nucleation

LIT-1868: The Frankfurt Cases: The Moral of the Stories

1 min read

Properties4
StatusActive — read 2026-10-30 (NOTE-1457) in full, from the published PDF on andrewmbailey.com (https://andrewmbailey.com/jmf/Frankfurt_Cases_Moral_of_the_Stories.pdf), which the owner ruled a lawful copy on 2026-10-30. Worth reading as Fischer's reply to the Dilemma Defense: a deterministic Frankfurt case in which determinism and Black's device together, and neither alone, rule out alternatives, giving the conclusion that if determinism rules out responsibility it is not by eliminating alternative possibilities. Read it knowing that Fischer concedes causal determination may still matter, for instance by removing "sourcehood", and that Pereboom's buffer cases and Widerker's dilemma are reported, not argued in full.
Tagsfree-will, ethics, metaphysics
ExtendsLIT-694 — Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-1457 — Fischer — The Frankfurt Cases: The Moral of the Stories

Graph View

Fischer, J. M. (2010). The Frankfurt Cases: The Moral of the Stories. The Philosophical Review, 119(3), 315–336. doi:10.1215/00318108-2010-002.

Key takeaways

  • The lesson of the Frankfurt cases is conditional: if determinism rules out responsibility, it is not by eliminating alternatives. It does not by itself establish compatibilism.
  • A deterministic Frankfurt case need not beg the question: assume determinism, stay agnostic on whether it removes alternatives, and let determinism plus Black’s device remove them together.
  • What matters is robust alternatives; a mere flicker, such as showing a different involuntary sign, does not ground responsibility.
  • Fischer concedes that causal determination may matter to responsibility in another way, “lack of ‘sourcehood’” (p. 331).

Why this is here

THEORY-316 states Pereboom’s causal-history incompatibilism from a partial reading of Living without Free Will (LIT-1006, Unavailable) and waits on the rest of its Chapter 1 and on a reply from the leeway side. This paper reports Pereboom’s buffer case and Widerker’s dilemma, and is the compatibilist’s statement of what the cases do and do not show.

Backlinks