Contribution
It restates Frankfurt-style compatibilism after the Dilemma Defense and answers it on both horns. The new part is the deterministic horn: an earlier argument of Fischer’s assumed that Black’s device by itself removed Jones’s alternatives, which the critics showed false, and here he gives a case in which determinism and the device remove them only together, so the device is not idle. It also states plainly what the cases are for: a conditional, not compatibilism.
Key insight
“If causal determinism rules out moral responsibility, it is not in virtue of eliminating alternative possibilities” (p. 318). The cases isolate alternatives as irrelevant; they leave every other route from determinism to non-responsibility open, sourcehood among them.
Assumptions
- Robustness. Only alternatives “sufficiently robust to ground attributions of moral responsibility” matter (pp. 321–322); a flicker, such as an involuntary sign, does not (p. 326).
- Agnosticism, then its relaxation. Section IV.1 assumes determinism but takes “no stand about whether causal determinism eliminates genuine metaphysical access to alternative possibilities” (p. 325), the stance of semicompatibilism. Section IV.2 drops it.
- The necessary-condition conditional. “If Jones were to choose at t2 to vote for McCain, he would have (say) furrowed his right brow by t1” must be true in the case (p. 326).
- Irrelevance is judged by intuition. That Black’s device is irrelevant to Jones’s responsibility is taken as clear (p. 330).
Key results
- The case (p. 316). Black’s chip would make Jones decide for Obama if he showed any inclination otherwise; Jones decides for Obama on his own.
- The Dilemma Defense (pp. 319–321). Kane, Widerker, Ginet, Wyma, Goetz, Pereboom and Palmer (n. 8). Indeterministic horn: the prior sign cannot guarantee the choice, so an alternative remains. Deterministic horn: assuming determinism begs the question, and, with Goetz, it is determinism, not Black, that removes the alternative, so Black “drops out”. Goetz is quoted: “if Jones is not free to choose otherwise, it is because of the occurrence of causal determinism in the actual sequence of events and not because of Black’s device in the alternative sequence” (Goetz 2005, 85).
- Indeterministic horn (pp. 321–323). Buffer cases (Hunt; Pereboom, Living without Free Will, “esp. 18–28”) set a necessary condition for choosing otherwise, such as having a certain thought by a certain time, that is not itself robust enough to ground responsibility, and let Black’s device trigger on it. Footnote 15 describes Pereboom’s “Tax Evasion”: “the necessary condition for not deciding to evade taxes, that is, the specified level of attentiveness to the moral reasons”, is one whose absence “at any specific time is compatible with both Joe’s deciding to evade taxes and with his not deciding to evade taxes”. “The jury is still out” on this horn, but it is not enough to point to some residual alternative (p. 323).
- The earlier argument fails (pp. 324–325). Fischer’s previous premise, that Black’s device in itself and apart from determinism removes alternatives, is false. “I accept the criticism.”
- The new argument (pp. 325–329). (1) Assume determinism and the case. (2) Determinism is not assumed in itself to remove alternatives, nor is Black. (3) Determinism plus Black removes Jones’s freedom at t2 to choose otherwise. (4) If Jones is not responsible, it is not because he was not free to choose otherwise. (5) “If causal determinism rules out Jones’s moral responsibility for his choice at t2, it is not in virtue of its eliminating alternative possibilities (if in fact it does eliminate alternative possibilities)” (p. 328). With Black, the Republican sign would trigger intervention; without him nothing rules out the alternative (p. 329).
- From 3 to 4 (pp. 330–331). Claim C: that determinism and Black together remove Jones’s alternatives is irrelevant to his responsibility, though determinism itself may be relevant. The analogy: two medicines needed together both cure a disease (through substance S) and raise the temperature, which does nothing for the cure. “It may be that causal determination also issues in lack of ‘sourcehood,’ in a sense relevant to moral responsibility” (p. 331).
- A buffer case, or a deterministic one? (pp. 326–327). Fischer grants his case may be a special case of the buffer strategy and may not need determinism (a point he credits to Pereboom, n. 19). A deterministic version is useful because some hold responsibility requires determinism, and because the necessary-condition conditionals are easier to defend under determinism. Note 20: a case with determinism in the actual sequence sidesteps Goetz’s “drops out”, and “nothing that Pereboom or Hunt say about the Buffer Cases can explain why this is so (I thank Derk Pereboom for this generous point)”.
- Without agnosticism (pp. 331–333). Granting that determinism removes alternatives, the same argument runs, since nothing in it uses the incompatibilist assumption, and one explanation of Jones’s inability need not crowd out another, as mechanistic and belief–desire explanations coexist (Dennett). Haji and McKenna’s restriction of the cases to uncommitted audiences is “a gratuitous concession”.
- Widerker (pp. 333–335). Widerker’s IRR: “There may be circumstances in which a person performs some action which although they make it impossible for him to avoid performing that action, they in no way bring it about that he performs it” (Widerker 1995, 248), on which Frankfurt’s case “depends crucially” (248–49). His dilemma: either the truth of the prior-sign conditional “is grounded in some fact that is causally sufficient … for Jones’s decision”, and the case is not an IRR case, or it is not, and “it is hard to see how Jones’s decision is unavoidable” (251). Fischer: the case against PAP does not need IRR, which would rule out every deterministic version ex ante.
- Conclusion (pp. 335–336). The Dilemma Defense is dead: deterministic Frankfurt cases need not beg the question and give Black a real role. Responsibility is “a matter of how I walk down the path of life, rather than selection from among a suite of available options.”
Claims
| id | claim | strength | support |
|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | The moral of the Frankfurt cases is conditional: if determinism rules out responsibility, it is not by eliminating alternatives | moderate | the five-step argument (p. 328), resting on Claim C and intuition about Black |
| C2 | A deterministic Frankfurt case can be built in which determinism and Black’s device remove alternatives only together | moderate | the agnostic case (pp. 325–329); depends on the necessary-condition conditional |
| C3 | The step from “determinism plus Black removes alternatives” to “lack of alternatives is irrelevant” does not beg the question | weak to moderate | the two-medicines analogy (pp. 330–331) |
| C4 | The argument runs unchanged if determinism is granted to remove alternatives | weak to moderate | that no premise uses the assumption, and that explanations need not exclude each other (pp. 331–333) |
| C5 | Buffer cases are promising on the indeterministic horn, but the jury is out | as stated | sketch only (pp. 322–323) |
| C6 | A Frankfurt case need not satisfy Widerker’s IRR | moderate | IRR would exclude deterministic versions ex ante (p. 334) |
| C7 | Causal determination may still undermine responsibility through lack of sourcehood | conceded, not argued | p. 331 |
Concepts
- PAP — “An agent is morally responsible for performing a given act A only if he or she could have done otherwise” (p. 316).
- Dilemma Defense — either determinism holds in the case, and the case begs the question or Black drops out, or it does not, and Black cannot remove every alternative (pp. 319–321).
- Robust alternative — one whose availability could plausibly ground responsibility; a flicker of freedom is not one (pp. 321–322, 326).
- Buffer case — a case with a necessary condition for doing otherwise, not itself robust, on which the intervener triggers, and whose absence at any one time is not sufficient for the action (n. 15).
- Semicompatibilism — “the claim that causal determinism is compatible with moral responsibility, quite apart from whether causal determinism eliminates access to alternative possibilities” (p. 325).
- IRR — Widerker’s thesis that circumstances can make an action unavoidable without bringing it about (p. 333).
Connections
It extends Frankfurt 1969 (LIT-694), and argues for the thesis THEORY-119 states, that an agent can be responsible though she could not have done otherwise. The record’s Fischer and Ravizza readings (LIT-687, LIT-728) and THEORY-121’s guidance control are the positive account this paper’s last sentence gestures at. THEORY-316 states Pereboom’s view, which Fischer names as the “source” alternative (p. 317, n. 6) and whose buffer case he takes up.
Bearing on the record
- THEORY-316, partly; it does not meet the promote_when. That asks for a first-hand reading of Pereboom’s Chapter 1, pp. 10–37, where his new Frankfurt-style case is argued, and for a checked reply from the leeway side. This paper gives neither: it describes Pereboom’s “Tax Evasion” (book pp. 18–28) in one footnote without quoting it, and it reports Widerker’s dilemma only to answer it. What it does give: the leading compatibilist, writing after Pereboom’s book, defends Step 1 of THEORY-316 on both horns of the Dilemma Defense, and again concedes what Step 2 builds on, that the cases leave open that determinism undermines responsibility by another route, “lack of ‘sourcehood’” (p. 331). It also reports that Pereboom himself pointed out that a deterministic case avoids Goetz’s objection where buffer cases cannot (n. 20). It neither confirms nor refutes the claim that the causal-history condition is the more fundamental one.
- THEORY-119, that the principle of alternate possibilities is false by Frankfurt-style cases, is supported: this is the fullest statement in the record of why the Dilemma Defense does not defeat it, though “the jury is still out” on the indeterministic horn.
- No instruction for machine-learning practice; nothing for the anthology.
Limitations
- The deterministic case rests on intuition that Black’s device is irrelevant, and on the necessary-condition conditional, which a libertarian may deny under indeterminism, as Fischer says (p. 327).
- The indeterministic horn is sketched, and the buffer cases are described, not defended.
- What the paper does not claim: it does not establish compatibilism, and says so (pp. 317–318).
- Second hand for Pereboom and Widerker. Their arguments are known here through Fischer’s descriptions and short quotations.
Open questions
- Does Pereboom’s “Tax Evasion”, read first-hand, remove every robust alternative without assuming determinism, as Fischer reports?
- Can a leeway incompatibilist hold that the alternative removed in the deterministic case is robust after all?