106 Alternative Possibilities and Frankfurt Cases
In opposition to source incompatibilism, Fischer once argued that “there is
simply no good reason to suppose that causal determinism in itself (and apart
from considerations pertaining to alternative possibilities) vitiates our moral
responsibility” (1994: 159). Now it is true that one widespread incompatibilist
intuition is that if due to causal determination we can never do otherwise, and
we therefore could not have refrained from the immoral actions we perform, we
could not legitimately be held blameworthy for them. But another common intu-
ition is that if all of our behavior was “in the cards” before we existed, in the
sense that things happened before we were born that, by way of a deterministic
causal process, inevitably resulted in our actions, we could not legitimately be
held responsible for them. By this intuition, if causal factors existed before a
criminal was born that, by way of a deterministic process, inevitably issued in
his act of murder, then he could not legitimately be blamed for this action. And
if all of our actions had this type of causal history, it would seem that we would
lack the kind of control over our actions moral responsibility requires.
Still, in the dialectic of the free will debate one should not expect Fischer or
any compatibilist to be moved much by this basic source incompatibilist intu-
ition alone to abandon their position. In our view, the best source incompatibilist
challenge to compatibilism develops the claim that causal determination presents
in principle no less of a threat to moral responsibility than deterministic manipu-
lation by neuroscientists. We shall turn to that challenge in Chapter 7. Nonethe-
less, what this basic intuition should show at this stage is that there might well
be a coherent incompatibilist position that could survive the demise of the
alternative- possibilities requirement on moral responsibility (Della Rocca, 1998;
Pereboom, 2001).
5.2. The Flicker of Freedom Defense
Leeway theorists have argued that the alternative- possibilities requirement can
withstand the argument from Frankfurt examples. In the next three sections, we
will consider and address three objections to this argument: the Flicker of
Freedom, Dilemma, and Timing defenses.
We begin the Flicker defense, which concedes the intuition that the agent in
the Frankfurt example is morally responsible, but claims that the example fea-
tures an alternative possibility that explains the intuition. In any Frankfurt
example, there must be some factor that the neuroscientist’s device is rigged up
to detect that could have but does not actually occur, such as the agent’s inten-
tion to do otherwise (e.g., Fischer, 1994: 134–47; Naylor, 1984; van Inwagen,
1983: 166–80). This factor—a “flicker of freedom,” to use Fischer’s term—can
then serve as the alternative possibility required for moral responsibility. It’s not
implausible that the formation of an intention to do otherwise, say, should count
as the relevant sort of alternative possibility, and so this factor could indeed
serve to explain the agent’s moral responsibility.
Fischer responds to the Flicker defense by arguing that one can construct
Frankfurt examples in which the neuroscientist’s device detects some factor that