Moral Responsibility, Alternative Possibilities, and Frankfurt Examples

Abstract

Abstract This chapter addresses the debate about whether moral responsibility for an action requires that the agent could have avoided that action, and thus had an alternative possibility available to her. The assumption that blameworthiness, in particular, requires that the agent could have done something that would have precluded her blameworthiness is widespread, and for a long time went unchallenged. But then in a 1969 article, Harry Frankfurt, using an intriguing type of example, argued that this assumption is false. This chapter surveys this challenge and debate to which it has given rise, which has the following structure. In response to the challenge from Frankfurt examples, defenders of the alternative-possibilities requirement have advanced a number of counterstrategies. One involves contending that despite initial impressions, the example does feature a relevant alternative possibility after all; John Fischer calls this the “flicker of freedom strategy.” Another is to argue that despite initial impressions, the example requires causal determinism in the actual causal history of the action in order to secure the absence of alternatives, and this counts against the intuition that the agent in the example is morally responsible. These objections have given rise to Frankfurt examples designed to address the objections. The chapter provides a critical appraisal of these moves in the debate.