Fahim Khan

Argument Analysis Paper

Traditional libertarianism holds the view that moral responsibility can exist if and

only if a moral agent also has true freedom of choice. This belief has been named (by

Harry Frankfurt) the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP). Freedom of choice

means that a person could have acted counterfactually to how he opted to act. In a

deterministic world, this is not possible because a person’s act is logically necessitated by

previous events. So, PAP is one big reason why libertarians believe that determinism, and

compatibilism, is false. Compatibilists have to refute PAP if they plan to advocate the

possibility of a deterministic world that also confers moral responsibility. Harry

Frankfurt, in his paper ‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility’ (1969), is the

first compatibilist to argue the feasibility of such an arrangement, and subsequently all

variations of this type of argument have been referred to as “Frankfurt-style arguments.”

There are arguments against PAP that are not Frankfurt-style. For example,

contemporary Daniel Dennett states that a person’s character can be morally defined even

though a person being what they are would not do otherwise than what their character

compels them to do. He gives the example of Martin Luther, who proclaimed, “Here I

stand. I can do no other.” Luther’s beliefs about Christianity were strong enough as to

make any other actions morally impossible. And, accepting determinism, we may say that

any other actions were physically impossible. Nevertheless, we are still inclined to

believe that Luther’s actions are morally attributable to him – this, at least, is what

Dennett concludes. Robert Kane refutes Dennett by saying that Luther must have had the

ability to do otherwise at some previous point in his life in order for him to be morally

responsible, because if Luther never had a choice between good and bad, then it would be

awkward to say that he was morally responsible for his actions while still not being

physically responsible for his actions. This kind of moral responsibility is not the kind

that we intuitively understand, in which the ultimate cause of an action would be where

moral responsibility is placed (certainly, if a criminal threatened an innocent person into

doing something immoral, the criminal would be held accountable and not the innocent).

Dennett’s example of Luther only weakens the connection between moral responsibility

and the ability to do otherwise, but does not eliminate it.

A stronger attack on PAP than Dennett’s attempt is given by Frankfurt-style

arguments. Classical Frankfurt-style arguments demonstrate that the actual ability to

otherwise is not necessary for moral responsibility – simply the belief that other actions

are possible is enough. Take, for example, the scenario proffered by John Locke: a man

might be locked in a room, but if he does not realize this and his decision to stay in the

room is made by only his own will, then we can say that the man’s decision can be

analyzed in terms of moral agency and responsibility without alternate possibilities being

needed. Frankfurt’s original argument adopts the style of Locke’s story, but places an

even greater restriction on the ability to do otherwise. He imagines a situation where a

man named Black wants another man named Jones to make a particular decision. If Jones

makes this decision on his own, Black does nothing, but if Jones is about to take an

alternate course of action, Black can interfere and force him to make the desired decision.

Although Jones may not be held morally responsible in the latter case, in the former case

it would seem that Jones is responsible because he chose to do what he did purely on his

own. Intent combined with action is enough for moral responsibility.

Frankfurt’s thesis has remained fairly robust in the face of criticism. For example,

one may object that Jones does have alternate possibilities to choose from – for Black to

force Jones to make the desired decision if the need arises, he must first interpret some

sign that indicates that Jones is going to do otherwise. If Jones has free choice over this

sign, he has either a chance of fooling Black or drawing a difference for an action that he

does because he wants to and an action that he does although he doesn’t want to. But here

we simply make the situation more complicated, but still controllable by Black because

all he has to do is make sure Jones can only show the sign Black intends to observe. And,

if Black has been controlling Jones in this way for the entirety of Jones’ life, then there is

no action that Jones could do that is not pre-approved by Black.

It should be noted that Frankfurt-style arguments are compatibilist arguments –

one presupposes determinism. There are ways to necessitate PAP, but so far only in

indeterministic situations. The purpose of the classical Frankfurt-style arguments is to

defend moral responsibility in a deterministic world, not to defend determinism itself, so

we may skip over such objections. Nevertheless, it is a shortcoming of Frankfurt-style

arguments that they require one to adopt determinism to work. “New” Frankfurt-style

arguments have been proposed that work to convince incompatibilists about the falsity of

PAP. These involve blockage of possibilities so that the ability to do otherwise is not

possible, while maintaining moral responsibility by allowing the person to choose the

option that has been predetermined to be chosen.

There is also another point of view that is very similar to the kind of

compatibilism and moral responsibility communicated by the Frankfurt-style arguments,

but rejects the idea that a person has to freely choose an option in order for that person to

be held morally responsible. This view is called semi-compatibilism, held most

prominently by philosopher John Martin Fischer. Fischer also rejects PAP, because his

belief is that one may have moral responsibility over an action without having to have

freely chosen the action (his idea of free choice requires alternative possibilities, and is

thus incompatible with determinism). The assumption is that responsibility requires free

choice, but Fischer argues that responsibility really only needs something called guidance

control. Guidance control is simply the kind of control where a person agrees with their

action e.g. a person is intending to go left while going left. This person would be morally

responsible for going left even if he really had no other choice but to go left because he

would have done the same thing even if he did have alternative choices – he agreed with

the act of going left. Fischer illustrates the importance of this by having us imagine if the

person had injured someone while going in his leftward path. If the person wanted to go

left, he should be held morally accountable, but if the person didn’t want to yet was going

left anyway, it would not be the fault of the person for having injured someone.

Frankfurt-style and semi-compatibilist arguments make a strong case for

determinists who want the ethical responsibilities and sense of free will that we strongly

and intuitively believe in. One may say that now the only reason to be a libertarian is if

one really wants alternative possibilities. But, if PAP is false, the issue of alternative

possibilities being real or not loses much of its value. However, while I believe that moral

responsibility is robust enough with Frankfurt-style and semi-compatibilist arguments to

allow for a system of ethics, I worry about the quality of morality itself in such a world as

Frankfurt and others imagine. In a deterministic world, it would seem that even a

person’s intentions are caused by events that are not necessarily of a moral character. So,

while Frankfurt argues that someone’s intention to either do or not do something that he

can’t help but do determines the person’s moral responsibility, if that person’s intention is

itself caused, how could he be responsible for his intention? Because it seems nonsensical

to expect someone to intend an intention, and a determinist might believe that the

intentions follow some unchanging set of laws. An indeterminist would probably not

believe this, but then it becomes difficult to attach moral responsibility to them since

morals are an unchanging set of laws (or so some would believe). We seem to still be

stuck in the Libertarian dilemma – where free will seems to be incompatible with both

determinism and indeterminism.