Abstract
In this paper I refute an apparently obvious objection to Frankfurt-type counterexamples to the Principle of Alternate Possibilities according to which if in the counterfactual scenario the agent does not act, then the agent could have avoided acting in the actual scenario. And because what happens in the counterfactual scenario cannot count as the relevant agent’s actions given the sort of external control that agent is under, then we can ground responsibility on that agent having been able to avoid acting. I illustrate how this objection to Frankfurt’s famous counterexample is motivated by Frankfurt’s own ‘guidance’ view of agency. My argument consists in showing that even if we concede that the agent does not act in the counterfactual scenario, that does not show that the agent could have avoided acting in the actual scenario. This depends on the crucial distinction between ‘not φ-ing’ and ‘avoiding φ-ing’.
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Notes
Some explicit or otherwise discussion or mention of this kind of objection can be found in at least the following places: Fischer (1982); Kane (1985); Kane (1996); McKenna (1997); Wyma (1997); Otsuka (1998); Fischer (1999a,b), and Alvarez (2009). But given the near-to-infinite literature on Frankfurt-type cases (see Fischer 1999a—ten pages of references in a ten-year-old article on ‘recent work’!), I think it is fair to say that the objection in question has received relatively little attention.
My intuition is that P2 is true not because what happens in the counterfactual scenario does not count as agency, but because it does not count as the relevant agent’s agency, but only as the counterfactual intervener’s agency.
In Fischer’s (1982) formulation of a Frankfurt-type scenario, Black installs a mechanism in “Jones’s brain which enables Black to monitor and control Jones’s activities” (p. 26).
McKenna makes a similar point: “when an agent’s actions, or the deliberative machinery of her actions, are brought about by reasons independent of the agent’s own rational machinery, then the actions, or the deliberative machinery are not hers. This is not to say that it is a priori impossible for an intervener to cause an agent to act, or even to cause her to have such and such deliberations. It is only to say that the actions or the deliberations are not hers” (1997, p. 83).
There is a potential objection to P2 which I am not going to deal with: the idea that to say that Jones cannot be considered to be acting in the alternative scenario because his movements are externally determined (by Black) begs the question against compatibilism by assuming that external determination is incompatible with agency. Wyma (1997, p. 69) makes a similar point.
It might be proposed that in order for something to count as ‘avoiding φ-ing’, it needs to be intentional. And that that’s the difference between ‘not φ-ing’ and ‘avoiding φ-ing’ (I owe this point to an anonymous referee for this journal). This might very well be the case, but here I am conceding to Alvarez a weaker distinction that doesn’t even require that ‘avoiding φ-ing’ be an action, let alone an intentional action.
References
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Di Nucci, E. Refuting a Frankfurtian Objection to Frankfurt-Type Counterexamples. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 13, 207–213 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-009-9188-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-009-9188-0