FRANKFURT EXAMPLES, DERIVATIVE RESPONSIBILITY, AND THE TIMING OBJECTION1

Abstract

Source views claim an agent’s moral responsibility for an action is not to be explained primarily by the availability to her of alternative possibilities, but rather by the action’s having a causal history in which she is the source of her action in a specific way. Agent-causal libertarianism is commonly conceived as an incompatibilist position in which an agent can be the source of her action in the way required for moral responsibility, and thus proponents of this view can be, and often are, source incompatibilists. However, one might also be a source incompatibilist and seriously doubt that we have the sort of free will required for moral responsibility, and this is the position I advocate. Contemporary versions of source positions are typically motivated by Frankfurt examples (Frankfurt 1969). In examples of this sort, an agent considers performing some action, but a neuroscientist is concerned that she will not come through. So if she were to manifest an indication that she will not or might not perform the action, neuroscientist would intervene. But as things actually go, the neuroscientist remains idle, since the agent performs the action on her own. The idea is that even though the agent could not have avoided the action she performs, she is still intuitively