Contribution
The paper makes two moves. It separates two things the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP) runs together: what makes an action unavoidable, and what brings it about. With the counterfactual-intervener case, it shows they can come apart. It then argues that only the second bears on responsibility, and proposes a replacement for PAP that keeps coercion and compulsion as excuses without making unavoidability an excuse in itself.
Key insight
An excuse works by explaining. “I could not have done otherwise” excuses when it tells us why the agent acted. When the factor that made the action unavoidable did no work, as with Black, it explains nothing, and “it seems quite gratuitous to assign it any weight in the assessment of his moral responsibility” (p. 837). Responsibility is therefore settled by the actual sequence that produced the action, not by the alternatives.
Assumptions
- No analysis of either concept. The two concepts PAP employs, “morally responsible” and “could have done otherwise”, are left unanalysed: “my Jolly Roger is now unfurled” (n. 1). The case is meant to work on any account of “could have done otherwise”: Black is to use “whatever measures” the reader thinks sufficient (p. 835).
- Moral intuitions about cases are evidence. The examples “tend to disconfirm” PAP (p. 830); the argument rests on the judgement that Jones4 is responsible.
- Black can predict the decision. This is secured by a sign, a twitch that precedes deciding on A and never deciding on B. It assumes a causal relation between the twitch and later states but “does not require that these earlier phases be deterministically related to still earlier events” (n. 3).
- A responsibility-relevant fact must figure in explaining the action (§V). This is the premise the dilemma defence later presses.
Key results
- §I The target (pp. 829–830). PAP: “a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise”. Some call it “an a priori truth”; “practically no one … seems inclined to deny or even to question” it. “But the principle of alternate possibilities is false.” Usual illustrations are cases in which “the same circumstances both bring it about that a person does something and make it impossible for him to avoid doing it” (coercion, hypnosis, inner compulsion). The paper looks for circumstances that make the action unavoidable “without them playing any role, indeed, in bringing it about” (p. 830).
- §§II–III Coercion (pp. 830–834). The doctrine that coercion
excludes responsibility “is not correctly understood … as a particularized
version” of PAP (p. 831). Three versions of a threatened Jones who had
already decided to do what is demanded:
- Jones1, unmoved by threats, is not coerced and keeps his responsibility; no counterexample to anything (pp. 831–832).
- Jones2, stampeded, acts “entirely because he was terrified”; his earlier decision “played no role”, so he is not responsible for the action (p. 832).
- Jones3 would have submitted to the threat, but acted “solely by the considerations that had originally commended the action to him”; “his moral responsibility for what he did [is] unaffected by the threat even though … he could not have avoided doing what he did” (pp. 832–833). Either Jones3 was not coerced, so coercion requires acting because of the threat, or he was, and “being coerced does not exclude being morally responsible”. Either way, “When we excuse a person who has been coerced, we do not excuse him because he was unable to do otherwise” (pp. 833–834).
- §IV The intervener (pp. 834–836). The objection that Jones3 could still have defied the threat is met by changing the example. Black waits until Jones4 “is about to make up his mind”; if Jones4 is going to decide otherwise, Black “takes effective steps”, by threat, potion, hypnosis or manipulation of “the minute processes of Jones4’s brain”, so “Whatever Jones4’s initial preferences and inclinations, then, Black will have his way” (p. 835). Jones4 decides “for reasons of his own” to do what Black wants; Black never shows his hand. “Jones4 will bear precisely the same moral responsibility … as he would have borne if Black had not been ready”; it would be “quite unreasonable to excuse Jones4 for his action, or to withhold the praise to which it would normally entitle him” (p. 836). “What action he performs is not up to him”, though “it is in a way up to him whether he acts on his own or as a result of Black’s intervention” (p. 836). Black may be replaced by a machine, or by “natural forces involving no will or design at all” (n. 4).
- §V Why PAP fails (pp. 836–838). Unavoidability is “a sufficient condition of his having done it” but “may play no role whatever in the explanation of why he did it” (p. 836). Then the circumstances “could have been subtracted from the situation without affecting what happened or why it happened in any way” (p. 837), and they give no ground for excuse. We accept “I could not have done otherwise” as an excuse “because we assume that what they tell us serves to explain why they did what they did” (pp. 837–838).
- §V The replacement (pp. 838–839). The first revision, not responsible “if he did it because he could not have done otherwise”, is rejected: given the incompatibilist reading of “could have done otherwise” it entails that “a person is not morally responsible for what he has done if it was causally determined that he do it” (p. 838). The proposal: “a person is not morally responsible for what he has done if he did it only because he could not have done otherwise”, that is, when “it was not because that was what he really wanted to do” (p. 838). It “does not appear to conflict with the view that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism” (pp. 838–839). An agent who acted because he could not do otherwise, but also because “it was what he really wanted to do”, may be responsible (p. 839).
Claims
| id | claim | strength | support |
|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | PAP is false: a person may be morally responsible for what he did though he could not have done otherwise | informal argument from a case | §IV (Black/Jones4), pp. 835–836 |
| C2 | Coercion excuses only when the agent acts because of it, so the coercion excuse is not an instance of PAP | informal argument from cases | §§II–III, Jones1–Jones3, pp. 831–834 |
| C3 | Circumstances can make an action unavoidable without playing any role in bringing it about | constructed case | §IV; the twitch (n. 3) secures the prediction; Black can be a machine or natural forces (n. 4) |
| C4 | A fact that plays no role in explaining an action carries no weight in assessing responsibility for it | informal argument (premise) | §V, p. 837 |
| C5 | The case holds for praise as well as blame | assertion, from the case | p. 836, “or to withhold the praise” |
| C6 | PAP should be replaced by: not responsible if one did it only because one could not have done otherwise | proposal, “briefly and without argument” (p. 830) | §V, p. 838 |
| C7 | The replacement does not appear to conflict with compatibilism about responsibility and determinism | assertion, hedged (“does not appear”) | pp. 838–839 |
Concepts
- The principle of alternate possibilities (PAP). “A person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise” (p. 829).
- Bringing about vs. making unavoidable. Circumstances that “constitute sufficient conditions for a certain action” may still not “actually impel the person to act or in any way produce his action” (p. 830). This is the distinction Frankfurt-style cases trade on.
- Coercion. A threat coerces only if it “is what actually accounts for his doing it” (p. 833).
- Acting “only because” one could not do otherwise. Acting because of the constraint and not because “that was what he really wanted to do” (p. 838).
Connections
- Robb’s SEP entry (LIT-294, NOTE-269). This is the paper Robb’s §3.4.3 reports through Fischer’s voting retelling. The original is schematic: “a certain action”, options A and B. Robb’s remark that the prior sign is “not always explicit in Frankfurt’s own FSCs” (§4.3.2) is true of the 1983 dormant-addiction case he quotes, but in this paper the sign is explicit, in n. 3. NOTE-269 recorded from general knowledge that the paper substitutes “only because”; that is confirmed, p. 838.
- McKenna and Coates’s SEP entry (LIT-291, NOTE-270). Their shooting version (§3.2) is their own “close approximation”. Their claim that the argument shows that the freedom determinism threatens “is not the kind of freedom required for moral responsibility” matches pp. 838–839.
- “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person” (LIT-692). It cites this paper (n. 9) and supplies what “what he really wanted to do” means here: acting from the will one wants.
- Fischer and Ravizza (LIT-687, LIT-684), unread. By the SEP’s report their guidance control starts from this paper’s lesson that responsibility lies in the actual sequence. The paper’s own replacement principle is not reasons-responsiveness: it puts the excusing condition in the agent’s motive (“only because”, not “what he really wanted”).
- Wolf, “Asymmetrical Freedom” (LIT-688), unread. See Bearing.
Bearing on the record
- THEORY-119 is the account filed from this reading, with Robb’s objections, and this paper is its primary source.
- THEORY-121 (Fischer and Ravizza). Its Frankfurt-case basis is now first-hand. The case’s moral, that only the actual sequence matters, is this paper’s §V; the move to reasons-responsive mechanisms is not in it.
- THEORY-118 (Wolf’s asymmetry). C5 matters. Frankfurt applies the case to “excuse” and to “withhold the praise” in the same sentence, and says nothing about whether the action is good or bad, so the paper claims the symmetric result. Wolf’s view, as reported, is that PAP fails for praise and holds for blame. This paper does not argue against her, and her 1980 article answers it (if at all) unread.
- THEORY-040 is not engaged. Black’s means include direct manipulation, but only in the alternative sequence, so manipulation is never actual here.
- No ML-practice content; nothing belongs in the Anthology.
Limitations
- One case, one intuition. C1 rests on the judgement that Jones4 is responsible. No argument is given for it beyond that “everything happened just as it would have happened without Black’s presence” (p. 836).
- The prior sign opens the dilemma. The twitch precedes the decision and is causally related to it (n. 3). Whether it is a deterministic sign is left open, which is exactly what the later dilemma defence exploits (LIT-294, §4.3); the paper does not anticipate the defence.
- Flickers are not addressed. Jones4 still could have shown the sign and acted on Black’s intervention rather than “on his own”, which the paper concedes is “in a way up to him” (p. 836) but does not treat as an alternative that might matter.
- The replacement is offered “briefly and without argument” (p. 830). “What he really wanted to do” is not analysed, and the claim that it is compatible with determinism is hedged (“does not appear to conflict”).
- The text read is an OCR of a scan. All quotations above were checked against the page image or the reprint; the subscripts on Jones are the reprint’s.
Open questions
- Does the case survive the dilemma defence: if the twitch determines the decision, is Jones4 responsible on libertarian terms; if it does not, does Jones4 have a robust alternative (LIT-294, §4.3)?
- What exactly is “what he really wanted to do”? The 1971 paper’s answer is the will he wants (LIT-692, p. 19); whether that is the condition this paper intends is not said here.
- Is the result symmetric for blame and praise, as p. 836 says, against Wolf’s asymmetry?