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Frankfurt-style counterexamples and the importance of alternative possibilities
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Elzein, Nadine (2017) Frankfurt-style counterexamples and the importance of alternative possibilities. Acta Analytica , 32 (2). pp. 169-191. doi:10.1007/s12136-016-0305-0
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12136-016-0305-0
Abstract
Proponents of modern Frankfurt-Style Counterexamples (FSCs) generally accept that we cannot construct successful FSCs in which there are no alternative possibilities present. But they maintain that we can construct successful FSCs in which there are no morally significant alternatives present and that such examples succeed in breaking any conceptual link between alternative possibilities and free will. I argue that it is not possible to construct an FSC that succeeds even in this weaker sense. In cases where any alternatives are clearly insignificant, it does not appear at all obvious that the agent can be held responsible. Present popular FSCs include alternatives that are ambiguous in their significance, and when the examples are sharpened to remove this ambiguity, they lose their force. Moreover, the proponent of such examples faces a problem: We can easily construct scenarios in which any alternatives are obviously insignificant, and in such scenarios, we are not intuitively inclined to suppose the agent is responsible. The proponent of new FSCs must therefore distinguish any alternatives she includes from the sorts included in these scenarios. The difference must now be such that (a) this helps to make it seem intuitively likely that the agent is responsible where the agent otherwise would not appear responsible, and (b) these alternatives are irrelevant to any judgment about whether the agent is responsible. I maintain that it is impossible to achieve both of these goals at once.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Philosophy | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Acta Analytica | ||||||||
| Publisher: | Springer | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 0353-5150 | ||||||||
| Official Date: | June 2017 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 32 | ||||||||
| Number: | 2 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 169-191 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1007/s12136-016-0305-0 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Open Access |
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