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The Principle of Alternate Possibilities
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Extract
The standard argument for the incompatibility of determinism and moral responsibility employs the following two premises:
A person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise:
A person could have done otherwise only if his action was not causally determined.
While premise two has been the focus of an enormous amount of controversy, premise one until recently has remained virtually unchallenged. However, since Harry Frankfurt’s provocative paper in 1969, premise one, which he dubbed the principle of alternate possibilities (henceforth referred to as PAP), has begun to attract its share of the debate. Frankfurt argued that PAP is false and that its falsity undermines the position of those who assert the incompatibility of determinism and moral responsibility. Two previous papers I wrote were devoted in part to showing that Frankfurt’s argument is ineffective; one of those papers also argued that, while PAP is indeed false as it stands (though for reasons entirely different from those advanced by Frankfurt), if it is appropriately supplemented, it can continue to serve its traditional role in the determinism-responsibility debate.
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- Copyright © The Authors 1987
References
1 Frankfurt, Harry ‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,’ Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969) 829–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The literature which discusses Frankfurt's attack on PAP includes the following: Blumenfeld, David ‘The Principle of Alternate Possibilities,’ Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971) 339–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Van lnwagen, Peter ‘Ability and Responsibility,’ Philosophical Review 87 2(1978) 201–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gosselin, Phillip ‘Is There a Freedom Requirement for Moral Responsibility?’ Dialogue 18, 3 (1979) 289–306CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bernstein, Mark ‘Moral Responsibility and Free Will,’ Southern Journal of Philosophy 19 (1981) 1–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gosselin, Phillip ‘Moral Responsibility and the Possibility of Doing Otherwise,’ Philosophy Research Archives 8 (1982) 499–512CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There are also brief discussions of Frankfurt’s position in the following: Davidson, Donald ‘Freedom to Act,’Google Scholar in Honderich, Ted ed., Essays on Freedom of Action (Boston, MA: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1973) 137–56Google Scholar; Audi, Robert ‘Moral Responsibility, Freedom and Compulsion,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 11, 1(1974) 1–14.Google Scholar
2 In this paper incompatibilism will be defined as the view that determinism is incompatible with moral responsibility.
3 Gosselin, ‘Is There a Freedom Requirement for Moral Responsibility?’ and Gosselin, ‘Moral Responsibility and the Possibility of Doing Otherwise.’ The second paper includes some discussion of Blumenfeld, Van Inwagen and Bemstein as well as Frankfurt.
4 For a fuller statement of this argument see ‘Freedom Requirement,’ 301-4. Notice that PAP and S-P AP are concerned with moral responsibility for an action or failure to act. As I argue in ‘Freedom Requirement,’ responsibility for action or failure to act is basic in any determination of moral responsibility. One can be morally responsible for something other than an action or failure to act, but only if that something is the product of one’s earlier action or failure to act. Thus, you may be morally responsible for a state of affairs such as a death, or a character trait such as your child's truculence, but only if the death or the truculence is the product of your own earlier action or inaction.
5 Notice, incidentally, that the difficulty of doing something is sometimes sufficient to excuse one's failure to do it — impossibility is not required. Whether it is sufficient in any given case will depend on the gravity of the failing in question. To put it another way, the greater the obligation one has to meet, the greater the volitional obstacles one can be expected to overcome in the effort to meet it.
6 Some may be inclined to question the meaningfulness of the phrase trying to pass up a piece of pie. How does one go about ‘trying’ to do such a thing? The answer is that one goes about it in essentially the same way one tries to overcome any temptation: by attempting to put the forbidden object out of one's mind, by rehearsing the good reasons for turning away from it, by reflecting on the consequences of not doing so, etc. One must not suppose that all trying involves physical activity. Of course, a statement such as ‘I couldn't bring myself to refuse the pie’ may well exaggerate the actual extent of the agent's effort to resist temptation. In fact, there might well be no effort at all — but, if there was capitulation without any resistance, strictly speaking, it is inaccurate to talk of failing to ‘bring oneself’ to do it.
7 Indeed, some argue that the truth of determinism would render all norms meaningless (since ought implies can [p] and determinism is incompatible with can [p]). It is not, of course, necessary for me to rest my case on this controversial point.
8 Frankfurt's statement of the Evil Overseer counterexample appears in ‘Alternate Possibilities,’ 835-6. A fuller statement of my argument against this counterexample is to be found in ‘Freedom Requirement,’ 290-2. I also consider a modified version of the Evil Overseer argument (advanced by David Blumenfeld) in ‘Moral Responsibility and the Possibility of Doing Otherwise,’ 500-3.
9 The case of the Willing Addict was first set out in Frankfurt's ‘Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,’ Journal of Philosophy 68, 1 (1971) 18-20. My argument against this counterexample is stated more fully in ‘Moral Responsibility and the Possibility of Doing Otherwise,’ 507-10.
10 Frankfurt, ‘Alternate Possibilities,’ 831–2Google Scholar
11 Frankfurt, ‘Alternate Possibilities,’ 834Google Scholar
12 Zimmerman, Michael ‘Moral Responsibility, Freedom, and Alternate Possibilities,’ Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 63 (1982) 243–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13 Zimmerman, 244
14 Ibid.
15 A recent discussion which demonstrates once again the difficulty of formulating a reportive definition of free action is ‘Three Concepts of Free Action’ by Locke, Don and Frankfurt, Harry Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 49 (1975) 95–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
16 I wish to thank an anonymous referee for the helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.