Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities

Many philosophers are convinced that incompatibilist accounts of free action have been shown to be inconsequential, since moral responsibility has been shown not to require incompatibilist freedom. For a principle other than principle of alternative possibilities (PAP) may well correctly link moral responsibility and alternative possibilities of a sort realizable only if indeterminism is true. This chapter argues against Harry Frankfurt's defeat of PAP, but rather to counter the view that Frankfurt-type cases summarily undercut PAP. In the Frankfurt case, Jones₄ seems to possess some kind of control as he acts, but it is a kind of control that does not involve control over which of two alternate available actions he performs. In Frankfurt-type cases, the counterfactual intervener rules out the alternative scenarios. The chapter concludes P-2 ought to replace PAP as the principle formulating the right relation between moral responsibility for action and alternative possibilities.