ABSTRACT
This chapter presents that Reid’s causal theory of human freedom seems to be an all-or-nothing affair. When the agent wills to perform some action, either the act of will results from the exercise of the agent’s power to cause it or the agent plays no causal role and the act of will is the necessary result of other causal factors, perhaps the agent’s desires and beliefs. Assessing the strengths or weaknesses of what the author took to be Reid’s solution to the problem of alternate possibilities and moral responsibility posed in Frankfurt’s article requires some understanding of his view of causal role played by reasons and motives in the agent’s volitions and actions. Since Frankfurt’s argument against the widely held view just expressed is well known and often repeated in the literature. According to the principle of alternate possibilities PAP, a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise.
