5 Alternative Possibilities and Frankfurt Cases
In this chapter we discuss another of the three decisive influences on the free
will debate that originated in the 1960s. As we pointed out in Chapter 3, prior to
this time it was generally assumed that the sort of free will at issue in the debate
is the freedom to do otherwise, that is, the freedom on a particular occasion both
to act and to refrain from acting. It was also generally assumed that moral
responsibility required this sort of leeway freedom. But an important article,
published by Harry Frankfurt in 1969, changed all of that. There, he argued, by
the use of an ingenious type of example, that moral responsibility does not
require leeway freedom.
The intuition that moral responsibility for an action requires that the agent
could have done otherwise is a powerful one. Indeed, access to alternative possib-
ilities for action would seems to play a significant role in explaining why an agent
is morally responsible. For if an agent is to be blameworthy for an action, it seems
crucial that she could have done something to avoid being blameworthy—that
she could have done something to get herself off the hook (Moya, 2006; Pere-
boom, 2001: 1; Widerker, 2000). This intuition is aptly expressed by what David
Widerker calls the W- Defense. About Jones, who breaks a promise and is alleg-
edly morally responsible but could not have done otherwise, he writes:
Still, since you, [Harry] Frankfurt, wish to hold him blameworthy for his
decision to break his promise, tell me what, in your opinion, should he have
done instead? Now, you cannot claim that he should not have decided to
break the promise, since this was something that was not in his power to do.
Hence, I do not see how you can hold Jones blameworthy for his decision to
break the promise. (Widerker, 2000: 191)In Carlos Moya’s phrasing, to be blameworthy for an action an agent must have
an exempting alternative possibility, one that, should he avail himself of it,
would exempt him from blame (Moya, 2006: 67; cf. Otsuka, 1998). If he is to be
praiseworthy for an action, it seems important that he could have done some-
thing less admirable. Both classical compatibilists and classical incompatibilists
grounded their views about free will precisely in such intuitions. Accordingly,
they defended the following principle of alternative possibilities: