Abstract
Frankfurt cases are purported counterexamples to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities, which implies that we are not morally responsible for unavoidable actions. A major permutation of the counterexample strategy features buffered alternatives; this permutation is designed to overcome an influential defense of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities. Here we defend the buffering strategy against two recent objections, both of which stress the timing of an agent’s decision. We argue that attributions of moral responsibility aren’t time-sensitive in the way the objectors suppose. We then turn to the crucial question of when an action is relevantly avoidable—when, in the parlance of the literature, an alternative possibility is robust. We call attention to two plausible tests for robustness that merit further consideration, showing that the agents in buffered Frankfurt cases don’t pass these tests, despite being morally responsible for their actions.
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Notes
Ginet (2002, pp. 307–308) briefly sets out a version of the timing objection against Pereboom’s (2001) buffering strategy. This objection is an adaptation of one of Ginet’s (1996, pp. 406–409) earlier responses to Frankfurt’s original counterexample. Because it is very brief, it is hard to say exactly how much Ginet’s version of the timing objection has in common with Palmer’s and Franklin’s respective versions.
David Widerker and Michael McKenna call this “the most compelling of the defenses of PAP” (2003, p. 8).
According to the restricted principle, PAPD, “A person is morally responsible for his decision (choice, undertaking) to do A only if he could have decided otherwise” (p. 259, emphasis original).
Hunt and Pereboom came up with the idea of buffered alternatives independently. Hunt proposed a buffer case in Hunt (2000, p. 215), but developed it into a full-fledged argument against PAP only in Hunt (2005). Pereboom has revised his original example, Tax Evasion (2000, p. 30, 2001, pp. 18–22); we focus here on Tax Evasion 2 (2005, pp. 231–232). For an application of the buffering strategy to Kane’s (2000) “dual regress” defense of an avoidability requirement, see Shabo (2010, pp. 362–365).
Since PAP is a conceptual thesis, psychological plausibility is not strictly required, though examples involving recognizably human agents will undoubtedly have more persuasive force.
Palmer is more explicit about the restriction than Franklin is; as will be seen, however, both are committed to some version of it.
Indeed, we believe that it would be incumbent on Palmer to justify even the weaker supposition that we are typically morally responsible only for deciding as we do during very brief intervals, let alone at utterly specific instants.
As Pereboom (forthcoming) puts it, responses to such apparent counterexamples are dialectically unsatisfying if they must appeal to the very intuitions that the counterexamples are meant to challenge, rather than providing independent grounds for doubting the counterexamples.
Moreover, along with being morally responsible for deciding to evade taxes, Joe seems to be morally responsible (pace Palmer) for so deciding during some longer time period—say, the interval during which he had the opportunity to make and directly implement the decision (Cf. Pereboom 2001, p. 30).
One thought that has been suggested to us is that moral responsibility for an action is temporally specific because the exact time at which an act-token occurs is essential to that act-token. A discussion of this view and why we find it implausible is beyond our present scope. Suffice it to say that a version of the timing objection that proceeded from this premise would look very different from the one Palmer actually offers. As to why Joe is morally responsible only for his decision at t to evade taxes, rather than for so deciding simpliciter, such a version would imply that this is because t is the only time at which that decision-token could have occurred. Nothing in Palmer’s discussion clearly suggests that this is what he had in mind. Moreover, if exact timing were essential to act-tokens, we would have reason to believe, in light of cases like Z1–Z3, that act-tokens (including decision-tokens) are not what we are mainly interested in when we assign moral responsibility.
More carefully, Jones will be both morally responsible for deciding to kill Smith, and unable to avoid moral responsiblity for so deciding. The crucial point here is that the mere possibility of avoiding responsibility for this decision won’t satisfy Pereboom’s (or any plausible) condition of robustness. So, while it is indeed possible that Jones avoids responsibility for this decision by triggering Black’s intervention, this possibility is not, as Franklin puts it, sufficient to preserve the relevance of PAP1. More about this shortly.
Notice that we are not arguing that PAP1 fails simply because PAP does, or more generally that if some version of PAP fails, none is tenable. Rather, we are pointing out that promising variants of PAP must meet certain conditions, namely, they must show either that no item for which the agent is morally responsible (or blameworthy) is unavoidable, or that no item for which the agent is morally responsible (blameworthy) is such that the agent’s responsibility (blameworthiness) for it is unavoidable. Our objection to PAP1 is that it doesn’t meet this disjunctive condition. Thanks to anonymous referee for prompting this clarification.
Franklin (p. 195). Franklin does not say where this condition is to be found in Hunt’s paper. The condition Hunt actually invokes, as we shall explain in Sect. 5, is stronger than Pereboom’s epistemic condition, though it involves an epistemic component. On the following page (note 17), Franklin cites a Q-and-A session at which Hunt appeared to endorse the epistemic condition as a minimal necessary condition for the robustness of an alternative, but this is perfectly consistent with Hunt's advocating stronger conditions as well, which he does.
Here is Pereboom’s recent statement of the condition (2005, p. 230):
Robustness. For an alternative possibility to be relevant per se to explaining an agent’s moral responsibility for an action it must satisfy the following characterization: she could have willed something other than what she actually willed such that she understood that by willing it she would thereby have been precluded from the moral responsibility she actually has for the action.
Pereboom (forthcoming) further refines this condition; however, the details won’t concern us here.
One reason for denying that such opportunities are instantaneous is precisely that we have limited control over the exact timing of our decisions (cf. Pereboom 2001, p. 32).
Another plausible, intermediate option for the buffering strategist is this: “An alternative possibility is robust only if the agent understands that, by realizing that possibility, she will be precluded from responsibility for her action barring an unforeseen change in her reasons for action.” And of course, combining this condition with IR would yield yet another intermediate reading.
Another concern about Franklin’s argument is this. Recall Franklin’s reason for believing that the strong reading of EC is too strong: it’s implausible to require that someone understand that she will never be morally responsible for performing such an action. Notice, however, that this requirement no longer seems implausibly strong if we adopt the temporal restriction. For in that case, Jones need only understand that, if at t he were to consider not killing Smith, he would never be morally responsible for deciding at t to kill Smith! At the least, addressing this concern would require Franklin to re-characterize his opponent’s situation if Franklin insisted upon the temporal restriction.
Suppose that Black somehow knows that Smith will move at t3; and suppose that Black will—at the last possible instant before t3—impel Jones to decide to kill Smith if Jones hasn’t already decided by then to kill him. We believe that Jones is morally responsible for deciding to kill Smith simpliciter, as well as for deciding to kill Smith by t3, notwithstanding that both of these things are unavoidable (cf. Pereboom 2001, pp. 30–32, and forthcoming).
Note that “considering,” as Hunt uses the term, is a simple mental act; in the case of Jones’s considering not killing Smith, it is, “minimally, the conscious awareness, however brief, of not killing Smith as a possibility for him” (p. 133). Jones cannot take not killing Smith as the goal of an activity without being consciously aware of not killing Smith as a possibility for him. It’s in this sense that considering not killing Smith, as a means toward the goal of not killing Smith, presupposes a prior consideration of not killing Smith.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for prompting us to address this point.
In correspondence, Franklin has denied that he takes the robust alternative possibility in buffered Frankfurt cases to consist in being able to avoid responsibility for the action, as opposed to avoiding the action. Since, however, his PAP1 is stated in terms of being able to avoid responsibility for an action, and since, throughout his article, he supports his claims about agents having robust alternatives by appeal to what they can avoid responsibility for, we believe that this is a reasonable reading. He writes: “PAP1 makes it clear that what is at stake in principles like PAP is the ability to avoid responsibility for some event rather than being able to bring about some alternative event. What is crucial for moral responsibility is not that I am able to prevent the action from occurring, but that I am able to avoid responsibility for its occurring” (p. 192).
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Derk Pereboom, Chris Franklin, and an anonymous referee for Philosophical Studies for helpful comments that led to several improvements in and additions to the manuscript. David Hunt's work on this paper was made possible though the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.
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Hunt, D., Shabo, S. Frankfurt cases and the (in)significance of timing: a defense of the buffering strategy. Philos Stud 164, 599–622 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9874-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9874-y