## 1. Background



Like most important philosophical claims, PAP is more complex than it
first appears. It's useful for now to suppress many of these
complexities. But a few of them should be mentioned at the outset, if
only to make some simplifying assumptions and bracket certain
controversies. We begin, however, with some reasons to think this
topic is worth the effort.


### 1.1 The Importance of PAP



We are both moral and embodied agents, persons and organisms. We move
in the space of reasons, answerable to rules of morality and
rationality, as well as a space of causes, governed by the laws of
nature. How are these two aspects of our lives linked? This question
is too big to answer here. But PAP, if true, is one piece of the
puzzle. Our status as persons is enabled by a kind of power we
exercise in the world of causes, namely, the power to choose among
alternative courses of action. In this way, our principle links a
normative feature of our lives to a causal feature.



But with this abstract promise comes a concrete threat. The principle
tells us that when alternatives are blocked, when only one course of
action is available, you are not responsible for what you do. As noted
earlier, there are some extreme conditions, such as coercion, that can
preclude responsibility by blocking alternatives. But suppose it turns
out that even under standard conditions, no one has alternatives.
Given PAP, no one is morally responsible for anything. Universal
alternative-blockers have frequently appeared in the philosophical
literature. They include bivalence, divine foreknowledge, divine
sovereignty, mechanism, psychological determinism, and causal
determinism. If, due to any of these, none of us can act otherwise
than we actually act, then PAP will join in to produce a disturbing
conclusion: we are never responsible for what we do. A less global but
equally worrisome threat is that our principle will combine with some
thesis entailing the widespread reduction of abilities, even if not
their elimination. For example, situational, genetic, or
socio-economic influences, while not universally blocking
alternatives, could so severely limit them in particular cases that,
with PAP in the background, moral praise and blame are no longer
appropriate. (On the threat of "situationism", see Nelkin
2005; McKenna & Warmke 2017.)



Another reason PAP is important is that it intersects with the
philosophy and practice of law. Even if moral and legal responsibility
do not coincide, there is a region of overlap (Duff 2009; Brink &
Nelkin 2013) where PAP and its attendant literature can inform legal
reasoning, especially when it aims at the just punishment of
wrongdoers. A necessary condition of criminal responsibility is that
the conduct included a voluntary act (Sinnott-Armstrong 2012), one
that the accused had a "reasonable opportunity to avoid"
(Kelly 2017). If Mark was sleepwalking or hypnotized when he broke
into Ken's house, this could be excused, both morally and
legally, on the grounds that in his condition, Mark could not have
done otherwise. If, due to delusion, an accused murderer could not
avoid forming the intention to kill his victim--and acting
accordingly--this also could be exculpating.



That said, standards applied by the law may not match what in moral
contexts we think of as avoidable action. Imagine that a mild
provocation, one that a reasonable person could ignore, compels an
emotionally disturbed man to murder. Criminal law evaluates his
abilities according to the reasonable person standard--thereby
convicting him of murder rather than manslaughter--even if moral
reasoning would take into account the emotional state severely
restricting his alternatives (Kelly 2017). The relation between PAP
and the law is further complicated by the fact that criminal law does
not seem especially concerned with causal determinism (Morse 2013), a
thesis widely thought to limit us to exactly one future. That said, if
the irrelevance of determinism in the law reflects some degree of
indifference toward alternatives in assigning responsibility, this
could be part of a case against PAP in moral matters as well (see also
 SS3.1).


### 1.2 What is Moral Responsibility?



Start with what a person is morally responsible *for*. As
formulated above, PAP is about responsibility for what a person
"has done". For most of this entry this will be
interpreted to mean her actions (see entry on
 action),
 here construed broadly to include both overt actions, such as walking
to the store or shooting a gun, and mental actions, such as choosing
to go to law school or calculating a move in chess. In addition to
being responsible for actions, a person can be responsible for the
consequences of her actions. By putting salt in Sean's tea,
Meghan is responsible, not just for ruining Sean's tea (what she
did), but for his tea's being ruined (the consequence of what
she did). A politician's opponents may claim she is responsible
for an economic downturn, a result of her decisions and policies.
Finally, a person can be responsible for failures to act, sometimes
known as refrainings or omissions, and the consequences of such. Luke
the indifferent lifeguard is accountable for not saving the drowning
swimmer, and thus for the death as well. PAP has a different cast
depending on whether responsibility for actions, consequences, or
omissions is at issue. The focus for most of this entry is on actions,
but responsibility for consequences and omissions will appear again in
 SS5.3.



What is it to be morally responsible? This entry adopts a broadly
"Strawsonian" view in the tradition of P.F.
Strawson's "Freedom and Resentment" (P. F. Strawson
1962; cp. Fischer & Ravizza 1998, 6-8). To be morally
responsible is to be the proper object of the "reactive
attitudes," such as respect, praise, forgiveness, blame,
indignation, and the like. If Marija is responsible for adopting a
stray cat, it's proper to praise her for this act. If it turns
out Meghan is not responsible for ruining Sean's tea, then this
means it's not appropriate, for Sean or anyone else, to blame or
resent her for what she did. There are other theories of moral
responsibility (see entry on
 moral responsibility).
 What our principle looks like under these alternative accounts will
remain open, though one can expect that problems similar to those
considered below will arise on any but the most radically revisionary
ways of thinking of responsibility.



One final note on responsibility: In the literature one sometimes
finds the notion of *true* or *ultimate* moral
responsibility (Klein 1990; G. Strawson 1994; Kane 1996). It's
not always clear how this is related to what PAP calls, simply, moral
responsibility (M. Bernstein 2005; Boxer 2013). On one reading,
ultimacy is an additional condition on ordinary responsibility to be
listed alongside epistemic and other requirements alluded to earlier.
On the other hand, if talk of ultimacy is intended to signal a higher
grade of responsibility, there will be a corresponding version of our
principle to be evaluated on its own terms:




**PAP-ultimate**: a person is ultimately morally
responsible for what she has done only if she could have done
otherwise.




This enhanced version, if it's distinct from PAP, will not
appear in what follows. But the discussion below could be relevant to
PAP-ultimate. In particular, it's likely that PAP entails
PAP-ultimate, so that arguments considered below for the former
 (SS2)
 could be brought in favor of the latter. What's less clear is
whether PAP-ultimate entails PAP. If it doesn't, then objections
to the latter
 (SS3)
 needn't damage the former.


### 1.3 What is the Ability to Do Otherwise?



When a person, *S*, does something, what is it for her to have
the ability to do otherwise? For help we might look to alternative
locutions: *S* *can* do otherwise; *S* has the
*power* to do otherwise; this is *possible for*
*S*; the world in which *S* does otherwise is *accessible
to* *S*; doing so is *up to* *S*; this is
*open* to *S*. But without further elaboration, these
aren't much more than synonyms for what's to be explained.
No theory of ability is adopted here, and for the most part we will
rely on judgments about ability in particular cases. But a few general
issues are worth flagging. (See also
 SS4.2.1
 and the entry on
 abilities.)



*S*'s being able to do otherwise is distinct from its
merely being possible that *S* do otherwise. Once Lisa the
skydiver jumps out her plane, it is (logically) possible that she
float in midair rather than fall. But it's not in her power to
do so: the world in which Lisa floats is not accessible to her. And if
Kurt is brainwashed to steal John's lunch, then while it's
possible that he refrain, he nevertheless can't. Something must
be added to *S*'s possibly doing something else to ensure
it's within *S*'s power to do so.



As Hume (1748 [1999: 158]) and others have argued, adding that it
*seems* to *S* as if there are alternatives doesn't
seem to help here (Chisholm 1967; Ginet 1990, 90-1). While the
phenomenology of having alternatives--and more generally, of
agency--is an important topic in its own right (Nagel 1986: ch.
7; Horgan, Tienson, & Graham 2003), it does not secure the ability
in question. Fred feels he can overcome the temptation to smoke, then
decides to smoke anyway. But it turns out that he could not have
resisted his craving. Nor is seeming to have alternatives necessary
for having them. Fred's sister Fanny feels she is too weak to
overcome the temptation at noon to smoke, and in fact she does smoke
at that time. But she was wrong about her own capacities: with just a
bit of effort, she would have been able to resist.



What these agents can or cannot do is relative to a set of facts, not
all of which need be conscious. In the cases of Fred and Fanny, the
facts concern, among other things, the strengths of their cravings and
their respective degrees of will-power. These are held fixed to
evaluate their abilities. But what other facts are salient? There is
no consensus on this issue, though it does seem that which facts are
held fixed can vary depending on context (Lewis 1976; Horgan 1979;
Unger 1984). Such context-sensitivity is relevant to the proper
application of PAP. Keyne is confronted by a "your money or your
life" mugger, and hands over his wallet. According to PAP,
whether Keyne is responsible for doing so turns, in part, on whether
he could have refused. So could he have? Considering the example in
one sort of context, we will say Yes: his arm was under his control
and he was fully aware of what noncompliance involved and how to
achieve it. But in another sort of context we might say No: Keyne was
rational and valued his life far more than the money in his wallet, as
would any reasonable person such circumstances; fix this cognitive
background, and the mugger's demand left him no other option. So
in handing over his wallet, has Keyne met PAP's requirement on
responsibility or not? There seems to be no clear answer to this
question. Complicating matters still further is that ability--and
in particular, the ability to do otherwise--varies along a
continuum. The motive power of a threat, mental disorder, or hypnotic
suggestion varies from mild to overwhelming. Where along this
continuum does its influence becomes so strong as to preclude
alternatives? There is no non-arbitrary line to draw here--nor,
apparently, has science settled on one (Graham 2013: 186, citing Morse
2011).



These points can make it difficult to test or apply PAP in particular
cases. However, they do not by themselves entail that PAP is false, so
long as judgments of moral responsibility show a similar
context-sensitivity and gradation. (On degrees of responsibility, see
Zimmerman 1988: ch. 3; Coates & Swenson 2013; Nelkin 2016.)


### 1.4 A Note on Freedom



A final preliminary point concerns acting *freely*. A principle
closely related to PAP is the following (Audi 1974; van Inwagen 1983:
161; Widerker & McKenna 2003: 2):




**Freedom Condition:** a person is morally responsible
for what she has done only if she did it freely.




This principle raises many of the issues that will come up below. But
it's stronger than PAP if, as is plausible, freedom requires
more than alternatives (see entry on
 free will).
 Being the source of one's action may be one such requirement;
having properly functioning faculties could be another; agent-causing
one's action may be yet another. Investigating the Freedom
Condition would thus bring in additional topics that cannot be
explored here. So the discussion to follow will skirt the problems of
free action (and free will) and instead focus on PAP's weaker
requirement. But at least this much is worth noting: if PAP is false,
then so is the Freedom Condition, assuming that one must have
alternatives to act freely (see also Warfield 2007; McKenna 2008:
353).


## 2. Arguments for PAP



Much of the literature on PAP consists of arguments against it,
followed by replies to those arguments, and so on. Perhaps this
pattern is due to the strong *prima facie* plausibility the
principle enjoys: it should be accepted unless there are good reasons
not to. That said, there are a few positive arguments to advance in
favor of PAP; it's best to begin with those before turning to
objections in
 SS3.


### 2.1 Is the Principle Self-Evident?



One quick argument is that PAP is self-evident; alternatively, it is
immediately known *a priori*, intuitively obvious, or analytic.
Those who deny it are thereby convicted of confusion about moral
responsibility, the ability to do otherwise, or both. If PAP does
enjoy such a high epistemic status, this explains its wide acceptance
in the major historical periods of philosophy, a discipline not
usually known for producing even approximate consensus. But in spite
of this agreement, the principle has turned out not to be so obvious,
and in fact appears to make a substantive, controversial claim about
responsibility. Witness some notable dissenters, including the Stoics,
Augustine, Aquinas, and Hobbes (see, respectively,
 SS3.2;
 Hunt 1999; Stump 1997; Martinich 2005). Moreover, PAP has come under
sustained attack in recent decades due in large part to the early
efforts of Frankfurt (1969), Fischer (1982), and Dennett (1984a,b).
This is enough to show that, however plausible PAP might first appear,
it requires more than this quick defense.


### 2.2 Ordinary Judgments about Responsibility



PAP is supported by a wide range of cases in which we judge that
without alternatives, we are not responsible for acting--not
responsible, it seems, *because* we lack alternatives.



Consider persons with mental disorders such as kleptomania or
agoraphobia. When these disorders are considered severe enough to
compel behavior, blame and resentment no longer seem warranted. (It is
the reasoning employed in ordinary judgment that's relevant
here, but for scientific evidence against the compulsion of some
mental disorders, see Schroeder 2005; Vranas 2007; Pickard 2015.)
Similarly, we may be less inclined to condemn a criminal when we
discover that his illegal acts were the result of a brain tumor
(Sinnott-Armstrong 2012), or to praise the generosity of person who is
compelled to give things away (Bennett 2008). Those who, whether
pathologically or not, act from overwhelming stress, fear, or guilt
are not praised or blamed for what they do. And while young children
may have a limited capacity for self-control (Duckworth, Gendler,
& Gross 2014), among the many reasons we don't hold them
morally responsible is that we think they are often powerless to
resist their impulses.



Similar lessons can be drawn from cases of manipulation, in which
agents are influenced through physical or psychological means.
Examples of the latter include brainwashing, hypnosis, and duress. One
might also include more high-tech examples in which the manipulation
occurs via direct control of the victim's brain. (Such examples
are usually science-fiction, but see Krug, Salzman, & Waddell
2015.) The extent to which manipulation involves removing, rather than
merely reducing, alternatives depends on the mechanism at work. But
insofar as we take such examples to involve the blocking of
alternatives, we take them to rule out responsibility as well.



In reply, an opponent of PAP may concede that in all such cases, both
responsibility and alternatives are diminished or absent, yet still
deny that we can generalize from these to PAP, for in addition to
lacking alternatives, these agents are missing other important moral
or psychological capacities. It could be the absence of these, not the
lack of alternatives, that explains why these agents aren't
responsible (cp. Wallace 1994: ch. 5). Put another way: perhaps having
alternatives is merely correlated in ordinary circumstances with the
true requirements for responsibility, whatever those might be. A more
refined test of PAP needs to look at more exotic scenarios in which
these other conditions are present while alternatives are not
 (SS3.4;
 see
 SS4.1
 for more on "ordinary circumstances").


### 2.3 The Nature of Agency



Among the goals of action theory is to distinguish what we do from
what merely happens to us (see, e.g., Davidson 1980: ch. 3). Suppose
that on the best way to draw this distinction, action (agency)
requires alternatives. Some event in your life, that is, doesn't
count as something you *did* unless an alternative was within
your power. For example, when you're awakened by a noise, this
is not an event you could have avoided, and so it was not an action,
not an exercise of your agency. Similarly, events such as stumbling,
sweating, and blushing aren't things you (strictly) do: they
happen to you. To this list we could add mental events such as
obsessive thoughts: when such thoughts are, in the relevant sense,
unavoidable, they belong to the sufferer only in the sense that the
person is their subject, the arena in which they occur, not their
agent. Given this view of action, PAP follows immediately: if action
requires alternatives, then *a fortiori*, action for which one
is morally responsible requires them.



This line of defense finds a home in some versions of agent-causalism,
on which, not just free action, but action *simpliciter*
requires agent causation (Taylor 1966; Steward 2012b; Brent 2017). On
this picture, the difference between what I do and what merely happens
to me is that I am the (or a) cause of the former, not the latter. Now
add a second, logically independent premise that agent causation
requires alternatives. If someone is necessitated, either internally
or externally, it is the compelling factor, not the agent, that causes
the resulting event, which thus is not an action. Not all agent
causalists endorse both premises (Clarke 1993 and O'Connor 2000
deny that action simpliciter requires agent causation; Taylor 1966 and
Markosian 2012 deny that agent causation requires alternatives). But
joining the premises entails that action--and thus morally
responsible action--requires alternatives.



This approach to defending PAP will have to say something about
apparent actions that do not involve alternatives. When an addict
takes a drug due to an irresistible urge to do so, it seems this is
something the addict does, even if the addict can't resist. (For
a reply to such examples, see Alvarez 2013.) Similarly, the view
entails that if causal determinism or some other universal block of
alternatives is in place, no one ever acts; whether this is an
acceptable consequence is disputed (Shabo 2011; Steward 2012a).


### 2.4 Moral Arguments



A broader concern about the previous defense is that it grounds our
principle in the metaphysics of agency rather than in the nature of
moral responsibility. Morality, the thought goes, should be more
directly engaged in defense of PAP, a principle that explicitly
constrains our practices of praise and blame. It's not
surprising, then, that a number of arguments supporting PAP start from
moral premises.



A straightforward moral argument says it's not fair to praise or
blame a person for doing something that was, for her, unavoidable (for
discussion see, e.g., Glover 1970: 70-3; Watson 1996; Nelkin
2011: ch. 2). A responsible agent is a *proper* target of the
reactive attitudes, and unfairly or unjustly blaming someone, however
expedient, would not be morally proper. One challenge for this defense
of PAP is that fairness is itself entangled with the reactive
attitudes (P. F. Strawson 1962; cp. Wallace 1994: 4.3). Thus, those
who wonder whether praise and blame require alternatives are unlikely
to be persuaded by the claim that *fair* targeting by the
reactive attitudes requires alternatives--at least not without
further argument. Someone questioning PAP, that is, is unlikely to be
swayed by a moral appeal that seems only to reassert the
principle.



Another line appeals to the principle, often associated with Kant
(1785), that "ought" implies "can" (OIC). You
cannot be morally obligated to do something that's impossible
for you. While it would be good for you to eradicate world hunger, you
are under no obligation to do so for the simple reason that you
can't. (You may, however, be obligated to relieve hunger to the
extent you can.) Perhaps OIC is not, as Reid thought, "as
self-evident as the axioms of mathematics" (Reid 1788: IV.v),
but it is nevertheless very plausible.



Now return to PAP. Suppose Kristin robs a bank. A first try at the
argument runs as follows (here we take *refraining* from doing
something to be a way doing something else; for a bit more on this,
see
 SS4.2.2):



P1.
 If Kristin is blameworthy for robbing the bank, then she ought
not to have done so.
P2. 
 If Kristin ought not to have robbed the bank, then she could have
refrained from doing so.
C. 
 Therefore, if Kristin is blameworthy for robbing the bank, then
she could have refrained from doing so.


P1 looks safe, assuming that the moral sense of blame is in play (but
see Capes 2012; Haji 2019). P2 is an instance of OIC. However, the
conclusion, even when generalized, stops short of PAP, as it claims
merely that alternatives are necessary for actions for which one is
morally blameworthy; it is silent on actions for which one is morally
praiseworthy, and it's harder to see how OIC could be leveraged
to cover such actions (Frankfurt 1983). After all, when you do
something praiseworthy, you act as you should, so OIC can't get
a grip on alternative courses of action. That said, if some version of
the above argument were sound, this would be a major victory for
proponents of PAP. (Compare C. A. Campbell 1951: 451; van Inwagen
1983: 161; Widerker 1991; Copp 1997; critics include Yaffe 1999, 2005;
see also Widerker 2003; Speak 2005.)



A third moral argument for PAP is closely related to the first two. It
is the "What-should-he-have-done defense," or
"W-defense" for short (Widerker 2003). Like the argument
in the previous paragraph, the W-defense is designed to apply to
actions for which an agent is morally blameworthy. If Trent is to be
blamed for loudly coughing during Maggie's lecture, it's
morally reasonable to expect him to have refrained from coughing. But
the central thought is that this expectation is *not* morally
reasonable if he couldn't help himself due to, say, a
bug's flying into his mouth. "What would you have had me
do?," he might ask a peeved Maggie. Without any satisfactory
answer to such a question, blame seems inappropriate.


## 3. Arguments against PAP



Like most of the important conceptual claims of philosophy, PAP has
proved to be a tempting target, especially to philosophers wanting to
avoid its potential threat to responsibility
 (SS1.1).


### 3.1 The Irrelevance of Determinism



As noted earlier
 (SS2.2),
 it looks as if PAP is supported by our ordinary practices of praise
and blame. In particular, those who could not avoid what they've
done are excused. But despite these initial appearances, ordinary
practices might end up undermining the principle.



Consider again causal determinism, a thesis often thought to rule out
alternatives. Determinism is a substantive empirical claim, and no
one, certainly no ordinary person, knows whether it's true (see
entry on
 causal determinism).
 It appears, then, that if we presuppose PAP in ordinary life, we
should for the time being withhold judgment on whether any person is
responsible for her actions, cautiously awaiting a verdict from
scientists on the question of determinism. But, the argument goes, it
would be absurd to think we have to wait for scientific progress to
decide whether, say, Kevin should be grateful to Denise for picking up
his mail when he was on vacation, or a victim of fraud should blame
the con artist. These and similar reactions are justified however
things turn out in the *recherche* domain of
micro-physics. Determinism's threatened block of alternatives is
irrelevant to whether someone should be praised or blamed (P. F.
Strawson 1962; Dennett 1984b: ch. 6; Fischer 2006: 5).



In reply, PAP's defenders might take a cue from contextualists
and say that in ordinary contexts, determinism is routinely (and
properly) ignored. This would explain why micro-physics never appears
in ordinary thinking about responsibility, but in a way compatible
with our recognizing PAP's truth: if determinism were to become
salient--as it is in philosophical and scientific
contexts--its block of alternatives *would* cause us to
retract our ordinary judgments (cp. Hawthorne 2001). Another option is
to say that we ordinarily assume--even if we don't yet
know--that determinism is false (Wiggins 1973: SS8), and with
this we normally take ourselves to have alternatives. Perhaps if we
became determinists, we would stop our practices of praise and blame,
or at least stop thinking they were justified, precisely because we
endorse PAP or some closely related principle. There is a growing
experimental literature on whether we would attribute moral
responsibility under the explicit assumption of determinism, but the
results so far seem to be mixed (Sommers 2010; Nichols 2015: ch.
4).


### 3.2 Compelled but Willing Action



The previous section tried to undermine PAP by arguing that our
practices of praise and blame are neutral on whether we have
alternatives. A more direct line of attack--to explored in this
and following sections--tries to produce cases in which we
properly praise or blame agents even while knowing they lack
alternatives.



One sort of example is from the Stoics (Inwood & Gerson 1988:
134). Imagine a dog happily running behind a cart to which he is
chained. The cart makes the dog's running inevitable--he
cannot do otherwise--yet he nevertheless runs willingly. Whatever
exactly the Stoics meant by this example (Sauve Meyer 1999;
Hankinson 2014), an opponent of PAP may be inspired to argue by
analogy that necessity or "fate" doesn't preclude
responsibility. Even if Kurt is fated to steal John's lunch,
he's still responsible for doing so if he acts willingly: even
if fate "pulls" him along like the cart, he could be a
happy and contributing participant. Similarly, imagine a drug user
whose addiction compels him to take a drug, but who doesn't mind
being addicted, and thus indulges willingly. The addict is responsible
for taking the drug, even if he couldn't do otherwise (Frankfurt
1971; cf. Wallace 1994: 172-5; the irresistible addiction, while
perhaps useful for making such conceptual points, appears not to match
actual cases of addiction: see Levy 2006; Pickard 2015.)



That said, the power of such examples against PAP is limited, as they
involve the sorts of compulsion usually thought to preclude
responsibility (cp. Lamb 1993). At best these are examples of
overdetermination: responsibility-undermining factors are at work,
even if the agent's own character and values play a (redundant)
role in producing the action. A kind of case to be considered next,
however, may be more effective.


### 3.3 Volitional Necessity



Brought before Charles V and ordered to recant, Luther refused, saying
(according to tradition), "Here I stand. I can do no
other". If we can take his word for it, Luther was compelled by
his conscience. Yet we still praise him for refusing, in spite of his
inability to do otherwise. Indeed, his being compelled by conscience
may enhance our moral admiration. Such cases of "volitional
necessity" (Frankfurt 1982) are *prima facie*
counterexamples to PAP. Sometimes when we act, alternatives are
"unthinkable": if a normal person is offered money to
torture someone, that person will have no option but to refuse
(Dennett 1984a). Again, this lack of alternatives is compatible with,
and even enhances, moral praise. (See also Wolf 1980; Nelkin 2011, in
which the goodness of the determined act plays an important role.)
Such cases are similar to the compelled actions considered in the
previous section, but there's at least this difference: in those
earlier cases, what compels is something "alien" to the
agent: a cart, fate, an irresistible desire for a drug. But here,
compulsion comes only from the agent's own internalized system
of values. This might explain why praise is more forthcoming.



Nevertheless, a defender of PAP could question whether such agents are
responsible in the sense we're concerned with here. Reid notes
that Cato was said to be "*good because he could not be
otherwise*". Reid replies: 



> 
> 
> this saying, if understood literally and strictly, is not the praise
> of Cato, but of his constitution, which was no more the work of Cato,
> than his existence. (Reid 1788, IV.1; quoted in Chisholm 1966) 
> 
> 
> 



Praising Cato's character, we conflate this with moral credit
and thereby hold him responsible. Carefully avoid this mistake, and
cases of volitional necessity no longer appear to be counterexamples
to PAP.



But a more common reply to such examples is to clarify our principle
by allowing the relevant alternatives to occur before the time of
acting. Insofar as Luther should be praised for his refusal,
it's because the character compelling the action was itself the
result of Luther's past choices in which he could have done
otherwise. This important qualification to PAP, sometimes called
"tracing", has been standard since Aristotle
(*Nicomachean Ethics* iii.v; cp. John Locke 1689: II.xxi.56; C.
A. Campbell 1957; Lamb 1993; Kane 1996: 39-40). Only by moral
struggle, choosing a certain path among the many available, did Luther
finally arrive at a point in which his character and conscience
necessitated his actions. In light of this, let us formulate PAP with
an additional clause (closely following Mele 1999: 282):




**PAP-historical**: a person is morally responsible for
what she has done at time *t* only if (i) she could have done
otherwise at *t*, or (ii) even though she could not have done
otherwise at *t*, the psychological character on the basis of
which she acted at *t* is itself partially a product of an
earlier action (or actions) of hers which was performed at a time when
she could have done otherwise.




This less demanding version of PAP was needed all along, even for more
ordinary cases. Tom, who becomes violent when drunk, couldn't
help himself when he punched someone: Tom's intoxication put him
at the mercy of his anger. Yet, assuming other conditions on
responsibility are met, we should blame him, especially when learning
that he willingly drank beforehand. It's the prior act of
drinking for which Tom had alternatives, and it's these
alternatives, not those at the time of action, that satisfy our new
condition.



Henceforth let PAP and similar principles have such a historical
rider, at least implicitly (so "PAP" below can be read as
short for "PAP-historical"). The principle's
defenders can then allow a wide range of cases--willing
incapacitation, moral saintliness, confrontation with the
"unthinkable"--in which a person is responsible for
acting without, at the time, having alternatives. To test PAP, then,
one must go to "the source" and look at cases in which the
historical clause is not relevant to the agent's moral
responsibility. Stipulate that the actions to be considered below,
unless otherwise stated, are those for which, if the agent is
responsible at all, she is "directly" responsible
(Zimmerman 1988: ch. 3). Perhaps such actions are what Kane (1996)
calls "self-forming willings", foundational choices that
shape the characters that later constrain, or even fix, future action
(cp. Klein 1990: 58).


### 3.4 Inevitability without Causation



According to Frankfurt (1983: 322), 



> 
> 
> [c]onstructing counterexamples to PAP is not difficult. It is
> necessary only to conceive circumstances which make it inevitable that
> a person will perform some action but which do not bring it about that
> he performs it. 
> 
> 
> 



Frankfurt himself proposed examples of this sort, and they have
inspired a massive literature, a portion of which is discussed below.
But before we get to Frankfurt's own examples, others in the
same neighborhood are worth looking at.


#### 3.4.1 Divine Foreknowledge



As noted earlier
 (SS1.1),
 PAP threatens to join with divine foreknowledge to rule out moral
responsibility. The reasoning starts like this:



P1.
 If God knew a billion years ago that Kurt would steal
John's lunch, then Kurt could not have done otherwise.
P2. 
 If Kurt could not have done otherwise than steal John's
lunch, then he was not morally responsible for doing so.
C. 
 Therefore, if God knew a billion years ago that Kurt would steal
John's lunch, then Kurt was not morally responsible for doing
so.


Adding the thesis of divine foreknowledge as a premise would let us
complete the argument, but this initial stage is what matters here.
The conclusion looks false. After all, God's foreknowledge
didn't cause Kurt to act as he does. God merely saw ahead of
time that Kurt would do this on his own, for his own reasons. By
analogy, my covertly observing Kurt as he steals John's lunch
does not affect his responsibility for the theft. Why then should
God's being aware of that same act (albeit ahead of time) make
any difference to whether he should be blamed?



Suppose this case against C is convincing. The above argument is
valid, so either P1 or P2 must be rejected. P1, however, is supported
by a venerable line of reasoning, which goes roughly as follows:
Supposing that God foreknew Kurt's action, if Kurt had the power
to refrain from stealing John's lunch, he would thereby have the
power to change what God knew a billion years ago. But Kurt has no
such power, as the past is fixed. If this argument for P1 is sound,
then P2 is the culprit. But P2 is entailed by PAP, so PAP is false as
well.



This case against PAP follows Frankfurt's recipe for
constructing counterexamples (Hunt 1996, 1999; but cf. Zagzebski 1991:
ch. 6; Widerker 2000: 187-8). God's foreknowledge makes it
"inevitable" that Kurt will steal John's lunch, but
does not "bring it about" that he does so: Kurt steals on
his own, without divine interference. Evaluating this proposed
counterexample would lead us beyond this scope of this entry into the
topic of divine foreknowledge (see entry on
 divine foreknowledge and free will).
 But some of the moves one might make here will come up later when
replies to Frankfurt's own proposed counterexamples are
considered.


#### 3.4.2 Locke's Content Prisoner



In the *Essay* Locke asks us to imagine that



> 
> 
> a man be carried, whilst fast asleep, into a room, where is a person
> he longs to see and speak with; and be there locked fast in, beyond
> his power to get out: he awakes, and is glad to find himself in so
> desirable company, which he stays willingly in, i.e., prefers his stay
> to going away. (J. Locke 1689: II.xxi.10)
> 
> 
> 



Locke says the man remains in the room voluntarily, even if he is not
free to leave. If the man is responsible for staying, this is a
counterexample to PAP. Like the previous example, this one also
appears to follow Frankfurt's recipe. What makes the man's
staying in the room unavoidable--namely, the room's being
locked--plays no role in his staying: he remains willingly, for
his own reasons (see Zimmerman 1988: 120-6 for a similar
example).



While Locke's example shaped later discussions of moral
responsibility, it appears that--whatever Locke
intended--it's not decisive against PAP. Distinguish two of
the man's actions: (A1) staying in the room, and (A2) deciding
(agreeing, willing) to stay in the room (Lowe 1995: 131). It's
not at all clear that he should be blamed for A1; the room is, after
all, locked. On the other hand, it seems he can be blamed for A2. But
he could have done otherwise than A2: he could have protested or tried
to get out. Whatever apparent pressure the example puts on PAP derives
from conflating A1 and A2. There is no action of the man that's
both unavoidable (for him) and one for which we should hold him
morally responsible.


#### 3.4.3 Frankfurt-Style Cases



So far we've looked at two sorts of proposed counterexample to
PAP that follow Frankfurt's recipe. Frankfurt's own
examples, and those they inspired, have come to be known as
"Frankfurt-Style Cases" (FSCs). Here is one:



> 
> 
> ...let us say that a person decides to take and does take a
> certain drug, just in order to enjoy the euphoria he expects it to
> induce. Now suppose further that his taking the drug would have been
> made to happen in any case, by forces which were in fact inactive but
> which would have come into play if he had not on his own decided and
> acted as he did. Let us say that, unknown to himself, the person is
> addicted to the drug and would therefore have been driven irresistibly
> to take it if he had not freely gone about doing so. His dormant
> addiction guarantees that he could have avoided neither deciding to
> take nor taking the drug, but it plays no role in bringing about his
> decision or his act. As the actual sequence of events develops,
> everything happens as if he were not addicted at all. The addiction is
> clearly irrelevant in this case to the question of whether the person
> is morally responsible for taking the drug. (Frankfurt 1983:
> 322-3)
> 
> 
> 



This person resembles the willing addict considered earlier
 (SS3.2),
 except in this case the addiction remains dormant. He takes the drug
on his own, for his own reasons. He thus seems morally responsible for
deciding to take the drug and for taking it. Yet both decision and
action were inevitable, for the addiction would have forced him had he
not chosen on his own to do so.



A more well-known FSC comes in an earlier paper (Frankfurt 1969;
Frankfurt credits Robert Nozick's unpublished lectures for
similar examples). In what follows, it will be useful to consider a
version of Frankfurt's example from Fischer:



> 
> 
> Black is a nefarious neurosurgeon. In performing an operation on Jones
> to remove a brain tumor, Black inserts a mechanism into Jones's
> brain which enables Black to monitor and control Jones's
> activities. Jones, meanwhile, knows nothing of this. Black exercises
> this control through a computer which he has programmed so that, among
> other things, it monitors Jones's voting behavior. If Jones
> shows an inclination to decide to vote for [the Democrat], then the
> computer, through the mechanism in Jones's brain, intervenes to
> assure that he actually decides to vote for [the Republican], and does
> so vote. But if Jones decides on his own to vote for [the Republican],
> the computer does nothing but continue to monitor--without
> affecting--the goings-on in Jones's head.
> 
> 
> 
> Suppose Jones decides to vote for [the Republican] on his own, just as
> he would have if Black had *not* inserted the mechanism into
> his head. Then Frankfurt claims that Jones is responsible for voting
> for [the Republican], regardless of the fact that he could not have
> done otherwise. (Fischer 1982: 26; cp. Frankfurt 1969:
> 835-836)
> 
> 
> 



Complicating details will come in later sections, but for now
it's worth noting two advantages of this kind of example. First,
unlike some of the earlier attempts to undermine PAP, there is no
factor, internal to the agent or otherwise, compelling the action.
What makes an action inevitable--the dormant addiction in one
case, Black and his computer in another--in no way brings about
the action, which the agent does for his own reasons. This makes
praise or blame more natural. Second, unlike the case of Locke's
prisoner, FSCs do not invite us to conflate decision and overt action,
for it is the decision itself (as well as the action) that is both
inevitable and that for which the agent is morally responsible.


## 4. Objections to Frankfurt-Style Cases



Not everyone is impressed by Frankfurt's proposed
counterexamples and the FSCs he inspired. Some critics concede that
PAP is false, but insist that some neighboring principle--one
that will serve many of the same purposes as PAP--is immune to
Frankfurt's examples. Others attack FSCs directly, arguing that
the examples fail to show even that PAP is false. The critical
literature is too large to cover in detail here, but this section
outlines a few broad themes. (Among the many useful surveys are
Fischer 1999, 2011; Sartorio 2017; and the pertinent chapters of
Beebee 2013; Griffith 2013; Timpe 2013.)


### 4.1 The Cases are Too Unusual



FSCs are philosophical thought-experiments, often involving science
fiction and covert figures with mysterious powers and unlikely
obsessions. The growing literature on FSCs continues this pattern (for
a sampling, see Widerker & McKenna 2003). As the cases get
increasingly "strange and esoteric" (Kane 2007: 168),
achieving "dizzying degrees of development" (Speak 2002:
98), we might start to wonder whether we've lost sight of the
goal, which is to understand concepts originating, not in
philosophical fantasy, but in everyday life and ordinary
circumstances. However things look in the distant possible worlds of
FSCs, our natural practices and judgments of moral responsibility
require alternatives.



This suggestion could play out in a few ways. One is to concede that
FSCs have refuted PAP, but to insist that the principle--much
like Newtonian theory in the domain of physics--is still good
enough for our ordinary practices of assigning praise and blame (Stump
1990). Or one might just abandon PAP as formulated but replace it with
a principle explicitly restricted to ordinary, non-Frankfurt
cases:




**PAP-ordinary:** in ordinary circumstances, a person is
morally responsible for what she has done only if she could have done
otherwise.




Such a principle appears Frankfurt-proof, yet is designed to be just
as useful to assigning praise and blame as the original
(O'Connor 2005; Glatz 2008; Perry 2010; Whittle 2016). Finally,
one could say that this sort of restriction was part of PAP all along,
as the principle gets its content from--and is restricted
to--our ordinary practices. In that case, PAP-ordinary just is
the original PAP, so FSCs were never a threat to begin with.



In reply, a defender of FSCs could note that not all such cases are so
far removed from everyday life. There is nothing especially bizarre
about Locke's content prisoner (an early kind of FSC) or
Frankfurt's own example of the dormant addiction. And there is
no fantastic technology or malevolent being in another FSC, the
"driver instruction vehicle" with dual controls: Sally
steers her car to the right, which the instructor is happy to allow.
But 



> 
> 
> if Sally had shown any inclination to cause the car to go in some
> other direction, the instructor would have intervened and caused the
> car to go to the right (just as it actually goes). (Fischer &
> Ravizza 1998: 32; cp. Naylor 1984) 
> 
> 
> 



It's worth noting as well that if traditional theism is true,
and if divine foreknowledge is an FSC (Hunt 2003), then FSCs, far from
being unusual, are commonplace. That said, all of these more
"ordinary" FSCs still violate background assumptions
usually in place when persons are praised or blamed. Those favoring
PAP-ordinary could claim that these examples do not fall within the
principle's scope.



In any case, there is a more fundamental reply to the general strategy
of this section: if FSCs, strange as some of them are, are at least
coherent, they do point to a conceptual divide between moral
responsibility and alternatives. Even if alternatives are needed for
responsibility in ordinary circumstances, FSCs, if successful, show
that this is a contingent fact. Fallback principles such as
PAP-ordinary reveal, at best, that alternatives are usually correlated
with responsibility, and tell us little about what it is to
*be* responsible. FSCs could thereby serve an important
theoretical role in directing attention away from alternatives to what
makes someone responsible for their actions (Fischer & Ravizza
1998: 30; Ekstrom 2000: 184-5).


### 4.2 Frankfurt Agents Could Have Done Otherwise



A central feature of all FSCs is that the agent could not have done
otherwise. Due to the presence of the (counterfactual) intervener, all
options but one are closed. But some have objected that the agent in
fact can do otherwise, and that it's this ability that, in
accordance with PAP, explains why the agent is responsible (assuming
that other conditions of responsibility are met). Below are two ways
Frankfurt agents could turn out to have alternatives after all.


#### 4.2.1 General Abilities



Wilderness Tim finds himself stranded in the middle of nowhere, miles
from any automobile. Can Tim drive a car? Yes and No
 (SS1.3).
 He is (for now) healthy, and has not lost any of the skills needed to
drive. So in that sense he can. But there are no cars available, so in
that sense he cannot. Say then that Tim has the *general
ability* (capacity, skill, competence) to drive, but he
can't drive in a more inclusive *all-in* sense, that is,
when his particular circumstances are also taken into account. This
distinction between kinds of ability is a staple of action theory
(e.g., Austin 1956; Goldman 1970: ch. 7; D. Locke 1974; Mele 2003).
Here we look briefly at its relevance to FSCs.



As the interveners in FSCs are merely counterfactual, they leave the
general abilities of their agents intact. Black's device, for
example, merely monitors Jones' brain: as things turn out,
because matters proceed as Black wishes, he does nothing to affect how
Jones deliberates, decides, or acts. Jones thus retains all of the
general abilities he would have had if Black had never been present.
(Stipulate that the device Black places in Jones does not interfere
with any relevant processes in Jones' brain: Black is a
supremely talented neurosurgeon.) Assuming Jones is otherwise normal,
we can suppose that among his general abilities is that he can vote
for the Democrat. So while Jones cannot in a more inclusive sense
choose otherwise than to vote for the Republican (that is, when the
presence of Black and his device are held fixed), Jones *can*
choose to vote for the Democrat in the general sense, and this is
ability enough for responsibility, thus rescuing PAP from such
examples. (Variations on this theme include J. K. Campbell 1997, 2005;
Smith 2003; Vihvelin 2004; Fara 2008.)



In light of this defense, let us for now formulate our principle
explicitly in terms of general abilities, allowing that this might
have been what PAP was saying all along:




**PAP-general:** a person is morally responsible for what
she has done only if she had the general ability to do otherwise.




This version appears to be immune to FSCs. And it has the added virtue
of explaining standard cases in which agents are blameless
 (SS2.2),
 so long as these can plausibly be construed as involving absent or
diminished general abilities. Moreover, compatibilists will note that
causal determinism is no longer the threat to moral responsibility it
first appeared to be
 (SS1.1;
 but see also
 SS5.2).
 After all, determinism does not rob us of our unexercised general
abilities. For example, even in a deterministic world, during periods
of silence one typically still has the *competence* to speak.
Why, then, should determinism deprive anyone of the ability--that
is, the general ability--to do otherwise? The point is ancient
(Sorabji 1980: 78), but it has received new life and sophisticated
defense in the hands of the "new dispositionalists" or
"dispositional compatibilists," so-called because general
abilities can be equated with dispositions (see entry on
 compatibilism SS4.1.5).



One question this defense raises is whether PAP, now construed as
PAP-general, is subject to counterexamples similar to FSCs (Cohen
& Handfield 2007; Whittle 2010). Another is whether this revised
principle reflects the kind of alternatives traditionally thought
needed to explain responsibility (McKenna 1998; Kane 2002; Clarke
2009; Whittle 2010; Fischer 2018; cp. entry on
 abilities SS5.2).
 There's a set of moral practices, and with it a version of PAP,
on which responsibility requires more than just the general ability to
do otherwise. It's apparently this reading of PAP that FSCs are
targeting. Even if Frankfurt agents have the relevant general
abilities, they seem to lack the ability to do otherwise in the sense
traditionally--but wrongly, according to Frankfurt and his
allies--required for responsibility.


#### 4.2.2 Flickers of Freedom



The previous section assumed that agents in FSCs cannot do otherwise
in the more inclusive all-in sense. But a more ambitious line of
response rejects this, insisting that Frankfurt agents can do
otherwise even when their peculiar circumstances are taken into
account. Or rather, they have *an* all-in alternative, one
that, however minor, is enough satisfy PAP's requirement on
moral responsibility. These are "little alternatives"
(Rowe 2006) or "flickers of freedom" (Fischer 1994).



There are several versions of this strategy. Here's one: Black
remains inactive only because his device detects in Jones no
inclination to vote for the Democrat. But then it looks as if Jones
had an alternative after all: he could have been inclined to vote for
the Democrat. This alternative would not have issued in a choice, but
it is an alternative for all that. But this sort of flicker is not
especially useful in defense of PAP. For one thing, it seems to locate
the alternative at the wrong time, and regarding the wrong action (if
indeed an inclination can be considered an action at all). For
another, there may be FSCs in which Black does not rely on any such
prior sign before the moment of choice
 (SS4.3.2).



There are, however, more promising versions of the flicker strategy:
early attempts include van Inwagen 1978; Naylor 1984; Rowe 1987. Take
Naylor's version to be representative. Black remains inactive
because he sees that Jones will decide on his own to do what Black
wishes, namely, vote for the Republican. Black would have intervened
otherwise. But doesn't this mean there's something Jones
could have refrained from doing, namely voting for the Republican
*on his own*, i.e., without Black's intervention? This is
an all-in ability, and it's because Jones had this alternative
open to him that he is rightly held responsible.



Frankfurt's allies may concede there are such flickers of
freedom, but deny that they are sufficiently "robust" to
ground our judgments of moral responsibility (Fischer 1994:
140-7; 1999). Grant that Jones could do otherwise than choose to
vote for the Republican on his own. But this alleged alternative is
one in which Jones doesn't choose at all: rather, in this
counterfactual scenario, it is Black who, by activating the neural
implant, causes a "choice" to vote for the Republican.
How, then, could an alternative in which Jones doesn't
act--one in which he is merely Black's puppet--be
relevant to Jones's responsibility in the actual scenario? Put
another way: the alternative in question is merely one in which
something else happens to Jones; it is not one in which he
*does* anything. This cannot be the kind of alternative PAP
requires for responsibility. The existence of flickers, it seems,
cannot save PAP from FSCs.



In reply, some of PAP's defenders have asked whether
alternatives need to be robust in this sense. Perhaps Jones'
alternative, however small, can ground his responsibility, not by
being an alternative action, but by indicating that Jones was not
determined to act as he did (Mele 1996; Della Rocca 1998; Ekstrom
2000: 190). A more ambitious response notes that even if Black
intervenes in the alternative scenario, Jones has there
*refrained* from choosing--at least he's refrained
from the particular choosing we see in the actual scenario. If we can
consider such refrainings as "doings" in some broad sense
of the term, then this is a sense in which Jones does otherwise in the
alternative scenario. "Robust" or not, this may be the
only kind of alternative that flicker theorists need (cp. Alvarez
2009; Steward 2009; 2012a;
 SS5.3.1;
 see also Speak 2002; Capes & Swenson 2017).


### 4.3 A Dilemma for Frankfurt-Style Cases



An influential criticism of FSCs is in the form of a dilemma, one that
becomes clear when we look more closely at how FSCs are supposed to
work. Below is one version of this dilemma, followed by two broad
categories of response.


#### 4.3.1 The Dilemma Stated



Although it is not always explicit in FSCs, the counterfactual
intervener appears to reply on some prior sign of what the agent is
about to do (Blumenfeld 1971). Black's device, for example, is
sensitive to Jones' inclination: if it detects an inclination
(call it "Pro-D") to choose the Democrat, Black will
intervene; if it detects an inclination ("Pro-R") to
choose the Republican, Black will remain idle. As matters turn out,
Pro-R appears, Black does nothing, and Jones votes for the Republican
on his own. The dilemma is this: either Pro-R determines (or is
associated with something that determines--a qualification to be
left out for simplicity) that Jones will vote for the Republican, or
it doesn't. Either way, the FSC fails as a counterexample to
PAP.



Suppose first that Pro-R determines Jones' choice. In that case,
it's no longer clear that Jones is responsible, for he's
been locked into his choice by a prior cause. Certainly PAPs
defenders--who tend to be libertarians about free will and moral
responsibility--will balk at attributing responsibility to an
agent whose actions are causally determined. Lost, then, is the
initially powerful appearance that Jones is morally responsible. On
the other hand, suppose Pro-R does not determine Jones' later
choice. In that case, Jones could have chosen otherwise, for the
sign--the *only* thing that stays Black's
hand--leaves open that Jones will vote for the Democrat. Jones
thus has an alternative, and a robust one at that: this is no mere
flicker.



The upshot is that there is no way of spelling out the details of this
FSC in a way that preserves both the responsibility of the agent and
the lack of alternatives. Yet both are need for it to be a successful
counterexample. If all FSCs are structurally similar to this one, they
are powerless against PAP. (Versions of this "dilemma
defense" include Kane 1985: 51; 1996: 142-3, 191-2;
Widerker 1995; Ginet 1996; Wyma 1997; cp. Ekstrom 2000: 197 for a
similar dilemma; and see Haji & McKenna 2004 for a critical
overview. Vihvelin 2000 presents a different dilemma for FSCs, one
that nevertheless engages some of issues that will come up below; for
an exchange on that alternative dilemma, see Fischer 2008; Vihvelin
2008.)


#### 4.3.2 Responses to the Dilemma



Start with the first horn and stipulate that Pro-R is a deterministic
cause of Jones' subsequent choice. But to prevent the
libertarian from objecting immediately, let us suppose that
Jones' responsibility for his choice is not clear; indeed, we
can suppose--even if initially shocking to Frankfurt's
allies--that he's *not* responsible for it.
Nevertheless, his being blameless is not due to something, namely
Black and his device, that rules out alternatives. In the actual
scenario, Black remains passive, merely monitoring Jones' brain
without interfering. The central idea here is that any factor causally
isolated from an agent cannot be relevant to that person's moral
responsibility. So even if Jones *isn't* responsible,
this isn't *entailed* by his lacking alternatives; this
would be enough to refute PAP. (Fischer 1999: 113; cp. Frankfurt 2003.
This is just a first pass at what turns out to be a much more complex
argument. For further refinement and criticism, see Goetz 2005;
Fischer 2010; Widerker & Goetz 2013; Fischer 2013; Palmer
2014.)



Frankfurt's defenders more often take on the second horn, on
which Pro-R is not causally sufficient for Jones' choice. This
makes his responsibility clearer, especially for libertarians. But now
it seems as if he could choose otherwise.



Pereboom (2001: ch. 1; see also Hunt 2005) replies that even with an
indeterministic sign, we can construct a successful FSC in which Jones
lacks alternatives. For variety, switch for a moment to
Pereboom's "Tax Evasion," though one could construct
the Black-Jones case to make similar points. Joe is an agent with
libertarian freedom who is considering whether to claim an illegal tax
deduction. He's inclined to do so, and as he deliberates, the
only factor that could potentially change his mind is a strong moral
reason. Whether such a reason occurs to Joe is not determined (cp.
Mele 1995: ch. 12), and even if it does occur to him, it may not
change his mind. But at least a *necessary* condition of his
choosing not to evade taxes is the occurrence of such a reason
(thereby entering a "mental buffer zone"--these are
thus called "buffer cases"). Now add the counterfactual
intervener, who wants Joe to break the law:



> 
> 
> ... to ensure that [Joe] chooses to evade taxes, a neuroscientist
> now implants a device which, were it to sense a moral reason occurring
> with the specified force, would electronically stimulate his brain so
> that he would choose to evade taxes. In actual fact, no moral reason
> occurs to him with such force, and he chooses to evade takes while the
> device remains idle (Pereboom 2001: 19).
> 
> 
> 



Joe seems responsible for his choice--even by the
libertarian's lights--but he could not have chosen
otherwise, for that would have required a moral reason, one that would
have triggered the intervention. In this FSC, the only overt sign is
in the counterfactual sequence, but one might nevertheless worry that
the *absence* of this sign in the actual sequence is, contrary
to the constraints of the second horn, causally sufficient for
Joe's deciding to take the illegal deduction. So add that at any
moment leading up to the decision, a moral reason could occur to Joe.
As Jones deliberates, then, there's no point at which the
absence (up to that time) of a moral reason determines his deciding to
evade taxes. (Critics of this buffer case include Ginet 2002; Goetz
2002; Widerker 2006.)



Another way to avoid a causally sufficient sign of Jones' choice
is simply to excise the sign itself, a feature, by the way, not always
explicit in Frankfurt's own FSCs. Suppose there is no sign or
anything else causally sufficient for Jones' choice, and
stipulate that the causal processes leading up to it are as the
libertarian sees fit. The question then is how to make Jones'
choice inevitable, as a successful FSC requires. Filling in the
details, Hunt (2000; 2003) imagines that the neural processes leading
up to Jones' choice proceed without any outside interference.
But while these processes are indeterministic, it turns out that all
of the alternative neural pathways--those that might have
realized a decision to vote for the Democrat--have been blocked.
Such "blockage" (Fischer 1999) gives Jones no alternative
but to vote for the Republican, yet he still makes the decision on his
own--the blockage never plays a role in his
deliberations--and is thus morally responsible for it. In a
related FSC (Mele & Robb 1998), Black has set up in Jones'
brain a process that will, at the time of the decision, cause Jones to
vote for the Republican, *unless* Jones decides at that time to
do so on his own. The process set up by Black does not interfere with
Jones' own deliberations which are assumed, as before, to
satisfy the libertarian. Nor does Black's process look for a
sign of what Jones will decide. When, at the relevant time, Jones
decides on his own to vote for the Republican, it seems he is
responsible for the decision, even though the process Black has set up
ensures that Jones could not have decided otherwise. (It turns out
that this example too involves blockage, as the process set up by
Black has also "neutralized" the neural realization of any
alternative decision.)



Among the reasons to worry about blockage cases is that they may,
contrary to what's intended, render Jones' choice causally
determined, again putting his responsibility into question. After all,
the objection goes, there seems little if any difference between
saying (i) that structures and processes set up in Jones' brain
block off all alternatives other than choosing to vote for the
Republican, and (ii) that Jones' choice is causally determined
by those same structures and processes. (For further critical
discussion of such cases, see, e.g., O'Connor 2000: 83-84;
Ekstrom 2002; Ginet 1996 [2001 addendum]; 2003; Kane 2003; Timpe 2013:
ch. 6. An important response to the dilemma defense not considered
here is Stump 1996; see also Goetz 1999; Stump 1999.)


## 5. Beyond PAP



So far not much consensus has emerged from the literature on PAP.
Optimists will still see progress of a sort: a principle taken for
granted through much of philosophy's history is now considered
more complex than it initially appeared, worth discussing, and
possibly false. In any case, in this this final section, assume for a
moment that for some reason or other PAP should be rejected. What
then?


### 5.1 Compatibilism Re-energized?



SS1.1
 noted that combining PAP with some universal block of
alternatives--such as causal determinism--rules out moral
responsibility. Here is a sketch of this kind of argument:



P1.
 If determinism is true, then Kurt could not have done otherwise
than steal John's lunch.
P2. 
 If Kurt could not have done otherwise than steal John's
lunch, then Kurt was not morally responsible for doing so.
C. 
 Therefore, if determinism is true, then Kurt was not morally
responsible for stealing John's lunch.


The first premise is supported by the Consequence Argument (see entry
on
 arguments for incompatibilism SS5):
 Given determinism, Kurt's theft was a necessary consequence of
the distant past plus the laws of nature. Kurt has no power over
either of these, so he couldn't avoid stealing John's
lunch. The second premise is an instance of PAP. And the conclusion
can be generalized to apply to any action: if determinism is true, no
one is responsible for anything they do.



Compatibilists about determinism and moral responsibility reject this
conclusion, so they must reject at least one of the premises. One
traditional sort of compatibilist accepts PAP (and P2), and targets P1
and with it the Consequence Argument. This entangles the compatibilist
in questions about the ability to do otherwise
 (SS1.3
 and
 SS4.2.1).
 However, if PAP is false, the compatibilist can avoid these
difficulties and reject P2 as unsupported. Without PAP in the way,
compatibilism receives new energy (see entry on
 compatibilism SS4).



But this route to compatibilism isn't straightforward. Even
without the help of PAP, determinism may still preclude responsibility
due to the *way* it blocks alternatives (Frankfurt 1969;
Blumenfeld 1971; Fischer 1982; Speak 2007). In FSCs, what makes the
action inevitable doesn't interfere with the agent's own
deliberative processes or actions: the "intervention" in
these examples is merely counterfactual. By contrast, if determinism
is true, its intervention is actual. After all, determinism entails
that every detail of how we choose and act is fixed by factors in the
distant past. As one might put it: in a deterministic world, we act as
we do *because* determinism has put us on the single track,
because we could not do otherwise. So even if FSCs show that the mere
blocking of alternatives does not preclude moral responsibility,
determinism's distinctive way of blocking alternatives is still
a threat. (In light of this point, one could reformulate the above
incompatibilist argument explicitly in terms of the particular way
determinism blocks alternatives. The modified P2 would not require
PAP, though it would need a weaker principle.)



This move shifts the burden back to compatibilists, who need to
explain why determinism, in spite of the way it blocks alternatives,
doesn't undermine responsibility. A traditional compatibilist
reply points out that determinism--unlike compulsion and other
threats to responsibility--does not disrupt the normal operation
of our faculties; in that sense, its "invasiveness" is
benign (cp.
 SS3.1).
 A more ambitious line defends this point by developing an
independently plausible compatibilist account of moral responsibility.
Here, briefly, are two such attempts (see entry on
 compatibilism
 for a detailed treatment of these and other compatibilist
options).



One is from Frankfurt (1971) and others, who say the morally
responsible agent is one who identifies with the motives that cause
him to act. Consider volitional necessity
 (SS3.3):
 While Luther is compelled by his conscience, he identifies with these
moral motives. Similarly, even if the willing addict can't help
but take the drug, he endorses the addiction. Such cases appeared
earlier as attempted counterexamples to PAP. Now they are treated as
cases of benign necessitation, ways of blocking alternatives, that,
while operating through an agent's own deliberative processes,
are compatible with moral responsibility. As long as the agent
endorses (or at least does not reject) these processes, they
needn't preclude responsibility. If an account along these lines
can be independently defended, a compatibilist can claim to have met
the above demand, as identification, and thus responsibility, is
compatible with determinism.



Another influential account is from Fischer and Ravizza (1998; see
also Fischer 1994). One lesson of FSCs is that the explanation of
moral responsibility should be found in the actual sequence leading up
to an agent's choice and action. In the Black-Jones case, what
happens in the alternative sequence, in which Black intervenes, is not
relevant to Jones' responsibility. It's not even clear
that Jones *does* anything in the alternative sequence
 (SS4.2.2).
 His moral responsibility, then, must be grounded in what actually
happens when Jones chooses on his own to vote for the Republican.
Fischer and Ravizza argue that the relevant portion of the actual
sequence includes a "reasons-responsive mechanism"
producing Jones' choice. As Jones deliberates, his deliberative
faculties are sensitive to reasons to vote for the Democrat as well as
reasons to vote for the Republican. As it turns out, the latter
outweigh the former, but there is still a scenario in which the
reasons to vote for the Democrat to outweigh those to vote for the
Republican, Jones' deliberative faculties are sensitive to this
fact, and he votes accordingly. In this sense, his deliberative
faculties can respond to competing reasons. (This Democratic-friendly
scenario needn't be accessible to Jones; we can thus preserve
Frankfurt's constraints.) Supposing that, given the appropriate
background conditions, reasons-responsiveness secures moral
responsibility, the compatibilist has met the earlier demand, for
having a reasons-responsive mechanism looks compatible with
determinism.



Fischer and Ravizza's account allows that control of a sort is
required for moral responsibility. One kind of control over
one's choices and actions is a matter of having alternatives: in
this sense, the control condition is equivalent to the rejected PAP;
Fischer and Ravizza call this "regulative control". But
there's another kind, "guidance control," that
doesn't require that the agent has alternatives available, and
it's this that the reasons-responsiveness account attempts to
capture. Jones guides his action in the relevant sense, and for this
reason can be responsible for what he does, even if, due to Black and
his computer, Jones lacks regulative control.


### 5.2 Incompatibilism without PAP



In spite of compatibilist theories developed in the wake of FSCs, some
philosophers have remained convinced that even if PAP is false,
determinism precludes responsibility. A compatibilist will challenge
such philosophers to explain why this is so, if not because
determinism blocks all alternatives.



One response to this challenge was in the previous section. Another
modifies the Consequence Argument so that it doesn't rely on
PAP. This is the "Direct Argument", *direct*
because it doesn't go through PAP. It can be reconstructed along
the following lines (a formal version is in van Inwagen 1980):



P1.
 If determinism is true, then Kurt's stealing John's
lunch is an inevitable consequence of factors (namely, the distant
past and laws) for which Kurt is not morally responsible.
P2. 
 If a person is not morally responsible for *X*, and *Y*
is an inevitable consequence of *X*, then that person is not
morally responsible for *Y*.
C. 
 Therefore, if determinism is true, then Kurt is not morally
responsible for stealing John's lunch.


The first premise P1 follows from the definition of determinism as
well as some auxiliary claims about moral responsibility. P2 is the
"transfer of blamelessness"; whatever else might be said
about this premise, it does not require PAP. And the conclusion, which
can be generalized, follows from P1 and P2. But while this argument
does not appeal to PAP, it appears that FSCs can be used against P2,
the transfer of blamelessness. The presence of Black, for which we can
hardly blame Jones, makes the choice to vote Republican inevitable,
but Jones is for all that morally responsible for so-choosing (see
Fischer's introduction to his 1986; Fischer & Ravizza 1998:
ch. 6; and for more discussion, Stump 2000; McKenna 2008).



A related answer to the compatibilist challenge is from the
"source incompatibilist" or "causal history
incompatibilist" (Stump 1990; Klein 1990; Pereboom 1995, 2001;
Zagzebski 2000). Under determinism, you are not the source--at
least not the *ultimate* source--of your actions.
Rather, the sources of your actions are found in the distant past.
This point seems to undermine your responsibility, at least one
desirable form of it (Mele 1996). Whatever the merits of source
incompatibilism, it addresses the compatibilist challenge, for it says
why determinism threatens moral responsibility--namely, by ruling
out sourcehood--but without appealing to its blocking of
alternatives, and thus without PAP. In this way, FSCs shift the
dispute away from alternatives to the nature and importance of
sourcehood. (Some source incompatibilists accept PAP or a closely
related principle--see, e.g., Kane 1996; Timpe 2013: ch.
9--but we are for now assuming PAP is false.)


### 5.3 Replacement Principles



One of the results of FSCs has been a long list of principles similar
to PAP, but intended to improve on it. Some of these keep PAP's
focus on action, while others switch to responsibility for
consequences or omissions
 (SS1.2).
 This final section samples a few of these replacement principles.


#### 5.3.1 Responsibility for Actions



This entry assumes that PAP's proposed condition is intended to
be explanatory, not merely necessary for responsibility. (Not all
necessary conditions are explanatory, as any Euthyphro-style problem
will show.) That is, the intent of the principle is that when a person
lacks alternatives, it is at least in part *in virtue of* this
that she is not morally responsible (Fischer 1994: 140; Pereboom 2001:
25). As formulated, however, PAP seems too weak for this purpose, as
it appears to allow any alternative action to meet its requirement.
Suppose that when Kurt stole John's lunch, he had an
alternative, but it was so remote from his mind, so irrelevant to his
circumstances, that he never considered it: Kurt could have sat down
and whistled a tune. Although this is an alternative to stealing
John's lunch, it is not the sort that could potentially explain
his responsibility. Thus finding PAP too weak, McKenna strengthens its
requirements:




**PAP-significant**: a person is morally responsible for
*A*-ing only if she could have performed some alternative action
*B* such that (i) *B*-ing was in her control; (ii)
*B*-ing is less morally bad than *A*-ing; and (iii) it would
have been reasonable by her lights for her to consider *B*-ing as
an alternative to *A*-ing. (simplified from McKenna 2003:
209)




Condition (i) brings to mind the earlier discussion of robustness
 (SS4.2.2),
 but (iii) is the focus at the moment, as it shows why Kurt's
sit-and-whistle alternative is not enough to ground his
responsibility: it was not reasonable for him to consider this as an
option. McKenna rejects PAP as "too inclusive", favoring
instead a principle with these more significant constraints. Having
said that, he argues that even this improved principle falls to an
FSC, one that, however, leaves open plenty of *insignificant*
alternatives to assuage libertarian concerns (see Robinson 2014 for
critical discussion).



One apparent lesson from PAP-significant is that, contrary to the
simplifying assumption adopted at the outset of this entry, one cannot
cleanly separate PAP's condition on moral responsibility from
epistemic requirements (cp. Mele 2010). In particular, in order for
alternatives to count as explanatory in the relevant sense, they must
be reasonable from the point of view of the agent. Similar
entanglements arise when one considers PAP's historical clause
 (SS3.3;
 see, e.g., Ginet 1996; Ekstrom 2000: 211). Luther is responsible for
his defiant act even if he could not have at the time done otherwise.
His responsibility can be "traced" to past self-forming
choices in which he could have done otherwise. If these are to help
explain his responsibility when brought before Charles V, it seems as
if Luther must in the past have known, at least in broad outline, how
those choices would shape his future actions. But if there are such
epistemic conditions in PAP's historical rider, there may be
problems looming, ordinary cases (not FSCs) in which a person is
responsible for her action at *t*, cannot at *t* do
otherwise, and yet whose responsibility cannot be traced to choices in
the past with the appropriate epistemic credentials. (See Vargas 2005,
and for discussion, Fischer & Tognazzini 2009; Shabo 2015.)



There are other action-focused replacements for PAP worth considering.
But because action has been in play for most of this entry, the
concluding sub-sections look at responsibility for something other
than action: consequences and omissions.


#### 5.3.2 Responsibility for Consequences



It seems clear that sometimes we are responsible for the consequences
of our actions (for dissent, see Frankfurt 1983). Recall that Meghan
is responsible, not just for ruining Sean's tea by putting salt
in it (an action), but for Sean's tea being ruined (a
consequence). Call this consequence a "state of affairs".
Perhaps one can also be responsible for states of affairs that
aren't the consequences of action. A homeowner is responsible
for the dangerous sink hole developing in her back yard, not because
of anything she did, but due simply to negligence. However one is to
treat such cases, they are here set aside to focus on states of
affairs that are more clearly the consequences of actions. And not
surprisingly, there is a replacement for PAP explicitly about these
(this principle and much of what follows is adapted from van Inwagen
1978; cp. Ginet 1996: 403):




**PAP-consequences:** a person is morally responsible for
a consequence of what she has done only if she could have prevented
it.




This has as much initial appeal as PAP. If the result of what Meghan
did would have happened anyway--if it was, for her,
inevitable--then it's hard to see how she could be praised
or blamed for it. Indeed, the examples that support PAP
 (SS2.2)
 could also be adapted to support this new principle. If it's
inappropriate to praise a person's "generous"
donation to a charity when it's caused by a compulsion to give
things away, it is also inappropriate to praise that person for the
consequence of this act, namely the charity's windfall. And the
reason is that the donor could not have prevented this state of
affairs from obtaining.



More relevant to present concerns, however, is that this replacement
may not be vulnerable to the examples that plague PAP. Return to our
central FSC: It seems as if Jones is responsible for voting Republican
(an action) because he does so on his own, for his own reasons. But
now consider a resulting state of affairs, say, the Republican's
having one more vote. This would have obtained no matter what Jones
did, or failed to do, on his own. Due to Black, the obtaining of the
state of affairs is not (as Jones' action is) sensitive to how
things proceed with Jones' own deliberative processes. One thus
loses any sense in which Jones is the author of the consequence, and
with it any sense in which he is responsible. This creates some space
between PAP-Consequences and PAP, permitting the former to stand when
the latter falls.



Here a state of affairs is a universal: whether Jones votes for a
Republican on his own or because of Black's intervention, one
and the same consequence obtains. In this way, the object of moral
appraisal (the state of affairs) doesn't turn on how things
actually go for Jones. But matters look different if the consequence
is instead construed as a concrete particular, something produced by
Jones in the actual scenario. In that case, PAP-consequences looks
vulnerable to FSCs in just the same way PAP is. When Jones votes for
the Republican, the particular consequence--that *event*
of one vote's being cast for a Republican--seems to be
something Jones produced on his own, and is thus responsible for.
(Whether numerically the same event would have obtained in the
counterfactual scenario is a controversial issue, one whose resolution
could yield a version of the "flicker" strategy considered
in
 SS4.2.2.)
 Let us in any case continue to assume that a consequence is a
(universal) state of affairs.



Even under this assumption, might this replacement fall to FSCs? The
above defense suggests not, but this has not prevented philosophers
from trying, and with a variety of examples (e.g., Heinaman 1986; Rowe
1989; Klein 1990: ch. 2; Fischer & Ravizza 1998: ch. 4). Here is
one thought to motivate such a project: Even if a consequence of an
agent's action was inevitable, we can still make sense of her
causing that state of affairs to obtain, which thus looks like the
result of something she did, even if it would have obtained anyway.
Perhaps this is enough to make the state of affairs sensitive to the
actual sequence by which it was produced, grounding the agent's
moral responsibility, as an FSC requires. Rowe (1989), for example,
imagines you are on a train headed down Track 2, a track that leads to
a safe stopping point. If you throw a switch, the train will go onto
another track, Track 1, on which a dog is tied. Unbeknownst to you,
there is someone (Peter) who is poised to throw that switch if you
don't. As it turns out, you throw the switch on your
own--Peter doesn't act at all--and the train goes down
Track 1, killing the dog. Rowe says you caused the dog's death
and are in fact morally responsible for it. (As usual, assume other
standard requirements are met.) Yet that consequence, the dog's
death, was inevitable: there was nothing you could have done to
prevent it. (For a successor to PAP-consequences, one that may handle
potential counterexamples more easily, see Sartorio 2012.)


#### 5.3.3 Responsibility for Omissions



Sometimes a person is responsible for *not* acting: Blame Luke
the indifferent lifeguard for failing to save the drowning swimmer.
Credit Emily for not cheating on a test. Let us formulate one more
replacement for PAP, using "omission," broadly, for any
failure to act:




**PAP-omissions**: a person is morally responsible for
what she didn't do only if she could have done it.




According to this new principle, if the waters were too treacherous
for a rescue, Luke is blameless for his failure. (He may still be
responsible for failing to try, or for failing to call for help.)
Similarly, Emily is responsible for not cheating only if she could
have done so. If, due to a fear of being caught, she was unable to
cheat, or if the means to cheat were simply unavailable to her, she
could not be credited for her omission, at least not on that occasion.
PAP-omissions is here treated as its own stand-alone principle, though
there is some metaphysics behind such an assumption (Clarke 2012; S.
Bernstein 2015). The present question is whether it can survive the
demise of PAP.



It appears not, for this replacement looks vulnerable to many of the
same arguments
 (SS3).
 But to test this alleged symmetry, focus in particular on whether an
FSC can be constructed as a counterexample to PAP-omissions (van
Inwagen 1978, 204-5): Bob sees a man being robbed and beaten
outside of his house. After considering whether to call the police,
Bob decides not to get involved, calculating that it wouldn't be
worth the trouble. For his own reasons, then, Bob refrains from
calling the police. What Bob didn't know, however, is that the
due to a technology disaster, all of the phones in the city are out of
order and will be for hours. It seems then that Bob isn't
responsible for failing to call the police. And plausibly,
PAP-omissions explains why he's off the hook: due to the
telephone disaster, he could not have called the police. (He might
still be responsible for failing to try to call the police, but trying
is something he could have done.) Given the present assumption that
PAP is false, what emerges from such examples is, contrary to initial
appearances, an important asymmetry: 



> 
> 
> moral responsibility for an action does not require the freedom to
> refrain from performing the action, whereas moral responsibility for
> failure to perform an action requires the freedom to perform the
> action. (Fischer & Ravizza 1991: 262, with similar examples; they
> later retract the asymmetry claim)
> 
> 
> 



Here's one try at explaining this asymmetry (Fischer
1985-86: 267-268): moral responsibility for
anything--action, consequence, omission--requires a certain
kind of control, though what kind of control is needed may vary
depending on the case. Now grant that FSCs show, contra PAP, that
regulative control
 (SS5.1)
 isn't required for responsibility for actions: guidance control
is enough (assuming other conditions on moral responsibility are met).
When omissions are in play, however, there is no potential object of
guidance control, for there is nothing to guide. For omissions, the
only kind of control available to satisfy the control requirement is
regulative control. No wonder then that FSCs fail to refute
PAP-omissions, as these cases remove the only sort of control one
could have over an omission.



That said, not everyone grants the claimed asymmetry. Both PAP and
PAP-omissions should fall together (Frankfurt 1994; Glannon 1995;
Fischer & Ravizza 1998: ch. 5; or stand together: Swenson 2016).
Consider one final FSC, this time bringing the omission inside to the
"locus of responsibility": a choice (or in this case, the
lack of one). Luke the indifferent lifeguard fails to save the
swimmer, and indeed fails even to try, for reasons entirely his own:
he's lazy and indifferent. But now add that unbeknownst to Luke,
had he even considered saving the swimmer, he would have been
paralyzed by an overwhelming fear, compelling him to remain inactive,
not even choosing or trying to save the swimmer. Here there is no
overdetermination, for the fear and the underlying pathology remain
dormant in the actual scenario: the only causal factors relevant to
the omission are Luke's own cognitive states and values, which
appear to exert a kind of responsibility-relevant control over his
failure. This looks like a genuine FSC, and, if so, a counterexample
to PAP-omissions. (For more on the considerable complexities involved
with PAP-omissions, see McIntyre 1994; Sartorio 2005; Clarke 2014;
Fischer 2017.)