ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author sketches Frankfurt’s argument against the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP) by presenting a counterexample that draws on the intuitions that led Frankfurt to reject PAP. The author presents the derivation of PAP from the Maxim, which he calls the Derivation. The author discusses objections to two inferences that are steps in the derivation, an inference from moral blameworthiness to wrongdoing and an inference from wrongdoing to the violation of a moral requirement. There are two crucial points about Frankfurt-pairs: it is crucial that: the agent is blameworthy in both cases in the pair; and the agent could not do anything other than she actually does in the second case in the pair, and the sense in which she ‘could not’ is the sense relevant to PAP. The chapter combines a new argument about ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ with arguments that appeared originally in David Copp, Defending the Principle of Alternate Possibilities: Blameworthiness and Moral Responsibility.
