The Flicker of Freedom in Defense of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities

Abstract

According to the principle of alternative possibilities, an agent is only morally responsible if he could have acted differently as a decision-maker or as an actor. Frankfurt emphasizes, by contrast, that there are cases in which, although a person is not forced to make a decision or take action, it is impossible for him/her to avoid doing so, and yet the agent is morally responsible. The flicker of freedom and the dilemmatic argument are two of the philosophers' most important responses to the Frankfurt model in which he rejects the principle of alternative possibilities. According to the flicker of freedom strategy, the Frankfurt-Style examples do not eliminate all alternative possibilities, and there are still flickers of freedom. In other words, in a Frankfurt-Style example, even though the agent lacks the ordinary choices due to the presence of an intervener, he/she actually has a limited number of alternative choices, which seems to justify his moral responsibility. Fisher and Stump's robustness objection is the most important obstacle to advancing this strategy, which does not seem effective enough in defending the Frankfurt-style examples.

Keywords

• frankfurt
• the principle of alternative possibilities
• the flicker of freedom
• robustness objection