ABSTRACT
This chapter is an exercise in applied Frankfurtianism. At the heart of Frankfurt’s argument lies a peculiar kind of counterexample. The best-known of these counterexamples (call it ‘BSJ’ after its three principals, Black, Smith and Jones). Two judgments about BSJ are integral to Frankfurt’s argument. One is that Jones is unable to refrain from killing Smith. Conditions are such that either Jones will kill Smith on his own or the device will make him do it; there is no third possibility at least none that Jones can actualize by his own efforts. So Jones has no alternative to killing Smith. The other judgment is that Jones may nevertheless remain morally responsible for killing Smith. The Frankfurt objection misrepresents the situation in one respect, however. Its reliance on Frankfurt’s critique of PAP, for purposes of defeating the argument for theological fatalism, looks initially like a case in which developments in the metaphysics of freedom provide succor to crisis in philosophical theology.
