The Principle of Robust Alternatives states that an agent is responsible for doing something only if he could have performed a ‘robust’ alternative thereto: another action having a different moral or practical value. Defenders of PRA maintain that it is not refuted by a ‘Frankfurt case’, given that its agent can be seen as having had such an alternative provided that we properly qualify that for which he is responsible. I argue here against two versions of this (...) defense. First, I show that those who maintain that a ‘Frankfurt agent’ is responsible for voluntarily performing his action must attach moral significance to his luck. I proceed to discuss Carl Ginet's strategy of temporally qualifying ascriptions of responsibility, arguing that his counterexample to the principle that ‘If an agent is responsible for doing A @ t, then he is responsible for doing A simpliciter ’ is disanalogous to a Frankfurt case. (shrink)

According to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities, an agent is morally responsible for an action of hers only if she could have done otherwise. The notion of a robust alternative plays a prominent role in recent attacks on PAP based on so-called Frankfurt cases. In this paper I defend the truth of PAP for blameworthy actions against Frankfurt cases recently proposed by Derk Pereboom and David Widerker. My defence rests on some intuitively plausible principles that yield a new understanding (...) of the concept of a robust alternative. I will leave aside whether PAP also holds for praiseworthy actions -/- Según el Principio de Posibilidades Alternativas, un agente es moralmente responsable de una acción sólo si hubiera podido actuar de otro modo. La noción de alternativa robusta desempeña un papel prominente en ataques recientes al PPA basados en los llamados casos Frankfurt. En este artículo defiendo el PPA para la culpabilidad moral frente a casos Frankfurt propuestos recientemente por Derk Pereboom y David Widerker. Mi defensa descansa en algunos principios intuitivamente plausibles que dan lugar a una comprensión nueva del concepto de alternativa robusta. No trataré la cuestión de la verdad del PPA para acciones moralmente laudables. (shrink)

Según el Principio de Posibilidades Alternativas (PPA), un agente es moralmente responsable de una acción sólo si hubiera podido actuar de otro modo. La noción de alternativa robusta desempeña un papel prominente en ataques recientes al PPA basados en los llamados casos Frankfurt. En este artículo defiendo el PPA para la culpabilidad moral frente a casos Frankfurt propuestos recientemente por Derk Pereboom y David Widerker. Mi defensa descansa en algunos principios intuitivamente plausibles que dan lugar a una comprensión nueva del (...) concepto de alternativa robusta. No trataré la cuestión de la verdad del PPA para acciones moralmente laudables. (shrink)

In a series of recent papers, Justin Capes and Philip Swenson and Michael Robinson have proposed new versions of the flickers of freedom reply to Frankfurt-style cases. Both proposals claim, first, that what agents in FSCs are morally responsible for is performing a certain action on their own, and, second, that agents in FSCs retain robust alternative possibilities—alternatives in which the agent freely omits to perform the pertinent action on their own. In this paper, I argue that, by (...) attending to the details of the omissions in question, it becomes clear that agents in FSCs lack robust alternatives of this sort, for in the alternative sequences such agents do not freely omit. Since the problem for these recent proposals arises from their attempt to show that agents in FSCs retain robust alternatives, I go on to consider whether the flicker theorist might be better off either revising or rejecting the robustness requirement on alternative possibilities. I argue that neither alternative is available to the flicker theorist, and yet I also point out that the reasons why these alternatives are unavailable serve to highlight what exactly is at issue in the debate between leeway and sourcehood theorists, namely the grounds of our freedom. (shrink)

According to some, free will requires alternative possibilities. But not any old alternative possibility will do. Sometimes, being able to bring about an alternative does not bestow any control on an agent. In order to bestow control, and so be directly relevant qua alternative to grounding the agent's moral responsibility, alternatives need to be robust. Here, I investigate the nature of robust alternatives. I argue that Derk Pereboom's latest robustness criterion is too strong, and I suggest (...) a different criterion based on the idea that what agents need to be able to do is keep open the possibility of securing their blamelessness, rather than needing to directly ensure their own blamelessness at the time of decision. (shrink)

In robustness analysis, hypotheses are supported to the extent that a result proves robust, and a result is robust to the extent that we detect it in diverse ways. But what precise sense of diversity is at work here? In this paper, I show that the formal explications of evidential diversity most often appealed to in work on robustness – which all draw in one way or another on probabilistic independence – fail to shed light on the notion (...) of diversity relevant to robustness analysis. I close by briefly outlining a promising alternative approach inspired by Horwich’s (1982) eliminative account of evidential diversity. (shrink)

:This essay advances a version of the flicker of freedom defense of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities and shows that it is invulnerable to the major objections facing other versions of this defense. Proponents of the flicker defense argue that Frankfurt-style cases fail to undermine PAP because agents in these cases continue to possess alternative possibilities. Critics of the flicker strategy contend that the alternatives that remain open to agents in these cases are unable to rebuff Frankfurt-style attack on (...) the grounds that they are insufficiently robust. Once we see that omissions are capable of constituting robust alternatives, even when they are not intentional, it becomes clear that agents in these cases do indeed possess robust alternative possibilities—alternatives that are ineliminable from cases of this sort. The upshot is that Frankfurt-style cases are theoretically incapable of providing us with good grounds for rejecting PAP. (shrink)

Contemporary analytic philosophy can generally be characterized by the following tendencies: commitment to first-order predicate logic as the only viable formal logic; rejection of correspondence theories of truth; a view of existence as something expressed by the existential quantifier; a metaphysics that doesnOCOt give the world as a whole its due. This book seeks to offer an alternative analytic theory, one that provides a unified account of what there is, how we speak about it, the underlying logic of our language, (...) how the truth of what we say is determined, and the central role of the real world in all of this. The result is a robust account of reality. The inspiration for many of the ideas that constitute this overall theory comes from such sources as Aristotle, Leibniz, Ryle, and Sommers.". (shrink)

Non-reductive physicalists have made a number of attempts to provide the relation of supervenience between levels of properties with enough bite to analyze interesting cases without at the same time losing the relation's acceptability for the physicalist. I criticize some of these proposals and suggest an alternative supplementation of the supervenience relation by imposing a requirement of robustness which is motivated by the notion of structural stability familiar from dynamical systems theory. Robust supervenience, I argue, captures what the non-reductive (...) physicalist wants from supervenience; most importantly, it provides a natural background for reconstructing the notion of (diachronic) property emergence in a way acceptable to physicalists. (shrink)

This paper is aimed at identifying how a model’s explanatory power is constructed and identified, particularly in the practice of template-based modeling (Humphreys, Philos Sci 69:1–11, 2002; Extending ourselves: computational science, empiricism, and scientific method, 2004), and what kinds of explanations models constructed in this way can provide. In particular, this paper offers an account of non-causal structural explanation that forms an alternative to causal–mechanical accounts of model explanation that are currently popular in philosophy of biology and cognitive science. Clearly, (...) defences of non-causal explanation are far from new (e.g. Batterman, Br J Philos Sci 53:21–38, 2002a; The devil in the details: asymptotic reasoning in explanation, reduction, and emergence, 2002b; Pincock, Noûs 41:253–275, 2007; Mathematics and scientific representation 2012; Rice, Noûs. doi:10.1111/nous.12042, 2013; Biol Philos 27:685–703, 2012), so the targets here are focused on a particular type of robust phenomenon and how strong invariance to interventions can block a range of causal explanations. By focusing on a common form of model construction, the paper also ties functional or computational style explanations found in cognitive science and biology more firmly with explanatory practices across model-based science in general. (shrink)

Frankfurt’s famous counterexample strategy challenges the traditional association between moral responsibility and alternative possibilities. While this strategy remains controversial, it is now widely agreed that an adequate response to it must preserve an agent’s ability to do otherwise, and not the mere possibility, for only then is her alternative possibility sufficiently robust to ground her responsibility. Here, I defend a more stringent requirement for robustness. To have a robust alternative, I argue, the agent must have the right kind (...) of ability, where the right kind is such that it is up to her whether she does otherwise. I argue that this kind of power attribution is epistemically conditioned. While a few writers have defended an epistemic condition for robustness, seeing this condition as a consequence of the relevant power attributions will provide much-needed support and clarification, while also illuminating the kind of ability in which free will consists. (shrink)

The previous chapter offers a distinctive virtue-theoretic account of knowledge, which the chapter describes as dispositional robust virtue epistemology. It is argued that this view is ultimately untenable because it cannot accommodate what we refer to as the epistemic dependence of knowledge. This point is motivated by employing what we call an epistemic Twin Earth argument, and also by appealing to some familiar claims in the epistemology of testimony. In addition, it is claimed that there is an alternative proposal (...) available, which we refer to as anti-luck virtue epistemology, that can accommodate epistemic dependence and which can thus offer a more satisfactory account of knowledge. (shrink)

In his monograph, Robust Ethics: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Godless Normative Realism, Erik Wielenberg offers arguably one of the most sophisticated defenses of the autonomy thesis to date. Wielenberg argues that the divine command theory is problematic because it cannot account for the moral obligations of reasonable unbelievers; Godless normative robust realism can be formulated in a way that avoids the standard objections to the autonomy thesis; and GRNR provides a better account of intrinsic value. In this (...) paper, I will argue Wielenberg’s defenses of the autonomy thesis fails. I will argue that his objection to divine command theories fails, that he fails to address two standard challenges to the autonomy thesis adequately, and, finally, that Wielenberg fails to show that GRNR better accounts for the intuition that certain things are intrinsically good than various forms of theistic alternatives. (shrink)

Frankfurt-style cases purport to show that an agent can be morally responsible for an action despite not having any alternatives. Some critics have responded by highlighting various alternatives that remain in the cases presented, while Frankfurtians have objected that such alternatives are typically not capable of grounding responsibility. In this essay I address the recent suggestion by Seth Shabo that only alternatives associated with the ‘up to us’ locution ground moral responsibility. I distinguish a number of (...) kinds of ability, suggest which kinds of abilities ground the truth of the ‘up to us’ locution, and outline how these distinctions apply to the indeterministic buffer cases. (shrink)

Some rules seem more important than others. The moral rule to keep promises seems more important than the aesthetic rule not to wear brown with black or the pool rule not to scratch on the eight ball. A worrying number of metaethicists are increasingly tempted to explain this difference by appealing to something they call “authoritative normativity” – it’s because moral rules are “authoritatively normatively” that they are especially important. The authors of this chapter argue for three claims concerning “authoritative (...) normativity”: (1) that motivation for it originates in a parochial conception of “normative flavours”; (2) that arguments against alternative ways of explaining e.g., morality’s importance are overblown; and (3) that there are strong reasons against theorizing in terms of “authoritative normativity”. The overarching aim is not to show that “authoritative normativity” is incoherent or entirely unmotivated. Rather, it is to discuss some of “authoritative normativity’s” deeper commitments to correct the impression that is it largely benign or that it is entailed by familiar and popular “metanormative” positions. Authoritative normativity, it seems to us, is a solution in search of a problem. (shrink)

The robustness of a system indicates its ability to withstand disturbances while maintaining its properties, performance, and efficiency. There are plenty of studies on the robustness of air transport networks in the literature. However, few works consider its mesoscopic organization. Building on the recently introduced component structure, we explore the impact of targeted attacks on the weighted world air transportation network on its components. Indeed, it contains five local components covering different regions and one global component linking these regions. We (...) investigate targeted attacks based on influential weighted centrality measures. Results show that the local components gradually separate from the world air transportation network as the fraction of removed airports grows. The weighted betweenness attack removes fewer top airports to isolate the regions compared to its alternatives. Furthermore, it is still convenient to travel locally in the separate areas. In contrast, strength and PageRank attacks need to target more airports to split the network. However, they are more disruptive. Indeed, the size of the isolated local components reduces drastically, so it becomes more challenging to travel locally. Looking at the world air transportation network through its component structure reveals a new viewpoint on its resilence. It opens new perspectives to design more efficient attacks. (shrink)

According to some scholars, while sets of greenhouse gases emissions generate harms deriving from climate change, which can be mitigated through collective actions, individual emissions and mitigation activities seem to be causally insufficient to cause harms. If so, single individuals are neither responsible for climate harms, nor they have mitigation duties. If this view were true, there would be collective responsibility for climate harms without individual responsibility and collective mitigation duties without individual duties: this is puzzling. This paper explores a (...) way to solve this puzzle. First, it will be argued that individual emissions, though not proper and full-fledged causes, causally contribute to raise the probability of climate harms. As a consequence, individuals are in fact responsible for their expected contributions to climate harms – this is contributive responsibility for likely outcomes. Second, it will be argued that people have responsibility also for the possible impacts of their individual emissions on climate harms. People can plausibly be regarded as individually responsible for the possible outcomes of their actions in close possible alternative worlds – this is robust responsibility. Non-causal individual responsibility for climate harms is plausible, and the puzzle may be solved. (shrink)

Empirical work has lately confirmed what many philosophers have taken to be true: people are ‘biased toward the future’. All else being equal, we usually prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. According to one hypothesis, the temporal metaphysics hypothesis, future-bias is explained either by our beliefs about temporal metaphysics—the temporal belief hypothesis—or alternatively by our temporal phenomenology—the temporal phenomenology hypothesis. We empirically investigate a particular version of the temporal belief hypothesis according to (...) which future-bias is explained by the belief that time robustly passes. Our results do not match the apparent predictions of this hypothesis, and so provide evidence against it. But we also find that people give more future-biased responses when asked to simulate a belief in robust passage. We take this to suggest that the phenomenology that attends simulation of that belief may be partially responsible for future-bias, and we examine the implications of these results for debates about the rationality of future-bias. (shrink)

One approach to achieving cooperation in the one-shot prisoner’s dilemma is Tennenholtz’s (Games Econ Behav 49(2):363–373, 2004) program equilibrium, in which the players of a game submit programs instead of strategies. These programs are then allowed to read each other’s source code to decide which action to take. As shown by Tennenholtz, cooperation is played in an equilibrium of this alternative game. In particular, he proposes that the two players submit the same version of the following program: cooperate if the (...) opponent is an exact copy of this program and defect otherwise. Neither of the two players can benefit from submitting a different program. Unfortunately, this equilibrium is fragile and unlikely to be realized in practice. We thus propose a new, simple program to achieve more robust cooperative program equilibria: cooperate with some small probability. (shrink)

In the contemporary debate on free will, most philosophers assume that the defense of libertarianism implies the defense of the notion of alternative possibilities. This article discusses this presupposition by showing that it is possible to build a libertarianism without alternative possibilities, apparently more robust than libertarianism with alternative possibilities. Inspired by Bergson, this nonclassical libertarianism challenges the idea that all causation implies the actualization of a predetermined possibility (an idea shared by determinism and classical libertarianism). Moreover, it challenges (...) the idea that free will is a mere choice between prefixed possibilities: for this libertarianism, free will is the result of a creative process of the mind—an entirely causal process whose outcome is not, however, predetermined. This nonclassical libertarianism describes the process of forming a will in a more realistic way than classical libertarianism does. Furthermore, it is not threatened by the problem of chance. (shrink)

In the presence of heterogeneity between the randomized controlled trial (RCT) participants and the target population, evaluating the treatment effect solely based on the RCT often leads to biased quantification of the real-world treatment effect. To address the problem of lack of generalizability for the treatment effect estimated by the RCT sample, we leverage observational studies with large samples that are representative of the target population. This article concerns evaluating treatment effects on survival outcomes for a target population and considers (...) a broad class of estimands that are functionals of treatment-specific survival functions, including differences in survival probability and restricted mean survival times. Motivated by two intuitive but distinct approaches, i.e., imputation based on survival outcome regression and weighting based on inverse probability of sampling, censoring, and treatment assignment, we propose a semiparametric estimator through the guidance of the efficient influence function. The proposed estimator is doubly robust in the sense that it is consistent for the target population estimands if either the survival model or the weighting model is correctly specified and is locally efficient when both are correct. In addition, as an alternative to parametric estimation, we employ the nonparametric method of sieves for flexible and robust estimation of the nuisance functions and show that the resulting estimator retains the root- n n consistency and efficiency, the so-called rate-double robustness. Simulation studies confirm the theoretical properties of the proposed estimator and show that it outperforms competitors. We apply the proposed method to estimate the effect of adjuvant chemotherapy on survival in patients with early-stage resected non-small cell lung cancer. (shrink)

Robert Hudson’s book is a contribution to the recent debate on robustness analysis in scientific practice, with a specific focus on the empirical sciences. In this context, robustness analysis is defined as a way to increase the probability of a certain hypothesis by showing that the same result is obtained from several, alternative methods. The rationale underlying this practice is that it would be highly unlikely if different, independent means of observation provided the same wrong outcome.We do not believe in (...) miracles; hence, the probability of the initial hypothesis being true increases if the same result occurs across conditions.Simple as this notion sounds, according to Hudson, the various attempts that have been offered in the literature to formalize it have proved to be unsuccessful. Hudson’s skeptical argument is formulated at the outset of the book and illustrated throughout by means of several episodes from the recent history of science, mainly from physics and biology. Met .. (shrink)

The robustness of biological processes to perturbations has so far been mainly explored in unicellular organisms; multicellular organisms have been studied for developmental processes or in the special case of redundancy between gene duplicates. Here we explore the robustness of cell biological mechanisms of multicellular organisms in an evolutionary context. We propose that the reuse of similar cell biological mechanisms in different cell types of the same organism has evolutionary implications: (1) the maintenance of apparently redundant mechanisms over evolutionary time (...) may in part be explained by their differential requirement in various cell types; (2) the relative requirement for two alternative mechanisms may evolve among homologous cells in different organisms. We present examples of cell biological processes, such as centrosome separation in prophase, spindle formation or cleavage furrow positioning, that support the first proposition. We propose experimental tests of these hypotheses. (shrink)

This paper is intended to defend the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (pap)against two recent putative counterexamples to it, inspired by the one that HarryFrankfurt designed forty years ago. The first three sections provide a summary of the state of the art. In the remaining sections, the counterexamples to pap o Widerker’s (“Brain-Malfunction-W”) and Pereboom’s (“Tax Evasion”) are successively presented and discussed. We hold that both examples breach at least one otwo conditions that are required in order to refute pap, namely, (...) (1) that the agent is morally responsible for his/her decision and (2) that s/he lacks any morally significant (“robust”) alternatives to it. Regarding (1), the examples face several problems concerning the “reasons-responsiveness” of the agent’s mechanism of deliberation and decision making, which throws doubts upon his/her moral responsibility. Regarding (2), we try to show that the respective agents have robust alternatives within their reach. We conclude, then, that pap is not refuted by these examples. (shrink)

Multiple realization has traditionally been characterized as a thesis about the relation between kinds posited by the taxonomic systems of different sciences. In this paper, I argue that there are good reasons to move beyond this framing. I begin by showing how the traditional framing is tied to positivist models of explanation and reduction and proceed to develop an alternate framing that operates instead within causal explanatory frameworks. I draw connections between this account and the notion of functional robustness in (...) biology and neuroscience. I then examine two cases from systems neuroscience that substantiate my account and show how traditional debates fail to track important features of these cases. (shrink)

The assumption that natural selection alone is sufficient to explain not only which traits get fixed in a population/species, but also how they develop, has been questioned since Darwin’s times, and increasingly in the last decades. Alternative theories, linked to genetic and phenotypic processes, or to the theory of complex systems, have been proposed to explain the rise of the phenotypic variety upon which natural selection acts. In this article, we illustrate the current state of the issue and we propose (...) a logical space based on phenotypic robustness that allows a classification of evolutionary phenomena and can provide a framework for unifying all these accounts. (shrink)

The principle-based approach is a methodology to classify and analyse argumentation semantics. In this paper we classify seven of the main alternatives for argumentation semantics using a set of new robustness principles. These principles complement Baroni and Giacomin’s original classification and deal with the behaviour of a semantics when the argumentation framework changes due to the addition or removal of an attack between two arguments. We distinguish so-called persistence principles and monotonicity principles, where the former deal with the question (...) of whether a labelling or extension of an argumentation framework under a given semantics persists after a change, and the latter with the question of whether new labellings or extensions are created after a change. We furthermore show in which sense labelling-based and extension-based semantics lead to subtly different principles and results. Our results can be used for choosing a semantics for a particular application, or to guide the search for new argumentation semantics, but they have been used also in the design of algorithms. (shrink)

In the following paper, I wish to examine a problem for the theist libertarian. On the one hand, libertarians insist that freedom requires possible alternatives open to the agent. On the other hand, God’s perfectly formed moral character implies that He always does the morally best. Give His moral character, then, it appears that there are no possible alternatives open to God. We thus get a dilemma for the theist libertarian: either a) God is not libertarian free – (...) because His moral character rules out possible alternatives; or b) God’s character is not perfectly formed – because libertarian freedom requires that it is possible for God to act out of character. In the present paper, I argue that Thomas Reid, a paradigmatic libertarian, has the theoretical tools to retain a robust account of libertarian freedom without compromising a robust account of perfectly formed characters. In sum, it is necessary that agents with fully formed characters always act in character (read de dicto), but it is possible that agents with fully formed characters act out of character (read de re). The former claim captures the robustness of perfectly formed moral characters and the latter claim captures the robustness of libertarian freedom. (shrink)

In this paper I present a variant of the “Sleeping Beauty” case that shows that the “halfer” approach to the original Sleeping Beauty problem is incompatible with an extremely plausible principle pertaining to cases of disagreement. This principle says that, in “nonpermissive” contexts, the weight you give to a disputant’s view ought to be proportional to your estimation of the strength of the disputant’s epistemic position with respect to the disputed proposition. In requiring such proportionality, the principle denies the possibility (...) of what I will call “robustly perspectival” contexts. Given the plausibility and widespread acceptance of this principle, its incompatibility with the halfer approach to Sleeping Beauty gives us an apparently powerful new argument against the halfer position and for the alternative “thirder” view. But I am a halfer, not a thirder. So I go on to argue that despite the principle’s intuitive plausibility, there are good reasons for thinking that the case presented here does involve a robustly perspectival context and that the principle should be rejected. I suggest that the lesson that we should draw from this case is not that we should accept the thirder view, but rather that rationality can be perspectival in a robust way that many may find quite surprising. (shrink)

Recently Philip Pettit has claimed that attachment, virtue, and respect are robust goods. Robust goods require not only the actual provision of certain associated ‘thin’ goods, but also the modally robust provision of these thin goods across a range of counterfactual situations. I focus my attention on Pettit’s account of the robust good of love, which, for Pettit, is the modally robust provision of care. I argue Pettit’s account provides neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for (...) love. In place of Pettit’s account, I suggest an alternative account of love that distinguishes loving dispositions from loving actions. (shrink)

In this essay, I defend a view I call “Robust Realism” about normativity. According to this view, there are irreducibly, perfectly objective, normative truths, that when successful in our normative inquiries we discover rather than create or construct. My argument in support of Robust Realism is modeled after arguments from explanatory indispensability common in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of mathematics. I argue that irreducibly normative truths, though not explanatorily indispensable, are nevertheless deliberatively indispensable, and that (...) this kind of indispensability is just as respectable as the more familiar explanatory kind. Deliberative indispensability, I argue, justifies belief in normative facts, just like the explanatory indispensability of, say, theoretical entities like electrons justifies belief in electrons. In the introduction I characterize the view I will be arguing for and sketch the main argument of this essay. In chapter 1 I draw the analogy between explanatory and deliberative indispensability, and argue that there is no non-question-begging reason to take the former but not the latter seriously. Here I also present the master-argument of the thesis, and clarify the argumentative work that needs to be done by each of the following chapters. In chapter 2 I address the worries of the antirealist who is willing to reject arguments from explanatory indispensability as well. In other words, in this chapter I try to justify the move from indispensability (of whatever kind) to belief. In chapter 3 I develop an account of deliberation that supports the premises about deliberation needed for my master-argument to go through. In chapter 4 I reject some alternative views, showing that none of them can allow for sincere deliberation. In this chapter, in other words, I support the indispensability premise: I argue that it really is impossible to deliberate sincerely without believing in irreducibly normative truths.. (shrink)

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of Contributors -- Preface -- Foreword -- Introduction -- Chapter 1 Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility -- Chapter 2 Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities -- Chapter 3 Blameworthiness and Frankfurt's Argument Against the Principle of Alternative Possibilities -- Chapter 4 In Defense of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities: Why I Don't Find Frankfurt's Argument Convincing -- Chapter 5 Responsibility, Indeterminism and Frankfurt-style Cases: A Reply to (...) Mele and Robb -- Chapter 6 Classical Compatibilism: Not Dead Yet -- Chapter 7 Bbs, Magnets and Seesaws: The Metaphysics of Frankfurt-style Cases -- Chapter 8 Moral Responsibility without Alternative Possibilities -- Chapter 9 Freedom, Foreknowledge and Frankfurt -- Chapter 10 Source Incompatibilism and Alternative Possibilities -- Chapter 11 Robustness, Control, and the Demand for Morally Significant Alternatives: Frankfurt Examples with Oodles and Oodles of Alternatives -- Chapter 12 Alternate Possibilities and Reid's Theory of Agent-causation -- Chapter 13 Responsibility and Agent-causation -- Chapter 14 Soft Libertarianism and Flickers of Freedom -- Chapter 15 'Ought' Implies 'Can', Blameworthiness, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities -- Chapter 16 The Moral Significance of Alternate Possibilities -- Chapter 17 The Selling of Joseph - A Frankfurtian Interpretation -- Chapter 18 Some Thoughts Concerning PAP -- Bibliography -- Index. (shrink)

My main aim in this paper is to improve and give further support to a defense of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) against Frankfurt cases which I put forward in some previous work. In the present paper I concentrate on a recent Frankfurt case, Pereboom's "Tax Evasion". After presenting the essentials of my defense of PAP and applying it to this case, I go on to consider several objections that have been (or might be) raised against it and argue (...) that they don't succeed. I conclude by pointing out that my criticism of Pereboom's example suggests a general strategy against other actual or possible Frankfurt cases. (shrink)

In her recent book Causation and Free Will, Carolina Sartorio develops a distinctive version of an actual-sequence account of free will, according to which, when agents choose and act freely, their freedom is exclusively grounded in, and supervenes on, the actual causal history of such choices or actions. Against this proposal, I argue for an alternative- possibilities account, according to which agents’ freedom is partly grounded in their ability to choose or act otherwise. Actual-sequence accounts of freedom are motivated by (...) a reflection on so-called Frankfurt cases. Instead, other cases, such as two pairs of examples originally designed by van Inwagen, threaten actual-sequence accounts, including Sartorio’s. On the basis of her view of causation, Sartorio contends, however, that the two members of each pair have different causal histories, so that her view is not undermined by those cases after all. I discuss these test cases further and defend my alternative-possibilities account of freedom. (shrink)

Over the past fi fty years or so analytic philosophers have developed accounts of the nature of material objects that can plausibly be described as neo-Aristotelian. We argue that what we term non-robust neo-Aristotelian accounts of hylomorphism fail: if hylomorphism is true, then some species of robust hylomorphism is true. In Section 2 we explain what we take non-robust and robust hylomorphism to be and distinguish two species of non-robust hylomorphism. In Section 3 we examine (...) Aquinas’s definition of substance. It has much to recommend it, but precludes any sort of non-robust hylomorphism. So we consider whether there is an alternative definition of substance that might be employed in defense of non-robust hylomorphism. The only promising alternative, we suggest, is one inspired by Udayana, the great 10ᵗʰ-century Vaiśeṣika metaphysician, a definition that relies on the concept of inherence. In Section 4 we argue that formal non-robust hylomorphism is false under the alternative defi nition of substance, and that substantial non-robust hylomorphism, too, is false under that definition. And in Section 5 we offer a few final remarks, including a word of thanks to the neo-Aristotelians we so strongly criticize, for their work has signifi cantly benefitted those who, like us, favor a more traditional form of hylomorphism.Philosophi, ut aiunt, analytici, postremis quinquaginta annis explicationem rerum materialium naturae, quae rite Neoaristotelica nuncupari potest, elaborant. Arguunt vero huius tractationis auctores, Neoaristotelicas hylemorphismi explicationes, quas ipsi “mitigatas” nominant, parum succedere: si hyle mor phismus verus sit, aliquam hylemorphismi non mitigati speciem veram esse debere. In sectione 2 auctores rationes hylemorphismi mitigati et non mitigati explicant duasque hyle morphismi mitigati species distinguunt: “ formalem” scil. et “substantialem”. In sectione 3 auctores substantiae defi nitionem examinant a S. Thoma propositam. Quae defi nitio nonnullis praestat virtutibus, hylemorphismum vero mitigatum omnino excludit. Hac de causa auctores aliam substantiae defi nitionem quaerunt, qua accepta hylemorphismus mitigatus vindicari possit. Non tamen videtur ulla posse inveniri nisi elaboratio aliqua defi nitionis quam Udayana proposuit : quae defi nitio inhaerentiae conceptui innixa est. In sectione 4 auctores arguunt, hylemorphismum mitigatum tam formalem quam substantialem esse falsum hac altera substantiae defi nitione posita. In sectione 5 auctores paucis quibusdam notulis tractationem concludunt, gratias quoque agentes philosophis Neoaristotelicis, quos ipsi impugnaverunt: eorum enim labore auctores magis traditionali hylemorphismi faventes speciei, multum profecerunt. (shrink)

Frankfurt-style cases (FSCs) have famously served as counterexamples to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP). The fine-grained version of the flicker defense has become one of the most popular responses to FSCs. Proponents of this defense argue that there is an alternative available to all agents in FSCs such that the cases do not show that PAP is false. Specifically, the agents could have done otherwise than decide on their own, and this available alternative is robust enough to ground (...) moral responsibility. In this paper, I argue that, when relying on definitions of ‘on one’s own’ within the literature on FSCs, a case can be constructed in which the agent could not have done otherwise than make a decision on his own. Insofar as this new case is successful, it will be able to avoid arguments about robustness while showing that moral responsibility does not require alternative possibilities of the type argued for by proponents of the fine-grained version of the flicker defense. (shrink)

Analysts often use data-driven approaches to supplement their knowledge when selecting covariates for effect estimation. Multiple variable selection procedures for causal effect estimation have been devised in recent years, but additional developments are still required to adequately address the needs of analysts. We propose a generalized Bayesian causal effect estimation algorithm to perform variable selection and produce double robust estimates of causal effects for binary or continuous exposures and outcomes. GBCEE employs a prior distribution that targets the selection of (...) true confounders and predictors of the outcome for the unbiased estimation of causal effects with reduced standard errors. The Bayesian machinery allows GBCEE to directly produce inferences for its estimate. In simulations, GBCEE was observed to perform similarly or to outperform DR alternatives. Its ability to directly produce inferences is also an important advantage from a computational perspective. The method is finally illustrated for the estimation of the effect of meeting physical activity recommendations on the risk of hip or upper-leg fractures among older women in the study of osteoporotic fractures. The 95% confidence interval produced by GBCEE is 61% narrower than that of a DR estimator adjusting for all potential confounders in this illustration. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper, I argue that having ‘leeway’ is part and parcel of what it is to be the agential source of an action, so that embracing source incompatibilism does not, by itself, absolve the incompatibilist of the need to find Frankfurtian agents to be possessors of alternate possibilities. I offer a response to Frankfurt-style counterexamples to the Principle of Alternate Possibilities, based on the idea that Frankfurt's Jones exercises the two-way power of agency when he acts – a (...) power whose exercise intrinsically implies the possibility of having done otherwise. I then show how to respond to the objection that the alternative possibility noted is not sufficiently ‘robust’ to ground his moral responsibility. I also distinguish my own argument for the claim that source incompatibilism is not truly independent of leeway incompatibilism from an argument for the same conclusion which has been offered previously by Kevin Timpe, and suggest that my own version has the dialectical advantage that it does not automatically assume from the outset that sourcehood requires indeterminism, and hence is in line with the traditional idea that the alternate possibilities requirement on moral responsibility is the common property of compatibilists and incompatibilists alike. (shrink)

Most decisions in life involve ambiguity, where probabilities can not be meaningfully specified, as much as they involve probabilistic uncertainty. In such conditions, the aspiration to utility maximization may be self-deceptive. We propose “robust satisficing” as an alternative to utility maximizing as the normative standard for rational decision making in such circumstances. Instead of seeking to maximize the expected value, or utility, of a decision outcome, robust satisficing aims to maximize the robustness to uncertainty of a satisfactory outcome. (...) That is, robust satisficing asks, “what is a ‘good enough’ outcome,” and then seeks the option that will produce such an outcome under the widest set of circumstances. We explore the conditions under which robust satisficing is a more appropriate norm for decision making than utility maximizing. (shrink)

I examine one theme within Tom Morawetz's complex jurisprudential work (stemming from Wittgenstein): the concept of a practice. After considering this theme in some detail, I then sketch a different jurisprudential approach that still proceeds within the inspiration of Wittgenstein's later philosophy. Here, I summarise Stanley Cavell's elaborate recounting of Wittgenstein's twin concepts, “criteria” and “grammar.” In a third and final section, I employ this alternative method to provide a brief example of how a Wittgensteinian approach might be made towards (...) explicating and understanding Holmes’ classic claim regarding the need in jurisprudence to separate legal and moral concepts. (shrink)

The collection and classification of data into meaningful categories is a key step in the process of knowledge making. In the life sciences, the design of data discovery and integration tools has relied on the premise that a formal classificatory system for expressing a body of data should be grounded in consensus definitions for classifications. On this approach, exemplified by the realist program of the Open Biomedical Ontologies Foundry, progress is maximized by grounding the representation and aggregation of data on (...) settled knowledge. We argue that historical practices in systematic biology provide an important and overlooked alternative approach to classifying and disseminating data, based on a principle of coordinative rather than definitional consensus. Systematists have developed a robust system for referring to taxonomic entities that can deliver high quality data discovery and integration without invoking consensus about reality or “settled” science. (shrink)

This paper presents a proof of concept for a graphical models approach to assessing the moral coherence and moral robustness of systems of social interactions. “Moral coherence” refers to the degree to which the rights and duties of agents within a system are effectively respected when agents in the system comply with the rights and duties that are recognized as in force for the relevant context of interaction. “Moral robustness” refers to the degree to which a system of social interaction (...) is configured to ensure that the interests of agents are effectively respected even in the face of noncompliance. Using the case of conscientious objection of pharmacists to filling prescriptions for emergency contraception as an example, we illustrate how a graphical models approach can help stakeholders identify structural weaknesses in systems of social interaction and evaluate the relative merits of alternate organizational structures. By illustrating the merits of a graphical models approach we hope to spur further developments in this area. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article offers a constructive critique of the Oxford Principles for the governance of geoengineering and proposes an alternative set of principles, the Tollgate Principles, based on that critique. Our main concern is that, despite their many merits, the Oxford Principles remain largely instrumental and dominated by procedural considerations; therefore, they fail to lay the groundwork sufficiently for the more substantive ethical debate that is needed. The article aims to address this gap by making explicit many of the important ethical (...) questions lurking in the background, especially around values such as justice, respect and legitimacy. (shrink)

This paper argues that libertarianism—and only libertarianism—can vindicate immigration's status as a human right whose protection is morally required in nearly all circumstances. Competing political theories such as liberal egalitarianism fail to rule out significant immigration restrictions in a range of realistic conditions. We begin by outlining the core tenets of libertarianism and their implications for immigration policy. Next, we explain why arguments that appeal to alternative principles are unable to provide robust justification for open borders. We conclude by (...) considering whether our argument vindicates libertarianism or undermines open borders. (shrink)

Expectations play a distinctive role in shaping emerging technologies and producing hype cycles when a technology is adopted or fails on the market. To harness expectations, facilitate and provoke forward-looking discussions, and identify policy alternatives, futures studies are required. Here, expert anticipation of possible or probable future developments becomes extremely arbitrary beyond short-term prediction, and the results of futures studies are often controversial, divergent, or even contradictory; thus they are contested. Nevertheless, such socio-technical imaginaries may prescribe a future that (...) seems attainable to those involved in the visioneering process, and other futures may thus become less likely and shaping them could become more difficult. This implies a need to broaden the debate on socio-technological development, creating spaces where policy, science, and society can become mutually responsive to each other. Laypeople’s experiential and value-based knowledge is highly relevant for complementing expertise to inform socially robust decision-making in science and technology. This paper presents the evolution of a transdisciplinary, forward-looking co-creation process—a demand-side approach developed to strengthen needs-driven research and innovation governance by cross-linking knowledge of laypeople, experts, and stakeholders. Three case studies serve as examples. We argue that this approach can be considered a method for adding social robustness to visioneering and to responsible socio-technical change. (shrink)