Further thoughts about a Frankfurt-style argument

Abstract

I have presented a Frankfurt-style argument (Pereboom 2000, 2001, 2003) against the requirement of robust alternative possibilities for moral responsibility that features an example, Tax Evasion, in which an agent is intuitively morally responsible for a decision, has no robust alternative possibilities, and is clearly not causally determined to make the decision. Here I revise the criterion for robustness in response to suggestions by Dana Nelkin, Jonathan Vance, and Kevin Timpe, and I respond to objections to the argument by Carlos Moya and David Widerker, in the process of which I refine the Tax Evasion example.

Keywords:

• moral responsibility
• alternative possibilities
• source
• leeway

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the audience at the Workshop on Belief, Responsibility, and Action in Valencia, and in particular to my respondent Miriam Hoyo, for a lively and helpful discussion. Thanks in addition to Dana Nelkin, David Widerker, Carlos Moya, Carl Ginet, Jonathan Vance, and Kevin Timpe for highly valuable comments.

Notes

Kevin Timpe defended such a condition in the presentation of his paper “How Troublesome is Tracing” at the Responsibility, Agency, and Persons conference at the University of San Francisco in October, 2007.

Jonathan Vance made this point in conversation, and Kevin Timpe argued for it in his presentation at the conference in San Francisco in October 2007 (see the previous note).

What follows is a reply to one of Widerker's two criticisms of the Tax Evasion argument; the second is a timing concern that echoes Carl Ginet's criticisms (1996, 2002), to which I respond in (2001: 28–33) and in (2005). I also discuss Widerker's objections in Pereboom (2008). An example of a principle of alternative possibilities: Agent S performs action A at t freely in the sense required for moral responsibility for A only if S could have avoided performing A at t.

So I might well endorse some version of a principle of alternative possibilities.