The Principle Of Alternate Possibilities

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The Principle of Alternate Possibilities

Moral responsibility is one element that every individual faces in life especially when one

becomes a grownup. Parents and the entire society have expectations that they wish every person

who gets into adulthood would achieve. One of the hopes is moral responsibility. The

community expects that every person who can be held liable should have some sense of taking

charge of things around them morally. For instance, one should know how and when to react to

situations. According to the society, the reactions ought to have a moral base in all cases. Harry

Frankfurt, a famous philosopher, came up with the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP) to

help understand moral responsibility (Speaks). In his principle, Harry brings in the idea of having

choices. He argues that one shall only be held accountable for a decision made if there was an

alternative option. The big concern is whether the ideology behind Frankfurt’s theory really

defines moral responsibility. Moral responsibility does not require the truth laid down in the

principle of alternate possibilities. One is not only needed to act responsible manner when there

are multiple options. Even when we have one possible action to take, moral responsibility should

stand.

The Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP) is a norm that Harry Frankfurt presented in

1961. The principle states: “A person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he

could have done otherwise (Frankfurt 139).” According to the theory, morality seems to have

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root in the number of choices one has on the table. It assumes that if a person makes a particular

move in a case where there was no other option to pick, at no time will the individual be held

morally accountable for the action taken. This principle brings a twist to when a person should

have the moral responsibility for the actions taken. It holds that such obligations are only

assumed when one had an option of acting otherwise.

Despite being the father of the PAP, Frankfurt came up with complicated

counterarguments to face his 1961 theory. In what is widely referred to as the Frankfurt’s

Demon, he comes up with a claim that the PAP is faulty (Blumenfeld 339). He says, “One may

be morally responsible for what he has done even though he could not have done otherwise. The

principle’s plausibility is an illusion (The Information Philosopher).” Based on this claim, Harry

developed a counterexample to the principle. Despite raising the questionability of this

principle’s credibility, the example creates a connection between free will and moral

responsibility.

In the counterexample, Frankfurt uses two gentlemen, Black and Jones. Black wishes to

have Jones carry out a particular action. Black is in dire need to see Jones take this action, and he

is ready to go an extra mile to have it done his way. However, he does not want to show he has a

hand in it. Therefore, Black holds back until there is certainty that Jones is about to make a

decision. Black makes no move not unless he is sure the other party is going to make a decision

that is contrary to what he wants. In this case, Black would take a step of doing the necessary

things at his disposal to lure Jones into doing the thing he wants him to do. Supposedly, if Black

gets to know that Jones is going to do what he wants, then Black would not take any step towards

influencing his decision. In this case, Jones is presumed to have no other alternatives. In both

cases, it should be argued that Jones has the moral responsibility for his actions. Frankfurt

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comments that it is unreasonable to excuse Jones from standing up for his actions just because he

had no other options since Black never intruded.

In real life, people are always free to make their decisions despite the influence of the

society. A perfect scenario is the case of teenagers in the modern world. Today, kids are exposed

to social media and other forms of modern technology that expose them to a vacuum of being

easily influenced. Peer pressure among the teens is higher in the current century than before.

Consider an example of two teenagers who are close friends, Peter and John. Peter is already

exposed to abuse of drugs, and he uses cannabis occasionally. On the other hand, John is raised

in a family setup where he cannot abuse drugs. He is also against usage of such abusive drugs. At

one point, Peter introduces the topic of eating cakes baked with cannabis. John has never heard

of it. He gets shocked that cannabis cakes exist. The innocent teenager has the options of trying

the bhang-baked cakes or keeping to the stand of not abusing drugs. Whether John was not given

an opportunity of engaging in drugs by Peter or he was influenced, the moral responsibility still

rests with him. This scenario elaborates Frankfurt’s counterexample.

Peter van Inwagen, a philosopher, came up with arguments that share the spirit of the

principle of alternate possibilities and were immune to the Frankfurt counterexample. One

argument he had is that one would only be morally responsible for missing to carry out a duty

when he could have performed it and never did (O’Connor 346). The other one is that a person is

held accountable for a given state of affairs only if he could have prevented it from happening.

According to O’Connor (346), the two arguments are immune to the Frankfurt-style of

counterexample due to their preciseness. In the first case, the person carrying out the actions had

a known duty which he or she chose not to perform. For the second scenario, the individual had

the powers to avoid the state of affairs from happening, but he or she did not prevent it. In both

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events, the parties in question have full knowledge of what is expected of them. Therefore,

missing out an action or taking a wrong option leaves them morally responsible. The argument of

Peter van Inwagen presents a principle that ties moral responsibility to free will with no room for

a Frankfurt-style counterexample.

Everyone in this world has some moral obligation to meet without necessarily facing

pressure. Harry Frankfurt’s principle of alternate possibilities is one philosophy that exists

concerning this norm of responsibility. The PAP argues that one should only be morally liable if

there were alternative actions that the person never picked. Frankfurt developed a

counterexample that questioned his notion. Indeed, everyone should have a moral liability to the

decisions made regardless of whether there were alternative actions to take or not.

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Works Cited

Blumenfeld, David. “The Principle of Alternate Possibilities.” The Journal of Philosophy,

vol.68, no.11, 1971, pp. 339-345

Frankfurt, Harry G. "Alternate possibilities and moral responsibility." The Philosophy of Free

Will: Essential Readings from the Contemporary Debates (2013): 139-148.

O’Cannor, Timothy. “Alternative Possibilities and Responsibilities.” Southern Journal of

Philosophy, vol.31, 1993, pp.345-372.

Speaks, Jeff. “Frankfurt’s compatibilist theory of free will.” JSpeaks Courses, 9 March 2006,

https://www3.nd.edu/~jspeaks/courses/mcgill/201/frankfurt-free-will.html. Accessed 30

Nov. 2017.

The Information Philosophers. “Frankfurt Cases - The Principle of Alternate Possibilities,” 2016,

http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/frankfurt_cases.html. Accessed 30

Nov. 2017.

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