Alternative Possibilities and Frankfurt Cases 119which will explode at t4, which he knows will kill Victim instantaneously.
Imagine that factors beyond Adam’s causal reach causally determine him to
decide to push the button in order to kill him, and so to decide at some precise
time t1. The leeway incompatibilist will maintain that Adam is not blamewor-
thy for making the decision at t1 to kill his victim. But now suppose that
factors beyond Adam’s causal reach causally determine him so to decide, but
so that it is up to him at which instant during a short interval, beginning at t0
up to and including t3, he makes the decision to push the button. The bomb
will explode at t4 no matter which of these instants he makes the decision.
Filling out the story, factors beyond Adam’s causal reach causally determine
him to have a desire to kill Victim so powerful that he will inevitably make
this decision at some time in this interval. Adam first has this desire just before
t0, and it would persist to t3 were he not to decide before then, and this desire
would not alter in strength during the interval. This last instant, t3, is the dead-
line because Adam believes, correctly, that the bomb is rigged to explode if he
decides any later. Adam understands that at which of these instants he decides
makes no difference morally, and as a result he is indifferent among them.
Suppose he decides at t1. Given incompatibilist sensibilities, leeway or source,
he will not be blameworthy for deciding at t1 to kill Victim. Rather, he is in a
morally neutral sense responsible for deciding at t1 rather than at another
instant in the interval.
(^) The reason the leeway incompatibilist must give for Adam’s not being blame-
worthy for deciding at t1 is that he has no (robust) alternative possibility relative
to making his decision by t3. According to the leeway incompatibilist it must be
the unavailability of some alternative possibility that explains why he is not
blameworthy for his choice. In this case, causal determination excludes Adam’s
blameworthiness, and our leeway incompatibilist holds that, in general, causal
determination rules out blameworthiness because it precludes alternative possib-
ilities. The only credible explanation for Adam’s not being blameworthy is the
unavailability of an alternative to making the decision by t3, and consequently,
according to the leeway incompatibilist this unavailability would have to be suf-
ficient for his not being blameworthy at t1.
We can now draw the following consequence from Adam’s case for Jones’s
situation in Tax Cut. The leeway incompatibilist won’t be able to support the
contention that Jones’s deciding at t1 to vote in favor of the tax cut with the
intervener’s device in place is as blameworthy, and for the same reasons, as
would be his deciding to vote in favor by t3 without the device in place. For with
the device in place, the leeway incompatibilist cannot explain Jones’s blamewor-
thiness for making his decision at t1, only his responsibility in a neutral sense for
making the decision at t1 rather than at some other available instant. Although,
as in Adam’s situation, Jones does have an alternative to deciding at t1—for
example, continuing to deliberate at t1 and deciding at t2 instead—the availabil-
ity of this alternative cannot explain Jones’s blameworthiness for making his
decision at t1. As the case is set up, Jones has no robust alternative to making his
decision by t3, and as Adam’s scenario shows, for the leeway incompatibilist