116 Alternative Possibilities and Frankfurt Cases
not intuitive that he is non- derivatively as opposed to merely derivatively
morally responsible. In response, the paradigm for derivative responsibility is
provided by the drunkenness example cited earlier. In this illustration, some of
the uncontroversial general conditions on non- derivative moral responsibility
fail to be satisfied when Biff is drunk, yet they are all satisfied when he decides
to get drunk. However, Biff ’s situation differs from Joe’s. Biff has knowingly
put himself in a position in which some of the uncontroversial general conditions
on non- derivative moral responsibility will not be satisfied at the relevant sub-
sequent times. The same is not the case for Joe. One might object that if an agent
can’t be sufficiently attentive to moral reasons, one such uncontroversial con-
dition is not satisfied. Yet at any time when Joe is not sufficiently attentive to
moral reasons, he understands that it is open to him to become sufficiently more
attentive at a later time. As a result, Joe’s situation diverges in the crucial respect
from paradigm examples of derivative responsibility. In Pereboom’s view, this
indicates that the application of the alternative- possibilities schema to Joe in the
way suggested by Widerker’s objection may not be appropriate (Pereboom,
2009a, 2014).^3
5.4. The Timing Defense
Carl Ginet (1996, 2002), a defender of leeway incompatibilism, has developed a
third major type of objection to Frankfurt examples. In his challenge to Tax
Evasion, specifically to the Pereboom (2000, 2001) version of this example, he
argues that at t1, the precise time Joe makes the decision to evade taxes, he
might instead have been attending to the moral reasons, and that this alternative
possibility is robust:
For had J taken it, he would at t1 have been refraining from a willing – to do
B [to decide to take the illegal deduction] right then – such that by so
refraining he would have avoided responsibility for doing B right then and
would have been aware that he was avoiding responsibility for doing B right
then (that being such an obvious implication of his not doing B right then,
of which he of course would have been aware). (Ginet, 2002)David Palmer (2011) and Christopher Franklin (2011a), both leeway incompati-
bilists, also raise this type of objection to Tax Evasion.
The force of Ginet’s objection depends on a component of his (1996) general
response to Frankfurt’s argument against the alternative- possibilities require-
ment. Ginet begins with the following schema for Frankfurt examples:
Black sets up a mechanism that monitors Jones’s actions and would cause
Jones’s doing B by t3 if Jones has not already done B by some deadline t2.
We must suppose that had this mechanism been triggered at t2 it would have
causally necessitated Jones’s doing B by t3 in such a way as to render Jones
unable to avoid doing B by t3, and that there was no time at which Jones