Source
Pereboom (2001), Living without Free Will, LIT-1006, read in part in NOTE-823: Chapter 1, “Two incompatibilist intuitions” and “Leeway vs. causal-history incompatibilism” (pp. 1–6), and the Introduction’s statement of the chapter’s thesis (p. xv). The pages are from Cambridge University Press’s published excerpt and front matter.
What was actually shown
An argument in two steps, the second resting on a concession from the other side.
Step 1: alternative possibilities fall. Principles (1) and (2) say an action is free in the sense responsibility requires only if the agent could have done, or chosen, otherwise. In Fischer’s case, Black’s device would have made Jones vote for Reagan had he shown an inclination to vote for Carter. Jones decides for Reagan on his own. He seems responsible, although he could not have done or chosen otherwise (pp. 2–3). Pereboom holds that any alternative-possibilities requirement “relevant to explaining why an agent is morally responsible … falls to counterexamples” (p. 1). The pages read state Widerker’s objection to this step and leave its answer for later.
Step 2: causal history survives. The case “does not specify that Jones’s action is causally determined”. Fischer concedes that the argument “leaves untouched the view that moral responsibility requires that one’s action not actually result from a deterministic causal process that traces back to factors beyond one’s control” (p. 3). Had Jones’s choice been specified as produced by “Martian neuroscientists”, “the intuition that he could be morally responsible might well fade away”. The factors that remove alternatives “need not be part of the actual causal history”. So condition (3) survives: “An action is free in the sense required for moral responsibility only if it is not produced by a deterministic process that traces back to causal factors beyond the agent’s control.”
Which is more fundamental. Condition (3) and Kane’s (U) express origination (O). The production of a decision must be something “over which the agent has control” (p. 4). Pereboom calls this “the most fundamental and plausible incompatibilist intuition”. It explains why determinism threatens responsibility, and why an uncaused decision would too (p. 5). The view is causal-history incompatibilism, as against leeway incompatibilism.
What could have come out otherwise: Step 2 depends on the intuition fading when determination by outside factors is specified. A reader whose intuition does not fade has a counterexample, which is the compatibilist’s position.
What this does not say
- Not that determinism rules out responsibility. Condition (3) is a necessary condition that “any incompatibilist should endorse” (p. 3). That it is true, against the compatibilist, is argued in Chapter 4 by the comparison with covert manipulation, which was not read.
- Not that every alternative-possibilities condition is false. Pereboom leaves open conditions “necessary for moral responsibility but nevertheless irrelevant to explaining why an agent is morally responsible” (p. 2). His own robust-alternative condition and his new Frankfurt-style case are on pp. 6–23, mostly unread.
- Not that Step 1 is secure. Widerker’s dilemma is stated as “a test for the effectiveness of any Frankfurt-style argument” (p. 10), and the answer lies past the pages read.
- Held at the strength of a partial reading, of an argument whose second step rests on an intuition and a concession, not a proof.
Connections
No relation is declared. None of the open questions asks which incompatibilist condition is fundamental.
- THEORY-119 holds that the principle of alternate possibilities is false by Frankfurt-style cases. This account accepts that, and adds that it leaves incompatibilism standing. The two do not conflict. They part where THEORY-119 joins Fischer’s compatibilist conclusion.
- THEORY-121 makes taking responsibility a historical condition on owning the mechanism. Condition (3) is a historical condition of a different kind: on the causes of the decision, not on the agent’s attitude to her mechanism.
- THEORY-040 asks whether any historical condition escapes the manipulation argument. Condition (3) is the incompatibilist’s, and an agent deterministically manipulated by outside factors fails it, so manipulation cases of that kind do not show it insufficient. Whether it is true, and not only consistent with the cases, is what Chapter 4 argues. Indeterministic manipulation is not discussed in the pages read.
Note of 2026-10-30: which alternative-possibilities conditions the title means
The title’s “defeat alternative-possibilities conditions” means principles (1) and (2), and any such condition “relevant to explaining why an agent is morally responsible” (p. 1), as the body says; it does not mean every such condition. Timpe (LIT-1867, read in NOTE-1459) argues that the incompatibilist’s ultimacy condition entails a weak, possibly non-robust alternatives condition that Frankfurt-style cases leave standing (p. 150), and counts Pereboom among those who keep one (p. 147). That agrees with Pereboom’s allowance of conditions “necessary for moral responsibility but nevertheless irrelevant to explaining why” (p. 2). It weighs on the title’s wording, not its thesis. Fischer (LIT-1868, read in NOTE-1457), writing after the book, again concedes the route Step 2 builds on: determinism may still undermine responsibility through “lack of ‘sourcehood’” (p. 331).
Note of 2026-10-30: what holds it back
Pereboom’s Chapter 1, pp. 10–37, where his new Frankfurt-style case is argued, is unread (LIT-1006 is Unavailable), and no reply from the leeway side has been read first-hand: Widerker and Goetz are known only through Fischer’s quotations (NOTE-1457), and Fischer and Timpe write from the compatibilist and source sides. Timpe’s argument runs from ultimacy to alternatives, so it is not the refuting argument the promote_when names.