NOTE-269: Moral Responsibility and the Principle of Alternative Possibilities

Contribution

The entry is a structured survey of PAP.

• Setting (§1). Why PAP matters: universal alternative-blockers (bivalence, foreknowledge, determinism), and its role in law. It adopts a Strawsonian (reactive-attitude) view of responsibility, and it separates PAP from the stronger Freedom Condition.
• Positive arguments (§2). Self-evidence; ordinary excuses; action requiring alternatives (agent-causalism); and moral arguments (fairness, OIC, W-defense).
• Counterexamples (§3).
  • Irrelevance of determinism to practice.
  • Compelled-but-willing action.
  • Volitional necessity, with “tracing” (PAP-historical) as the standard repair.
  • “Inevitability without causation”: foreknowledge, Locke’s prisoner and FSCs.
• Objections to FSCs (§4).
• What follows if PAP is false (§5). Re-energised compatibilism; incompatibilism without PAP (the Direct Argument, source incompatibilism); and replacement principles for actions, consequences and omissions.

Key insight

Frankfurt’s recipe (quoted from 1983: 322) is to “conceive circumstances which make it inevitable that a person will perform some action but which do not bring it about that he performs it.” If responsibility survives such circumstances, then lacking alternatives is not what excuses in the ordinary cases. Whatever does excuse must be found in the actual sequence: how the action was produced, as in identification (Frankfurt) or reasons-responsive guidance control (Fischer & Ravizza). It is not found in what the agent could have done.

Assumptions

The premises and authorities the entry works from:

• Responsibility is Strawsonian. Being responsible means being a proper object of reactive attitudes (§1.2). Ultimate responsibility is set aside.
• Actions are the main object (§1.2). Consequences and omissions are deferred to §5.3.
• No theory of ability is adopted. Ability judgments are context-sensitive and graded (§1.3).
• Tracing is built in. After §3.3, “PAP” means PAP-historical: the principle is also satisfied if the character one acted from was partly produced by earlier actions for which one had alternatives. So test cases are about direct responsibility.
• Epistemic conditions are bracketed (preamble). The entry itself concedes in §5.3.1 that this separation does not hold cleanly.

Key results

What the entry argues or reports.

• §2 Arguments for PAP.
  • PAP is not self-evident: the Stoics, Augustine, Aquinas and Hobbes dissent, and there are the “early efforts of Frankfurt (1969), Fischer (1982), and Dennett (1984a,b)”.
  • Ordinary excuses (compulsion, manipulation) confound lack of alternatives with other missing capacities (Wallace 1994).
  • The agent-causal argument needs two contested premises.
  • Fairness arguments are entangled with the reactive attitudes.
  • The OIC argument reaches blameworthiness only, not praiseworthiness (Frankfurt 1983). So does the W-defense (Widerker 2003).
• §3.2 Compelled but willing.
  • The Stoic dog tied to a cart.
  • The willing addict: “responsible for taking the drug, even if he couldn’t do otherwise (Frankfurt 1971…)”. This is limited: it is really overdetermination by a responsibility-undermining factor.
• §3.3 Volitional necessity (Frankfurt 1982). Luther’s “I can do no other” is a prima facie counterexample. The replies are Reid on Cato, and tracing, formulated as PAP-historical after Mele 1999: 282.
• §3.4.3 FSCs.
  • Frankfurt 1983: 322–3, the dormant addiction. An agent takes a drug on his own. An addiction he does not know about would have made him take it anyway, but it “plays no role in bringing about his decision or his act”.
  • Frankfurt 1969, in Fischer 1982: 26. Black’s implant would force Jones to vote Republican if Jones showed an inclination otherwise. Jones decides on his own, and “Frankfurt claims that Jones is responsible… regardless of the fact that he could not have done otherwise”. Frankfurt credits Nozick’s unpublished lectures.
  • Two advantages over earlier cases: no factor compels the action; and the decision itself is inevitable, which avoids Locke’s staying/deciding conflation.
• §4.1 Too unusual.
  • PAP-ordinary (O’Connor 2005 and others) restricts the principle to ordinary circumstances.
  • Reply: FSCs such as the dual-control driving instructor (Fischer & Ravizza 1998: 32), or foreknowledge if theism is true, are not exotic. More fundamentally, a coherent FSC shows the tie between responsibility and alternatives is contingent.
• §4.2.1 General abilities. PAP-general: Frankfurt agents keep the general ability to do otherwise, and determinism does not remove it (the “new dispositionalists”). Open: whether PAP-general faces analogous counterexamples, and whether general ability is the traditional requirement.
• §4.2.2 Flickers of freedom.
  • The weak version: Jones could have shown an inclination.
  • The stronger version (Naylor 1984, van Inwagen 1978, Rowe 1987): Jones could have refrained from voting Republican on his own.
  • Fischer’s reply (1994: 140–7): such alternatives are not “robust”, because in the alternative sequence Black, not Jones, acts.
  • Counter-replies: a flicker may indicate indeterminism (Mele 1996; Della Rocca 1998; Ekstrom 2000), or refraining may itself count as a doing (Alvarez 2009; Steward 2009, 2012a).
• §4.3 The dilemma (Kane 1985, 1996; Widerker 1995; Ginet 1996; Wyma 1997). Either the prior sign (Pro-R) determines the choice, so the libertarian will not grant responsibility, or it does not, so Jones has a robust alternative. Replies:
  • First horn: Black is causally idle, and a causally isolated factor cannot be relevant to responsibility, so even if Jones is not responsible, his lack of alternatives is not why (Fischer 1999: 113; cp. Frankfurt 2003).
  • Second horn: Pereboom’s “Tax Evasion” buffer case (2001: 19); Hunt’s blockage (2000, 2003); Mele & Robb 1998. The worry is that blockage collapses into determination (O’Connor, Ekstrom, Ginet, Kane, Timpe). Stump 1996 is flagged as “important” but not discussed.
• §5.1 Compatibilism re-energised? Without PAP, the compatibilist can reject P2 of the incompatibilist argument. But determinism’s actual (not counterfactual) way of blocking alternatives may still threaten responsibility (Frankfurt 1969; Blumenfeld 1971; Fischer 1982; Speak 2007). Two compatibilist answers:
  • Frankfurt (1971) “and others”. The responsible agent “identifies with the motives that cause him to act”. Luther identifies with his conscience; the willing addict “endorses the addiction”. Cases that were earlier counterexamples to PAP become “benign necessitation”; “as long as the agent endorses (or at least does not reject) these processes, they needn’t preclude responsibility”. This works if such an account “can be independently defended”.
  • Fischer & Ravizza. Reasons-responsive mechanisms; guidance control versus regulative control.
• §5.2 Incompatibilism without PAP. The Direct Argument (van Inwagen 1980), whose transfer principle FSCs may refute; and source incompatibilism (Stump 1990; Klein 1990; Pereboom; Zagzebski 2000).
• §5.3 Replacement principles.
  • PAP-significant (McKenna 2003), which itself falls to an FSC.
  • PAP-consequences (van Inwagen 1978): it survives FSCs if consequences are universals, but faces Rowe 1989’s train case. Frankfurt 1983 dissents on responsibility for consequences.
  • PAP-omissions: the asymmetry claim (Fischer & Ravizza 1991, later retracted), versus Frankfurt 1994 and others, who hold that PAP and PAP-omissions fall together. Robb’s own FSC for omissions is the lifeguard with a dormant paralysing fear.

What the entry attributes to the paywalled originals

• Frankfurt 1969 (“Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility”):

  • PAP as the target (preamble, “cp.”);
  • an early attack on PAP (§2.1);
  • the Black/Jones-type case, credited to Nozick’s lectures (§3.4.3, pp. 835–836 via Fischer 1982: 26); per Robb, the prior sign is “not always explicit in Frankfurt’s own FSCs” (§4.3.2);
  • that determinism may still threaten responsibility through its actual blocking of alternatives (§5.1).

  The case is not quoted verbatim, and the revised principle is not given.

• Frankfurt 1971 (“Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person”):

  • the willing addict is responsible though unable to do otherwise (§3.2);
  • responsibility as identification with, or endorsement of (or at least non-rejection of), the motives that cause one’s action, which makes necessitation that runs through one’s own deliberation compatible with responsibility (§5.1).

  Not given: the hierarchy, second-order volitions, wantons, persons, freedom of will vs. action.

• Frankfurt 1976, 1987, 1992, 1994 (autonomy papers); Watson 1975; Bratman 1996/2004: not cited.

  • The “Frankfurt 1994” that the entry does cite is a different paper, “An Alleged Asymmetry Between Actions and Omissions” (Ethics 104), not “Autonomy, Necessity, and Love”.
  • Watson appears only as Watson 1996 (“Two Faces of Responsibility”) on fairness (§2.4).

• Other Frankfurt, cited:

  • 1982, “The Importance of What We Care About”: volitional necessity (§3.3).
  • 1983, “What We Are Morally Responsible For”: the recipe, p. 322; the dormant addiction, pp. 322–3; OIC does not cover praise (§2.4); dissent on responsibility for consequences (§5.3.2).
  • 2003, “Some Thoughts Concerning PAP”: cp. the first-horn reply (§4.3.2).

Claims

id	claim	strength	support
C1	PAP is not self-evident	informal argument	§2.1: the historical dissenters and the modern controversy
C2	Moral arguments for PAP (OIC, W-defense) at most cover blameworthy action	informal argument	§2.4; OIC cannot grip praiseworthy action (Frankfurt 1983 cited)
C3	Volitional-necessity cases do not refute PAP once it is given a tracing (historical) clause	informal argument	§3.3; PAP-historical after Mele 1999: 282; standard since Aristotle
C4	FSCs are counterexamples to PAP: the inevitability-making factor is causally idle, and the decision itself is inevitable	second-hand report of the Frankfurt/Fischer argument	§3.4.3; quoted from Frankfurt 1983: 322–3 and Fischer 1982: 26; Robb presents it without endorsing it
C5	Flickers of freedom are not robust enough to ground responsibility	second-hand report, contested	§4.2.2; Fischer 1994: 140–7, with counter-replies reported
C6	The dilemma defence: no FSC can secure both responsibility and the absence of alternatives	second-hand report, contested	§4.3.1; replies in §4.3.2 (Fischer, Pereboom, Hunt, Mele & Robb) and critics of those replies are listed; Robb takes no side
C7	”Not much consensus” has emerged on PAP	assertion (the author’s assessment)	§5
C8	Frankfurt 1971’s identification view is one of two main compatibilist accounts of responsibility after PAP	second-hand report	§5.1; a single paragraph; conditional on the view being “independently defended”
C9	Even without PAP, determinism’s actual blocking of alternatives may preclude responsibility	second-hand report	§5.1; cited to Frankfurt 1969, Blumenfeld 1971, Fischer 1982, Speak 2007
C10	An FSC can be built against PAP-omissions (the lifeguard with dormant fear)	informal argument (the author’s own case)	§5.3.3

Concepts

• PAP. “A person is morally responsible for what she has done only if she could have done otherwise.” There are several variants:
  • PAP-ultimate: the same for ultimate responsibility.
  • PAP-historical: the tracing clause.
  • PAP-ordinary: restricted to ordinary circumstances.
  • PAP-general: stated in terms of general abilities.
  • PAP-significant: McKenna’s.
  • PAP-consequences: responsibility for consequences.
  • PAP-omissions: responsibility for omissions.
• Freedom Condition. Responsible only if one acted freely. This is stronger than PAP (§1.4).
• Frankfurt-style case (FSC). A counterfactual intervener or condition makes the action inevitable without contributing to it (§3.4.3).
• Volitional necessity. Being unable to will otherwise because of one’s own values (§3.3, Frankfurt 1982).
• Tracing. Responsibility derived from earlier actions for which one had alternatives (§3.3).
• Flicker of freedom / robustness. A minimal alternative, and the requirement that alternatives be ones in which the agent acts (§4.2.2).
• Dilemma defence; buffer case; blockage (§4.3).
• Regulative vs. guidance control. Control that requires alternatives, versus control through a reasons-responsive actual sequence (§5.1).
• Benign necessitation. Robb’s label for necessitation through the agent’s own endorsed deliberation, in Frankfurt’s identification view (§5.1).

Connections

• Within this batch.
  • The SEP “Personal Autonomy” entry (Buss & Westlund) and the IEP “Autonomy” entry (Dryden). They carry the other half of Frankfurt 1971: hierarchy, identification and the regress. What this entry calls Frankfurt’s identification account of responsibility (§5.1) is what Buss & Westlund call “strict coherentism”, on which a willing addict is autonomous (§2). Both entries treat the willing addict the same way. Robb adds the explicit bridge: once alternatives are shown irrelevant (FSCs), responsibility needs an actual-sequence condition, and identification is one candidate.
  • Velleman’s two papers. They press whether identification can supply the agent’s participation that such an actual-sequence account needs.
  • Frankfurt’s Tanner Lectures. Volitional necessity reappears there.
• Adaptive preferences (LIT-202). Per NOTE-144, Pettigrew uses a Frankfurt-style actualist point: what counts for the effectiveness of consent is how a preference was actually formed, not how it would otherwise have been formed. That is exactly §5.1’s actual-sequence lesson, applied to preference formation.
• Divine foreknowledge. §3.4.1 treats foreknowledge as following Frankfurt’s recipe (Hunt). No work in the record treats this.
• Anthology of the SOTA. No ANTH document mentions PAP, Frankfurt or moral responsibility.

Bearing on the record

• No THEORY in the record bears on this. If one is written on hierarchical agency, this entry supports only the claim that Frankfurt’s 1969 argument motivated an actual-sequence account of responsibility, with identification (1971) as one such account. It is the record’s source for the FSC literature (dilemma, flickers, buffers, blockage) up to 2020.
• No ML-practice content. Nothing belongs in the Anthology. The one distant echo is the actual-sequence versus counterfactual contrast, which parallels actual versus counterfactual causation in attribution work. The entry says nothing of machines, and that is an analogy only.
• For filing. agency first (control, ability to do otherwise, action); ethics (moral responsibility, blame, praise); metaphysics (determinism, abilities, agent causation, the Consequence and Direct Arguments). religion is not justified: divine foreknowledge is one subsection (§3.4.1) used as a test case.

Note of 2026-10-16: THEORY-119 and THEORY-121 now cite LIT-294 as a source.

Limitations

• It does not reproduce the 1969 text. The Black/Jones case is Fischer’s retelling, and Frankfurt’s own replacement principle is not stated.
• The link between FSCs and the hierarchical account is one paragraph (§5.1). Nothing is said about how endorsement is analysed, about the regress, or about manipulation cases against identification. Manipulation is discussed only as an ordinary excuse (§2.2).
• It is deliberately non-committal. On the central disputes (flickers, dilemma, blockage) it lists positions and critics without adjudicating. Stump 1996 is flagged as important and not discussed.
• The literature coverage ends in about 2019. It is a single-author entry with no revision since 2020.
• Epistemic conditions are bracketed at the outset, and the entry itself shows (§5.3.1) that they cannot be kept separate.

Open questions

• Does any FSC survive the dilemma without its blockage collapsing into determination (§4.3.2)?
• Is the robustness requirement on alternatives principled, or does a refraining-as-doing flicker suffice (§4.2.2)?
• If PAP falls, does Frankfurt’s identification condition give an independently defensible account of responsibility? §5.1 makes compatibilism’s success conditional on this, and the autonomy entries in this batch argue that identification faces manipulation and regress problems.
• Do responsibility for actions and responsibility for omissions stand or fall together (§5.3.3)?

Corrections to the seeded skim

• none (there was no seed or dossier)
• The scoping report’s pointer (“§3.4.3 ‘Frankfurt-Style Cases’ and §4, objections”) is right, but the Frankfurt–hierarchy link is elsewhere.
  • It is in §3.2: the willing addict, cited to Frankfurt 1971.
  • It is in §3.3: volitional necessity, cited to Frankfurt 1982.
  • Above all it is in §5.1, where identification with one’s motives is presented as one of two compatibilist accounts of responsibility after PAP’s fall.
  • No section mentions second-order desires or volitions, wantons or persons. §5.1 compresses the 1971 theory to “the morally responsible agent is one who identifies with the motives that cause him to act” and “endorses (or at least does not reject)” them.
• The 1969 case is given in Fischer’s version, not Frankfurt’s. The Black/Jones voting case is quoted from Fischer 1982: 26, with “cp. Frankfurt 1969: 835–836”. The only Frankfurt text quoted verbatim is from the 1983 paper (“What We Are Morally Responsible For”, pp. 322–3): the recipe and the dormant-addiction case. So the entry does not show what the 1969 paper itself says. It also never states the revised principle Frankfurt 1969 is commonly reported to substitute for PAP, that a person is not responsible if he did it only because he could not have done otherwise. (That report is from general knowledge and is not verified here.)
• One attribution to the 1969 paper cuts the other way. §5.1 cites Frankfurt 1969, with Blumenfeld 1971, Fischer 1982 and Speak 2007, for the claim that “even without the help of PAP, determinism may still preclude responsibility due to the way it blocks alternatives”. A reader who knows Frankfurt only as the compatibilist in §5.1 may not expect this. Whether the 1969 paper leaves the determinism question open in that way cannot be checked here.
• Naming. The entry says “Alternative Possibilities”. Frankfurt’s 1969 title, per the bibliography, is “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility”.