Excuses and Alternatives

A version of the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP) claims that one is only blameworthy for actions which one was able to avoid. Much of the discussion about PAP concerns Frankfurt’s counterexamples to it. After fifty years of refined debates, progress might seem hopeless. Yet, we can make headway by asking: “what’s our reason for believing PAP?” The best answer is this: lacking eligible alternatives—alternatives whose cost is not too high to reasonably opt for—is a good excuse. Yet, this principle is subject to straightforward counterexamples, unless it is given an epistemicised reading. And in this latter case, it does not support PAP. So, PAP is unsupported, at least for now.

Must Knowers Be Agents?

This chapter explores agency as it applies to epistemic evaluation, using epistemic analogues of the well-known Frankfurt cases against the Principle of Alternate Possibilities. It argues that the satisfaction of manipulable counterfactual conditions is neither necessary nor sufficient for either moral or epistemic responsibility, nor is it necessary for knowledge. But what a person does in counterfactual circumstances is a sign of the presence of agency, and the argument here is that agency is necessary for epistemic responsibility and for knowledge. The chapter argues that agency is operative in getting epistemic credit and knowledge. The scope of agency includes those evaluative aspects of belief investigated by epistemology. In other work the author has argued that it is artificial to separate epistemology from ethics. The role of agency in beliefs as well as in acts further supports this position.

Is regulative control a necessary condition for moral responsibility?

Libertarianist concept of free will is based on the principle of alternate possibilities - standpoint which presupposes that an agent has moral responsibility only if, in the given circumstances, he could have done otherwise. The author of this paper tries to review this key principle of libertarianism, and to determine whether the access to alternate possibilities represents necessary or sufficient cause for the assessment of moral responsibility, or neither of that. Finally, based on the consideration of famous Frankfurt?s and Austin-style examples, in this paper is defended a sort of compatibilism, and the main advantages of that kind of free will concept over libertarianism are emphasized.

Fischer on the Fragilist Account of Alternative Possibilities

One response to the Frankfurtian attack on the Principle of Alternate Possibilities is to advert to the observation that the agent’s actual action (or the particular event resulting from that action) is numerically distinct from the corresponding action (or the resultant event) he would have generated in the relevant counterfactual scenario. Since this response is based on taking actions and events to be fragile, I shall call it the fragilist account of alternative possibilities. This paper addresses an anti-fragilist argument delivered by John Martin Fischer. I contend that, on close examination, Fischer’s counterargument does not undermine the fragilist account.