Timpe, K. (2007). Source Incompatibilism and Its Alternatives. American Philosophical Quarterly, 44(2), 143–155.
Key takeaways
- Mere alternatives cannot satisfy a control condition (the luck objection), so any acceptable incompatibilism must appeal to source, ultimacy or origination.
- “Narrow” source incompatibilists (Stump, Zagzebski, Hunt) require no alternatives at all; “wide” ones hold that ultimacy is fundamental but that some alternative-possibilities condition is also true. Timpe puts Kane and Pereboom among those who keep an alternatives condition while making the source condition more fundamental (p. 147).
- Ultimacy entails indeterminism, which entails some alternative, so the absence of every alternative suffices for failing the ultimacy condition. The alternatives entailed need not be robust or voluntary.
Why this is here
THEORY-316 states Pereboom’s view that Frankfurt-style cases defeat alternative-possibilities conditions but leave the causal-history condition standing as the more fundamental one, from a partial reading of Living without Free Will (LIT-1006, Unavailable). This paper argues that the causal-history condition itself entails an alternatives condition.