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Academic literature on the topic 'Harry Frankfurt, moral philosophy, responsibility, alternate possibilities'
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Journal articles on the topic "Harry Frankfurt, moral philosophy, responsibility, alternate possibilities"
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Gosselin, Phillip. "The Principle of Alternate Possibilities." Canadian Journal of Philosophy 17, no. 1 (March 1987): 91–104. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00455091.1987.10715902.
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The standard argument for the incompatibility of determinism and moral responsibility employs the following two premises:A person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise:A person could have done otherwise only if his action was not causally determined.While premise two has been the focus of an enormous amount of controversy, premise one until recently has remained virtually unchallenged. However, since Harry Frankfurt’s provocative paper in 1969, premise one, which he dubbed the principle of alternate possibilities (henceforth referred to as PAP), has begun to attract its share of the debate. Frankfurt argued that PAP is false and that its falsity undermines the position of those who assert the incompatibility of determinism and moral responsibility. Two previous papers I wrote were devoted in part to showing that Frankfurt’s argument is ineffective; one of those papers also argued that, while PAP is indeed false as it stands (though for reasons entirely different from those advanced by Frankfurt), if it is appropriately supplemented, it can continue to serve its traditional role in the determinism-responsibility debate.
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Timpe, Kevin. "Causal History Matters, but Not for Individuation." Canadian Journal of Philosophy 39, no. 1 (March 2009): 77–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/cjp.0.0041.
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In ‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,’ Harry Frankfurt introduces a scenario aimed at showing that the having of alternative possibilities is not required for moral responsibility. According to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP), an agent is morally responsible for her action only if she could have done otherwise; Frankfurt thinks his scenario shows that PAP is, in fact, false. Frankfurt also thinks that the denial of PAP gives credence to compatibilism, the thesis that an agent could both be causally determined in all her actions and yet be morally responsible. Since its introduction, Frankfurt's original example has generated a voluminous literature, including a plethora of other, more complicated, Frankfurt-style examples (FSEs).
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Vihvelin, Kadri. "Freedom, Foreknowledge, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities." Canadian Journal of Philosophy 30, no. 1 (March 2000): 1–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00455091.2000.10717523.
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For us there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.T.S. Eliot, Four QuartetsFew arguments in contemporary philosophy have had more influence than Harry Frankfurt's ‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsiblity.’ In that famous paper Frankfurt noted that all parties to the traditional debate about the compatibility of free will and moral responsibility with determinism had subscribed to a common assumption. They had assumed the truth of something Frankfurt called ‘the Principle of Alternate Possibilities,’ which he expressed as follows:(PAP) A person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise.In the traditional debate incompatibilists argued that if determinism is true, then no one can ever do otherwise, while compatibilists argued that there is a morally relevant sense in which even a deterministic agent can do otherwise. Frankfurt proposed to show that PAPis false, thereby undercutting the traditional debate.
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Funkhouser, Eric. "Frankfurt Cases and Overdetermination." Canadian Journal of Philosophy 39, no. 3 (September 2009): 341–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/cjp.0.0053.
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For nearly forty years now, Frankfurt cases have served as one of the major contributors to the compatibilist's cause with respect to moral responsibility. These cases typically involve a causally preempted condition that is supposed to guarantee a choice without causing it. This has had the effect of softening up some to the idea that determinism does not exclude moral responsibility simply in virtue of guaranteeing a unique future. I believe that these traditional Frankfurt cases adequately support this cause. But I also believe that the traditional versions of Frankfurt cases suffer from some rhetorical defects.My strategy is as follows. First, I want to respond to a dilemma that has been raised by some libertarians against arguments utilizing Frankfurt cases. This dilemma has the effect of raising a question-begging charge against such arguments. Part of my response is to draw attention to the relevant principle that I think Frankfurt cases should really target, a principle slightly different from Harry Frankfurt's original Principle of Alternate Possibilities. Second, I elaborate and defend the claim that traditional Frankfurt cases involve causal preemption.
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Giglou, Tavakkol Koohi, Javad Danesh, and Habib Asadi. "Investigation of Frankfurt's Argument on Moral Responsibility." Journal of Politics and Law 9, no. 3 (April 28, 2016): 63. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/jpl.v9n3p63.
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The common thought of Christian and Moslem philosophers considers moral responsibility of a person as dependent on his or her ability to choose from several options. However, Harry Frankfurt in his famous paper " alternate possibilities and moral responsibility" challenges freedom condition for moral responsibility with implicit reasons and makes use of several examples to show that it is completely possible for a person to be considered as morally responsible despite failure to access any kind of alternate possible. However, there are two reasons presented by Frankfurt that contrary to his claims show that presence of alternate possibilities or at least imagination for presence of alternatives is the base for responsibility or difficulty of moralactor and if sometimes anactor is regarded as responsible despite absence of alternate possible, this is resulted from his or her "ignorance" of the matter and also the impact of his "intention" in doing action. One of the main defects of theories which deal with moral responsibility conditions is ignoring the intention and purpose of moralactor. This is while ethics domain includes internal actions like intention and will of moral actor as well as apparent actions.
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Siegel, Max. "Revising the Principle of Alternate Possibilities." Stance: an international undergraduate philosophy journal 6, no. 1 (September 17, 2013): 15–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.33043/s.6.1.15-20.
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This paper examines the position in moral philosophy that Harry Frankfurt calls the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP). The paper first describes the principle as articulated by A.J. Ayer. Subsequently, the paper examines Frankfurt’s critique and proposed revision of the principle and argues that Frankfurt’s proposal relies on an excessively simplistic account of practical reasoning, which fails to account for the possibility of moral dilemmas. In response, the paper offers a further revision of PAP, which accounts for Frankfurt’s critique, moral dilemmas, and the challenge of causal determinism.
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Da Fonseca, Tania Schneider. "O princípio das possibilidades alternativas." Griot : Revista de Filosofia 19, no. 2 (June 13, 2019): 230–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.31977/grirfi.v19i2.1177.
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Com o seu artigo de 1969, “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility”, Harry Frankfurt mudou o curso do debate sobre o problema da vontade livre. Ele forneceu exemplos hipotéticos, por meio de experimentos de pensamento, de agentes que, conforme ele argumentou, embora não pudessem ter agido de outro modo, ainda assim seriam moralmente responsáveis pelas suas ações. O artigo de Frankfurt entusiasmou muitos filósofos, destacadamente John Fischer, a repensar o problema da responsabilidade moral. Para Fischer, Frankfurt teria mostrado que o debate não diz mais respeito ao problema de demonstrar a compatibilidade entre liberdade e determinismo, mas, sim, à questão da compatibilidade da responsabilidade moral com o determinismo.
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Moya Espí, Carlos J. "Blockage Cases: No Case against PAP." Crítica (México D. F. En línea) 35, no. 104 (January 8, 2003): 109–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.22201/iifs.18704905e.2003.1022.
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According to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP), an agent is morally responsible for something she has done only if she could have done otherwise. Harry Frankfurt held that PAP was false on the basis of examples ("Frankfurt cases") in which a counterfactual, and unactivated, device ensures that the agent will decide and do what she actually decides and does on her own, if she shows some sign that she is going to decide and do something else. Problems with these cases have led some thinkers to design examples in which the counterfactual factor is replaced by a device that actually blocks alternative possibilities. I argue that, even if these cases did not illicitly assume determinism, they are not successful against PAP anyway, for they violate a plausible condition on moral responsibility that Fischer has called "reasons-responsiveness".
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FACHIN (Unisinos), Patricia. "UMA RESPOSTA INCOMPATIBILISTA AO PROBLEMA DO DETERMINISMO E DA RESPONSABILIDADE MORAL." Kínesis - Revista de Estudos dos Pós-Graduandos em Filosofia 11, no. 28 (August 3, 2019): 242–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.36311/1984-8900.2019.v11.n28.16.p242.
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Tradicionalmente, a atribuição da responsabilidade moral depende de um compromisso com a existência do livre arbítrio, entendido de maneira bastante geral como “poder agir de outro modo”. No entanto, desde a publicação de Alternate Possibilities e Moral Responsibility por Harry G. Frankfurt em 1969, tal tese tem sido questionada e alguns filósofos argumentam que é possível atribuir responsabilidade moral mesmo se o determinismo for verdadeiro. A fim de responder a essa tentativa de conciliar a responsabilidade moral com o determinismo, Peter van Inwagen argumenta que o Princípio da Prevenção Possível - PPP demonstra que a existência da responsabilidade moral depende de um compromisso com uma tese metafísica do livre arbítrio. Assim, este artigo tem dois objetivos: por um lado, expor as posições compatibilistas e incompatibilistas sobre responsabilidade moral e determinismo defendidas por Frankfurt e van Inwagen e, por outro lado, apresentar a razão pela qual o não compromisso com uma noção metafísica de o livre arbítrio cria um problema ético. Assim, o artigo será dividido em quatro partes: na primeira parte, farei uma breve reconstrução do problema do compatibilismo entre livre-arbítrio e determinismo, do qual o problema da compatibilidade entre responsabilidade moral e determinismo é um subproblema; na segunda, apresentarei o argumento de Frankfurt, que deu origem à compatibilidade entre responsabilidade moral e determinismo; na terceira, vou expor o Princípio da Prevenção Possível - PPP formulado por Peter van Inwagen, como uma resposta incompatível à tese de Frankfurt; e, finalmente, justificarei porque o não compromisso com uma tese metafísica do livre-arbítrio tem implicações éticas.
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Haji, Ishtiyaque. "Incompatibilism and Prudential Obligation." Canadian Journal of Philosophy 40, no. 3 (September 2010): 385–410. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00455091.2010.10716728.
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Take determinism to be the thesis that for any instant, there is exactly one physically possible future (van Inwagen 1983, 3), and understand incompatibilism regarding responsibility to be the view that determinism is incompatible with moral responsibility. Of the many different arguments that have been advanced for this view, the crux of a relatively traditional one is this: If determinism is true, then we lack alternatives. If we lack alternatives, then we can't be morally responsible for any of our behavior. Therefore, if determinism is true, then we can't be morally responsible for any of our behavior. The second premise is a version of the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP): persons are morally responsible for what they have done only if they could have done otherwise. This principle, in conjunction with the assumptions that responsibility requires control, and that this control consists in the freedom to do otherwise, provides the vital bridge from the initial premise to the skeptical conclusion. Some incompatibilists, joining ranks with various compatibilists, have sought to reject this principle by invoking so-called ‘Frankfurt examples.’
Book chapters on the topic "Harry Frankfurt, moral philosophy, responsibility, alternate possibilities"
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Leiter, Brian. "Nietzsche’s Theory of Agency." In Moral Psychology with Nietzsche, 115–46. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199696505.003.0005.
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Nietzsche’s repudiation of free will and moral responsibility is documented throughout his corpus, and his arguments for this conclusion—arguments from his distinctive kind of fatalism, his skepticism about the causal efficacy of the will, and his particular brand of epiphenomenalism about the conscious mental states crucial to deliberation—are shown to undermine both compatibilist and incompatibilist views about free will and moral responsibility by engaging the views of many contemporary philosophers working on these topics, including Harry Frankfurt, Galen Strawson, Robert Kane, Derk Pereboom, Gary Watson, and others. In particular, the chapter argues that both “alternate possibilities” and “control” views of free will are vulnerable to Nietzsche’s critique. Some empirical evidence is adduced in support of Nietzsche’s view.