120 Alternative Possibilities and Frankfurt Cases
this has to be sufficient for Jones’s not being blameworthy for making his deci-
sion at t1. Both Adam and Jones can make their decisions at t2 instead of at t1,
but as in Adam’s case, Jones’s having no robust alternative to deciding by t3
will preclude its being a robust alternative that he decide at t2 instead. But it
nonetheless remains strongly intuitive that Jones is blameworthy for deciding to
vote for the tax cut at t1, a fact for which the leeway incompatibilist lacks any
explanation.
Thus the sense that Jones is blameworthy for deciding to vote in favor of the
tax cut can’t be explained by his being blameworthy for making his decision at
t1 together with the alternatives he has to doing so. On the leeway incompatibil-
ist conception, Jones’s blameworthiness for making his decision at t1 would
need to depend on his having a robust alternative possibility relative to making
the decision by t3. However, for this he has no robust alternative. Consequently,
Tax Cut issues a challenge to that position, and at least prima facie this Frankfurt
example can withstand Ginet’s objection.
5.5. General Abilities to Do Otherwise
Susan Wolf (1990) argues that what is crucially necessary for moral responsib-
ility is a general power to act and to refrain. As we pointed out in our discussion
of the Consequence Argument in Chapter 4, incompatibilists will agree that
agents can retain general abilities to act and to refrain supposing causal determi-
nation. In addition, a number of compatibilists have pointed out that an agent in
an appropriately constructed Frankfurt example can retain a general ability or
power to refrain from performing the action at issue (Fara, 2008; McKenna,
1997; Nelkin, 2011: 66–76; Vihvelin, 2004; Wolf, 1990). Note that even when
Usain Bolt is asleep, he retains the power to run 100 meters in less than ten
seconds, despite the fact that his being asleep is currently an impediment to his
activating this power. By extension, even if he is causally determined to be
asleep and thus not to be running, he retains that power. Similarly, in the
standard Frankfurt- style cases the agent would appear to retain the power not to
choose to perform the action, despite the fact that she cannot activate the power
because of the device.
The idea is that none of these Frankfurt- style arguments undermine the fol-
lowing condition:
(PAP- Robust-General Abilities) An action is free in the sense required for
moral responsibility only if the agent has the general ability to perform a
robust alternative to that action.On Wolf ’s more specific proposal, which Dana Nelkin develops and endorses,
an agent in a Frankfurt case retains what Nelkin calls an interference- free ability
to refrain from performing the action. That is, the agent possesses the skills,
talents, and so on, required for refraining, and nothing actually interferes with