bodily movements she makes when she acts, insofar as it has the same advantages over the standard story as volitionalism without being open to the phenomenological objection. I also defend the dual aspect theory from an objection by A.D. Smith. Finally, I show why the dual aspect theory of action is a better alternative to volitionalism than the theory of action recently put forward by Adrian Haddock. In order to avoid the phenomenological objection Haddock suggests a disjunctive account of bodily movements. While disjunctivism should be taken seriously in the philosophy of action, on the dual aspect theory it is the category of volition, rather than bodily movement, that should receive a disjunctive analysis. (shrink)

This is a critical review essay on John Martin Fischer's Deep Control: Essays on Free Will and Value.

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 (...) (ii) unsupported. (shrink)

In this paper I examine a recent argument that regularity approaches to causation can easily solve the problem of pre-emption. If this argument were successful it would neatly solve the problem of pre-emption—a problem that many still consider to be a central unsolved problem for accounts of causation. The argument is surprising in that the conclusion goes against the common consensus that regularity accounts of causation cannot solve the problem of pre-emption, at least without major amendments. This consensus was one (...) of the reasons for the decline in popularity of the regularity approach and the rise in popularity (for a few decades at least) of the counterfactual approach. In its fullest form the recent argument is due to Strevens (Causation and explanation, topics in contemporary philosophy. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2007). He claims, "Mackie's account supplies, without any of the complex amendments now standard in counterfactual theories, a completely satisfactory treatment of the standard cases of pre-emption". This paper examines this argument and refutes it. I argue that Mackie's account really does fail to solve the problem of pre-emption; it fails to account for even the standard cases of pre-emption in the literature. (shrink)

According to the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP), a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. Widerker (Philosophical Perspectives 14: 181-201, 2000) offers an intriguing argument for PAP as it applies to moral blameworthiness. His argument is known as the “What-should-he-have-done defense” of PAP or the “W-defense” for short. In a recent article, Capes (Philosophical Studies 150: 61-77, 2010) attacks Widerker’s argument by rejecting the central premise on which it rests, namely, (...) the premise that a person is blameworthy for his action only if in the circumstances it would be morally reasonable to expect him not to have acted as he did. In this paper, I show that Capes’ criticism does not undermine this premise and, to this extent, Widerker’s argument is safe from Capes’ attack. (shrink)

A great deal of attention has been paid recently to the claim that traditional Frankfurt-type counterexamples to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP), which depend for their success on the presence of a perfectly reliable indicator (or prior sign ) of what an agent will freely do if left to act on his own, are guilty of begging the question against incompatibilists, since such indicators seem to presuppose a deterministic relation between an agent’s free action and its causal antecedents. Objections (...) of this sort have given rise to considerable efforts to construct alternative Frankfurt-type counterexamples that do not rely on prior signs of this kind and so do not presuppose determinism in a way that incompatibilists should find objectionable. One consequence of this shift in the way Frankfurt-type counterexamples are formulated is that it provides an opportunity for the forceful resurgence of certain versions of the so-called flicker defense of PAP. In this paper I develop two versions of the flicker defense, indicate their advantages over other versions of this strategy, and defend them against objections. Insofar as either of these is successful, it will show not only that PAP has yet to be falsified by any of the modified Frankfurt-type counterexamples currently on offer but that cases of this sort are in principle incapable of falsifying PAP. (shrink)

In a fascinating recent article, Michael Otsuka seeks to bypass the debates about the Principle of Alternative Possibilities by presenting and defending a different, but related, principle, which he calls the “Principle of Avoidable Blame.” According to this principle, one is blameworthy for performing an act only if one could instead have behaved in an entirely blameless manner. Otsuka claims that although Frankfurt-cases do undermine the Principle of Alternative Possibilities, they do not undermine the Principle of Avoidable Blame. In this (...) brief paper, we offer a critical discussion of the core of Otsuka’s argument, especially the claim that his favored principle cannot be refuted by Frankfurt-cases. We do not believe that Otsuka has offered good reason to suppose that the Principle of Avoidable Blame—and the related incompatibilism—fares any better than the original Principle of Alternative Possibilities. (shrink)

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 (...) that this discussion also goes some distance to showing that any Frankfurt-libertarian is in a similar position regarding the need for some PAP-like principle. If I am correct, then Frankfurt-libertarians must either renounce their incompatibilism or concede that FSCs fail to show all PAP-like principles to be false. (shrink)

This paper responds to three critical essays on my book, The Significance of Free Will(Oxford, 1996) by Randolph Clarke, Istiyaque Haji and Alfred Mele (which essays appear in this issue and an earlier issue of this journal). This response first explains crucial features of the theory of free will of the book, including the notion of ultimate responsibility.The paper then answers objections of Haji and Mele that the occurrence of undetermined choices would be matters of luck or chance, and so (...) could not be responsible actions. It then responds to concerns of Clarke that indeterminism provides no greater degree of control for defenders of incompatibilist free will and to concerns Clarke has about the notions of "effort" and "willing" in the book. Finally, the paper addresses objections of Haji concerning Frankfurt type-examples and the relation of moral responsibility to the power to act otherwise, and it addresses a concern of Mele's about why we should want a free will that is incompatible with determinism. (shrink)

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 (...) with regard to the Principle of Alternate Possibilities. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that new attempts to undermine the principle of alternative possibilities via appeal to time travel fail. My argument targets a version of a Frankfurt-style counterexample to the principle recently developed by Spencer. I argue that in avoiding one prominent objection to standard Frankfurt-style counterexamples Spencer’s time travel case runs afoul of another. Furthermore, the very feature of the case which makes it initially appealing also makes it impossible to revise the case such that it can (...) avoid this further objection. Thus Spencer’s time travel case and cases like it provide no dialectical advantages over other Frankfurt-style cases. I conclude that this strategy for refining such cases should be abandoned. (shrink)

Direct source incompatibilism (DSI) is the conjunction of two claims: SI-F: there are genuine Frankfurt-style counterexamples (FSCs); SI-D: there is a sound version of the direct argument (DA). Eric Yang ( 2012 ) responds to a recent criticism of DSI (Campbell 2006 ). We show that Yang misses the mark. One can accept Yang’s criticisms and get the same result: there is a deep tension between FSCs and DA, between SI-F and SI-D. Thus, DSI is untenable. In this essay, we (...) use an important yet overlooked distinction between truthmakers and determiners to help drive this point home. (shrink)

I have presented a Frankfurt-style argument (Pereboom 2000, 2001, 2003) against the requirement of robust alternative possibilities for moral responsibility that features an example, Tax Evasion , in which an agent is intuitively morally responsible for a decision, has no robust alternative possibilities, and is clearly not causally determined to make the decision. Here I revise the criterion for robustness in response to suggestions by Dana Nelkin, Jonathan Vance, and Kevin Timpe, and I respond to objections to the argument by (...) Carlos Moya and David Widerker, in the process of which I refine the Tax Evasion example. (shrink)

According to the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP), a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. In what follows, I want to defend this principle against an apparent counterexample offered recently by Derk Pereboom (Living without free will, 2001; Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 29: 228-247, 2005). Pereboom's case, a variant of what are known as Trankfurt cases,' is important for it attempts to overcome a dilemma posed for earlier alleged counterexamples to (...) PAP. However, I will argue that by paying closer attention to the details of Pereboom's example, we see that his example fails to show a way between the horns of the dilemma posed for the earlier Frankfurt examples. (shrink)

The debate over whether Frankfurt-style cases are counterexamples to the principle of alternative possibilities has taken an interesting turn in recent years. Frankfurt originally envisaged his attack as an attempting to show that PAP is false—that the ability to do otherwise is not necessary for moral responsibility. To many this attack has failed. But Frankfurtians have not conceded defeat. Neo-Frankfurtians, as I will call them, argue that the upshot of Frankfurt-style cases is not that PAP is false, but that it (...) is explanatorily irrelevant. Derk Pereboom and David Hunt’s buffer cases are tailor made to establish this conclusion. In this paper I come to the aid of PAP, showing that buffer cases provide no reason for doubting either its truth or relevance with respect to explaining an agent’s moral responsibility. (shrink)

This is the introduction to a volume of new essays in the metaphysics of moral responsibility by John Martin Fischer, Carl Ginet, Ishtiyaque Haji, Alfred R. Mele, Derk Pereboom, Paul Russell, and Peter van Inwagen. I provide some background for the essays, cover the main debates in the metaphysics of moral responsibility, and emphasize some of the authors' contributions to this area of philosophy.

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 (...) Stump exploits concessions she need not have made. The upshot is that, contrary to what Timpe maintains, there is no reason to doubt that Stump's brand of incompatibilism is a genuine alternative to the traditional variety. (shrink)

The principle of alternate possibilities says that you are morally praiseworthy or blameworthy for something you do only if you could have done otherwise. Frankfurt examples are putative counterexamples to PAP. These examples feature a failsafe mechanism that ensures that some agent cannot refrain from doing what she does without intervening in how she conducts herself, thereby supposedly sustaining the upshot that she is responsible for her behavior despite not being able to do otherwise. I introduce a Frankfurt example in (...) which the agent who could not have done otherwise is God. Paying attention to the freedom requirements of moral obligation, the example is commissioned, first, to assess whether various statesof affairs that are unavoidable for God can be obligatory for God and for whichGod can be praiseworthy. The example is, next, used to unearth problems with conventional Frankfurt examples that feature human agents. I argue that conceptual connections between responsibility and obligation cast suspicion on these examples. Pertinent lessons that the divine Frankfurt example helps to reveal motivate the view that divine foreknowledge and determinism, assuming that both preclude freedom to do otherwise, may well imperil obligation and responsibility. (shrink)

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 (...) responsibility. In this paper, I argue that, when relying on definitions of ‘on one’s own’ within the literature on FSCs, a case can be constructed in which the agent could not have done otherwise than make a decision on his own. Insofar as this new case is successful, it will be able to avoid arguments about robustness while showing that moral responsibility does not require alternative possibilities of the type argued for by proponents of the fine-grained version of the flicker defense. (shrink)

Philosophers employing Frankfurt-style cases to challenge the principle of alternative possibilities have mostly sought to construct scenarios that eliminate as many of an agent’s alternatives as possible—and all alternatives at the moment of action, within the agent’s control—without causally determining the agent’s actions. One of the chief difficulties for this traditional approach is that the closer one gets to ruling out absolutely all alternative possibilities the more it appears that agents’ actions in these cases are causally determined. “Limited-blockage” versions of (...) these cases are meant to sidestep this worry by blocking all and only those alternatives that are intrinsically relevant to moral responsibility (“robust alternatives”) while leaving open all other alternatives, including a significant range of alternatives that are within the agent’s voluntary control at the moment of action. I argue that, owing to the fact that omissions (and not just actions) are capable of constituting robust alternative possibilities, limited-blockage cases cannot avoid collapsing into the more traditional sort of Frankfurt-style case to which they are meant to be an alternative and so are vulnerable to the very same concerns they are meant to avoid. (shrink)

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.

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 (...) to this objection (Pereboom 2009). Building on work by Moya (J Phil 104:475–486, 2007; Critica 43(128):3–26, 2011) and Widerker (Widerker 2006), I argue that there is good reason to measure the robustness of alternatives in terms of comparative, rather than non-comparative likelihood of exemption, where the important factor for blame is whether the agent is “doing her reasonable best” to avoid blameworthy behaviour. I maintain that an agent only ever appears responsible when alternatives are robust in this sense. In Pereboom’s examples, both Tax Evasion 2, and his more recent version, Tax Evasion 3 (Pereboom 2009), I maintain the robustness of the alternatives, so understood, is unclear. We can clear up any ambiguity by sharpening the examples, and the result is that the agent appears responsible when the alternatives are made clearly robust, and does not appear responsible when alternatives appear clearly non-robust. The comparative nature of our judgements about blame, I maintain helps to explain the continuing appeal of the “leeway-incompatibilist” viewpoint. (shrink)

I defend the principle of alternative possibilities against what are sometimes known as buffer cases, which are supposed by some to be counterexamples to the principle. I develop an existing problem with the claim that standard buffer cases are counterexamples to PAP, before responding to a recent attempt by Michael McKenna to modify the cases in a way that circumvents this problem. While McKenna’s strategy does avoid the problem, I argue that it faces a different difficulty. I conclude that buffer (...) cases pose no threat to PAP. (shrink)

In this paper, I assess Derk Pereboom’s argument for the thesis that moral responsibility does not require the ability to do otherwise. I argue that the Frankfurt-style example Pereboom develops presupposes a prior act or omission which the agent was able to avoid. This undermines his argument. I propose a way for Pereboom to revise his example and thereby undercut this objection. Along the way, I also argue that Pereboom should supplement his account of what counts as a robust alternative—an (...) alternative of the sort that should matter to those who argue for an ability-to-do-otherwise condition on moral responsibility. (shrink)

Harry G. Frankfurt has presented a case of a counterfactual intervener CI with knowledge and power to control an agent so he will do A. He concludes that if the agent prefers to do A and there is no intervention by CI, the agent has acted of his own free will and is morally responsible for doing A, though he lacked an alternative possibility. I consider the consequences for freedom and moral responsibility of CI having a complete plan P for (...) all actions of an agent, Lucky, who luckily has preferences that accord with P, and I extend the argument to all citizens of a land, Luckyland, who are like Lucky. I argue the citizens of Luckyland have free will but lack moral responsibility because of the connection between moral responsibility, reactive attitudes and future action. Furthermore, the presence of CI and his plan P may allow free will but is incompatible with freedom of preference. Preference concerns alternatives excluded by CI. I argue that a special higher order preference for the preference structure, a power preference, ends the regress of higher order preference and explains the first order preference. Causal determinism is compatible with freedom of preference explained by a power preference when a power preference would also explain an alternative preference. The remoteness argument for incompatibility fails because of a lack of transitivity causal explanation. The power preference is the self-explained source of freedom of preference. That basic freedom may be limited by government knowledge of our preferences, even if, like Lucky, our preferences do not provoke intervention and we conform of our own free will. (shrink)

Readers familiar with Harry Frankfurt’s argument that we do not need leeway-liberty (or the power to bring about alternative possible actions or intentions) to be morally responsible will probably also know that the most famous and popular response on behalf of leeway-libertarianism remains a dilemma posed in similar forms by David Widerker, Robert Kane, and Carl Ginet: either the agent retains significant residual leeway in Frankfurt-style cases, or these cases beg the question by presupposing causal determinism. In the last few (...) years, there have been several different attempts to defend Frankfurtian critiques of PAP in response this dilemma. In a novel approach, Derk Pereboom and Michael McKenna present cases in which all deliberatively relevant or “robust” alternatives are blocked, but the agent’s act or decision is not determined. Pereboom and McKenna argue that any plausible leeway-condition on responsibility must characterize the required alternatives as robust in two ways: being voluntary performances and having a practical relevance accessible to the agent’s mind. I agree with the requirement of robustness, and argue that we can build this notion into a complex concept of agent-possibility, or “agentive-can.” However, I argue that both McKenna’s and Pereboom’s conceptions of robustness are too demanding: they exclude alternatives that are intuitively relevant. Moreover, I argue that the alternative of refraining from deciding, or voluntarily failing to decide, is robust in the right sense. In agreement with a tradition running from Ockham back through Scotus to Aquinas, I argue that this robust alternative is necessary for responsibility. If the Frankfurt-controller eliminates it, then the agent’s responsibility is undermined. In particular, I argue that Pereboom’s tax evasion cases do not refute this leeway-condition on moral responsibility. (shrink)