ABSTRACT
The intuition that moral responsibility for an action requires that the agent could have done otherwise is a powerful one. Indeed, access to alternative possibilities for action would seem to play a significant role in explaining why an agent is morally responsible. In general, when defenders of the alternative-possibilities requirement, after examining a proposed Frankfurt example carefully, do have the clear intuition that the agent is morally responsible, they tend to argue that despite initial impressions the example does feature a relevant alternative possibility after all. When they don't have this intuition, they contend that there is some feature of the actual causal history of the action, such as the agent's causal determination, that undermines this intuition in a principled way. Leeway theorists have argued that the alternative-possibilities requirement can withstand the argument from Frankfurt examples. The chapter considers three objections to this argument: the Flicker of Freedom, Dilemma, and Timing defenses.
