Pereboom on the Frankfurt cases

According to the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP), a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. In what follows, I want to defend this principle against an apparent counterexample offered recently by Derk Pereboom (Living without free will, 2001; Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 29:228?C247, 2005). Pereboom??s case, a variant of what are known as ??Frankfurt cases,?? is important for it attempts to overcome a dilemma posed for earlier alleged counterexamples to PAP. However, I will argue that by paying closer attention to the details of Pereboom??s example, we see that his example fails to show a way between the horns of the dilemma posed for the earlier Frankfurt examples.     

Frankfurt-Style Cases User Manual: Why Frankfurt-Style Enabling Cases Do Not Necessitate Tech Support

‘Frankfurt-style cases’ (FSCs) are widely considered as having refuted the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP) by presenting cases in which an agent is morally responsible even if he could not have done otherwise. However, Neil Levy (J Philos 105:223–239, 2008) has recently argued that FSCs fail because we are not entitled to suppose that the agent is morally responsible, given that the mere presence of a counterfactual intervener is enough to make an agent lose responsibility-grounding abilities. Here, I distinguish two kinds of Frankfurt counter-arguments against the PAP: the direct and the indirect counter-arguments. I then argue that Levy’s argument, if valid, can shed doubt on the indirect argument but leaves the direct argument untouched. I conclude that FSCs can still do their job, even if we grant that the mere presence of a counterfactual intervener can modify an agent’s abilities.     

Pereboom’s Frankfurt case and derivative culpability

Pereboom has formulated a Frankfurt-style counterexample in which an agent is alleged to be responsible despite the fact that there are only non-robust alternatives present (Pereboom, Moral responsibility and alternative possibilities: essays on the importance of alternative possibilities, 2003; Phil Explor 12(2):109–118, 2009). I support Widerker’s objection to Pereboom’s Tax Evasion 2 example (Widerker, J Phil 103(4):163–187, 2006) (which rests on the worry that the agent in this example is derivatively culpable as opposed to directly responsible) against Pereboom’s recent counterarguments to this objection (Pereboom 2009). Building on work by Moya (J Phil 104:475–486, 2007; Critica 43(128):3–26, 2011) and Widerker (Widerker 2006), I argue that there is good reason to measure the robustness of alternatives in terms of comparative, rather than non-comparative likelihood of exemption, where the important factor for blame is whether the agent is “doing her reasonable best” to avoid blameworthy behaviour. I maintain that an agent only ever appears responsible when alternatives are robust in this sense. In Pereboom’s examples, both Tax Evasion 2, and his more recent version, Tax Evasion 3 (Pereboom 2009), I maintain the robustness of the alternatives, so understood, is unclear. We can clear up any ambiguity by sharpening the examples, and the result is that the agent appears responsible when the alternatives are made clearly robust, and does not appear responsible when alternatives appear clearly non-robust. The comparative nature of our judgements about blame, I maintain helps to explain the continuing appeal of the “leeway-incompatibilist” viewpoint.     

Deterministic Frankfurt cases

According to the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP), people are morally responsible for what they do only if they could have done otherwise. Over the last few decades, this principle has dominated discussions of free will and moral responsibility. One important strand of this discussion concerns the Frankfurt-type cases or Frankfurt cases, originally developed by Frankfurt (J Philos 66:829–839, 1969), which are alleged counterexamples to PAP. One way in which proponents of PAP have responded to these purported counterexamples is by arguing that they fall prey to a dilemma, both horns of which undermine their cogency. Recently, Fischer (Philos Rev 119: 315–336, 2010) has defended the Frankfurt cases against one horn of this dilemma. In this essay, I criticize Fischer’s defense of the Frankfurt cases and argue that he does not successfully show how the cases can avoid this horn of the dilemma. If I am right, then, despite Fischer’s claims to the contrary, the original dilemma plaguing the cases still stands.     

Exemplification as molecular function

Since the publication of Universals and Scientific Realism (Armstrong 1978a, b) until Sketch for a Systematic Metaphysics (Armstrong 2010), via Universals: An Opinionated Introduction (Armstrong 1989), a World of States of Affairs (Armstrong 1997), and Truth and Truthmakers (Armstrong 2004), David Armstrong has developed one of the most influential theories of instantiation in contemporary analytic metaphysics (see, for example, Lewis, in Aust J Phil 61(4), 343–377, 1983; Baxter in Aust J Phil, 79, 449–464, 2001; Forrest, in Aust J Phil, 83, 213–228, 2006). Instantiation has been advocated by Armstrong to give a solution to what he has called the “pressing problem” of “the multiple location of property universals” (Armstrong, in Universals: An opinionated introduction. University Press, Cambridge, 1989, pp. 89–90). Here I argue that Armstrong’s theory of instantiation fails to solve the problem because it involves two kinds of instantiation to account for particulars “having” and “sharing” universals. As a viable alternative to Armstrong’s theory, I propose a theory of instantiation capable of accounting for both phenomena in a univocal way.     

A Church-Fitch proof for the universality of causation

In an attempt to improve upon Alexander Pruss’s work (The principle of sufficient reason: A reassessment, pp. 240–248, 2006), I (Weaver, Synthese 184(3):299–317, 2012) have argued that if all purely contingent events could be caused and something like a Lewisian analysis of causation is true (per, Lewis’s, Causation as influence, reprinted in: Collins, Hall and paul. Causation and counterfactuals, 2004), then all purely contingent events have causes. I dubbed the derivation of the universality of causation the “Lewisian argument”. The Lewisian argument assumed not a few controversial metaphysical theses, particularly essentialism, an incommunicable-property view of essences (per Plantinga’s, Actualism and possible worlds, reprinted in: Davidson (ed.) Essays in the metaphysics of modality, 2003), and the idea that counterfactual dependence is necessary for causation. There are, of course, substantial objections to such theses. While I think a fight against objections to the Lewisian argument can be won, I develop, in what follows, a much more intuitive argument for the universality of causation which takes as its inspiration a result from Frederic B. Fitch’s work (J Symb Logic 28(2):135–142, 1963) [with credit to who we now know was Alonzo church’s, Referee Reports on Fitch’s Definition of value, in: (Salerno (ed.), New essays on the knowability paradox, 2009)] that if all truths are such that they are knowable, then (counter-intuitively) all truths are known. The resulting Church–Fitch proof for the universality of causation is preferable to the Lewisian argument since it rests upon far weaker formal and metaphysical assumptions than those of the Lewisian argument.     

Optimus prime: paraphrasing prime number talk

Baker (Mind 114:223–238, 2005; Brit J Philos Sci 60:611–633, 2009) has recently defended what he calls the “enhanced” version of the indispensability argument for mathematical Platonism. In this paper I demonstrate that the nominalist can respond to Baker’s argument. First, I outline Baker’s argument in more detail before providing a nominalistically acceptable paraphrase of prime-number talk. Second, I argue that, for the nominalist, mathematical language is used to express physical facts about the world. In endorsing this line I follow moves made by Saatsi (Brit J Philos Sci 62(1):143–154, 2011). But, unlike Saatsi, I go on to argue that the nominalist requires a paraphrase of prime-number talk, for otherwise we lack an account of what that ‘physical fact’ is in the case of mathematics that seemingly makes reference to prime numbers.     

The free will of corporations (and other collectives)

Moderate holists like French (Collective and corporate responsibility, 1984), Copp (J Soc Philos, 38(3):369–388, 2007), Hess (The Background of Social Reality – A Survey, 2013), Isaacs (Moral responsibility in collective contexts, 2011) and List and Pettit (Group agency: The possibility, design, and status of corporate agents, 2011) argue that certain collectives qualify as moral agents in their own right, often pointing to the corporation as an example of a collective likely to qualify. A common objection is that corporations cannot qualify as moral agents because they lack free will. The concern is that corporations (and other highly organized collectives like colleges, governments, and the military) are effectively puppets, dancing on strings controlled by external forces. The article begins by briefly presenting a novel account of corporate moral agency and then demonstrates that, on this account, qualifying corporations (and similar entities in other fields) do possess free will. Such entities possess and act from their own “actional springs”, in Haji’s (Midwest Stud Philos, 30(1):292–308, 2006) phrase, and from their own reasons-responsive mechanisms. When they do so, they act freely and are morally responsible for what they do.     

On the Argument from Divine Arbitrariness

William Rowe in his Can God be Free? (2004) argues that God, if there is a God, necessarily chooses the best. Combined with the premise that there is no best act of creation, this provides an a priori argument for atheism. Rowe assumes that necessarily God is a ??morally unsurpassable?? being, and it is for that reason that God chooses the best. In this article I drop that assumption and I consider a successor to Rowe??s argument, the Argument from Arbitrariness, based on the premise that God does not act arbitrarily. My chief conclusion will be that this argument fails because, for all we know, there can be non-arbitrary divine choices even if there is no best act of creation.     

Collins’ core fine-tuning argument

Collins (The Blackwell companion to natural theology, 2009) presents an argument he calls the ‘core fine-tuning argument’. In this paper, I show that Collins’ argument is flawed in at least two ways. First, the structure, depending on likelihoods, fails to establish anything about the posterior probability of God’s existence given fine-tuning. As an argument for God’s existence, this is a serious failing. Second, his analysis of what is appropriately restricted background knowledge, combined with the credences of a specially chosen ‘alien’, do not allow him to establish the premise \( \Pr (LPU \mid NSU~ \& ~k') \ll 1\) .     

Manifest Failure Failure: The Gettier Problem Revived

If the history of the Gettier Problem has taught us anything, it is to be skeptical regarding purported solutions. Nevertheless, in “Manifest Failure: The Gettier Problem Solved” (2011), that is precisely what John Turri offers us. For nearly fifty years, epistemologists have been chasing a solution for the Gettier Problem but with little to no success. If Turri is right, if he has actually solved the Gettier Problem, then he has done something that is absolutely groundbreaking and really quite remarkable. Regrettably, however, while Turri’s account is both intuitive and elegant—improving upon many seminal projects within contemporary epistemology—I argue in this paper that any success against Gettier counterexamples it affords is merely fleeting. Straightforwardly, this is done in two sections. In §1, I briefly sketch Turri’s proposed solution to the Gettier Problem. Then, in §2, I level a counterexample against it. Unfortunately for Turri and his solution, in this paper we will see history repeat itself.     

Crime Scene Investigation: The Chief Inspectors’ Display Rules

Television as one factor in the “cycle of role division” (Eagly 1987; Shields 2002) can aid to perpetuate traditional role attitudes as well as set new norms. The aim of the study is to examine gender differences in facial expression of emotion on TV as well as changes of these differences over time. A content analysis of 12 episodes of a prominent German crime series from two time samples (1979–1981 / 2005) was done by employing the Emotional Facial Action Coding System (EmFACS, Friesen and Ekman 1983). Results show that there are gender differences in stereotypically male emotions: Male actors express these emotions significantly more frequently than female actors, while the latter show more “social smiles”. These differences are reduced over time.     

The luck argument against event-causal libertarianism: It is here to stay

The luck argument raises a serious challenge for libertarianism about free will. In broad outline, if an action is undetermined, then it appears to be a matter of luck whether or not one performs it. And if it is a matter of luck whether or not one performs an action, then it seems that the action is not performed with free will. This argument is most effective against event-causal accounts of libertarianism. Recently, Franklin (Philosophical Studies 156:199–230, 2011) has defended event-causal libertarianism against four formulations of the luck argument. I will argue that three of Franklin’s responses are unsuccessful and that there are important versions of the luck challenge that his defense has left unaddressed.     

Epistemic Principles and Sceptical Arguments: Closure and Underdetermination

Anthony Brueckner has argued that claims about underdetermination of evidence are suppressed in closure-based scepticism (“The Structure of the Skeptical Argument”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54:4, 1994). He also argues that these claims about underdetermination themselves lead to a paradoxical sceptical argument—the underdetermination argument—which is more fundamental than the closure argument. If Brueckner is right, the status quo focus of some predominant anti-sceptical strategies may be misguided. In this paper I focus specifically on the relationship between these two arguments. I provide support for Brueckner’s claim that the underdetermination argument is the more fundamental sceptical argument. I do so by responding to a challenge to this claim put forward by Stewart Cohen (“Two Kinds of Skeptical Argument”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 58:1, 1998). Cohen invokes an alternative epistemic principle which he thinks can be used to challenge Brueckner. Cohen’s principle raises interesting questions about the relationship between evidential considerations and explanatory considerations in the context of scepticism about our knowledge of the external world. I explore these questions in my defence of Brueckner.     

Sketch this: extended mind and consciousness extension

This paper will defend the claim that, under certain circumstances, the material vehicles responsible for an agent’s conscious experience can be partly constituted by processes outside the agent’s body. In other words, the consciousness of the agent can extend. This claim will be supported by the Extended Mind Thesis (EMT) example of the artist and their sketchpad (Clark 2001, 2003). It will be argued that if this example is one of EMT, then this example also supports an argument for consciousness extension. Clark (2009) rejects claims of consciousness extension. This paper will challenge Clark and argue that he fails to show that the material vehicles responsible for consciousness must be internal to the agent.     

How Simple is it for Science to Acquire Wisdom According to its Choicest Aims?

Focusing on Nicholas Maxwell’s thesis that “science, properly understood, provides us the methodological key to the salvation of humanity”, the article discusses Maxwell’s aim oriented empiricism and his conception of Wisdom Inquiry as advocated in Maxwell’s (2009b, pp.1–56) essay entitled “How Can Life of Value Best Flourish in the Real World?” (in Science and the Pursuit of Wisdom: Studies in the Philosophy of Nicholas Maxwell 2009, edited by Leemon McHenry) and in Maxwell (2004 & 2009a).     

Are Conductive Arguments Possible?

Conductive Arguments are held to be defeasible, non-conclusive, and neither inductive nor deductive (Blair and Johnson in Conductive argument: An overlooked type of defeasible reasoning. College, London, 2011). Of the different kinds of Conductive Arguments, I am concerned only with those for which it is claimed that countervailing considerations detract from the support for the conclusion, complimentary to the positive reasons increasing that support. Here’s an example from Wellman (Challenge and response: justification in ethics. Southern Illinois University Press, Chicago, 1971): Although your lawn needs cutting, you ought to take your son to the movies because the picture is ideal for children and will be gone by tomorrow. (1971: 57) I argue that Conductive Arguments are not possible—the “ought” conclusion only holds if countervailing considerations are nullified.     

Incommensurability,slight pains and God

I will consider how the notion of incommensurability, as championed by Parfit (Reasons and persons, 1984), Griffin (Well-being: its meaning, measurement and importance, 1986), Chang (Ethics 112:659–688, 2002), and Hare (Philos Perspect 23:165–176, 2009), might affect both the argument from slight pain (which suggests God’s non-existence can be inferred from the merest stubbing of one’s toe) and Leibniz’s reply to this argument. I conclude that the notion of incommensurability may ultimately strengthen Leibniz’s general position.     

Metaphysically indeterminate existence

Sider (Four-dimensionalism 2001; Philos Stud 114:135–146, 2003; Nous 43:557–567, 2009) has developed an influential argument against indeterminacy in existence. In what follows, I argue that the defender of metaphysical forms of indeterminate existence has a unique way of responding to Sider’s argument. The response I’ll offer is interesting not only for its applicability to Sider’s argument, but also for its broader implications; responding to Sider helps to show both how we should think about precisification in the context of metaphysical indeterminacy and how we should understand commitment to metaphysically indeterminate existence. And if I’m right that metaphysical indeterminacy can allow for indeterminate existence in a way that semantic indeterminacy can’t, indeterminate existence might actually give us a reason to accept metaphysical indeterminacy (rather than a reason to reject it, as is commonly assumed).