why frankfurt-examples don’t need to succeed to succeed

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Why Frankfurt-Examples Don’t Need to Succeed to Succeed felipe leon California State University neal a. tognazzini College of William and Mary Decisive counterexamples to substantive philosophical theses are few and far between. It is relatively uncontroversial that Gettier (1963) gave us one. It is much more controversial whether Frankfurt (1969) did. Indeed, there is a huge literature surrounding so-called Frankfurt-style counterexamples (FSCs), with no clear consensus one way or the other. Many have contributed to the project of attempting to construct a fool- proof FSC; many have argued against the possibility of successfully completing that project. 1 In this paper, we do not aim to add directly to either of these projects. Rather, we aim to avoid both of them in a way that we hope will shed light on the debate as a whole. 1. The Debate Over the Success of FSCs But in order to sidestep, we need to know what it is we are sidestep- ping. So allow us to give a bit of background. Prior to 1969, most phi- losophers accepted the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP), which is the thesis that an agent is morally responsible for an action only if the agent could have done otherwise. 2 But, as is now well known, Harry Frankfurt (1969) challenged this thesis by constructing what appears to be a counterexample to it. Frankfurt’s basic insight was the following: it seems that there are situations in which certain factors block an agent’s access to any alternative courses of action, but that nevertheless play no role in bringing about the action that the 1 For an excellent collection of papers on this topic, see McKenna and Widerker 2003. 2 This is how Frankfurt 1969 puts it. But it should be noted that the ‘could’ indicates ability and not mere possibility. WHY FRANKFURT-EXAMPLES DONT NEED TO SUCCEED TO SUCCEED 551 Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. LXXX No. 3, May 2010 Ó 2010 Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LLC Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

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Page 1: Why Frankfurt-Examples Don’t Need to Succeed to Succeed

Why Frankfurt-Examples Don’tNeed to Succeed to Succeed

felipe leon

California State University

neal a. tognazzini

College of William and Mary

Decisive counterexamples to substantive philosophical theses are few

and far between. It is relatively uncontroversial that Gettier (1963) gave

us one. It is much more controversial whether Frankfurt (1969) did.

Indeed, there is a huge literature surrounding so-called Frankfurt-style

counterexamples (FSCs), with no clear consensus one way or the other.

Many have contributed to the project of attempting to construct a fool-

proof FSC; many have argued against the possibility of successfully

completing that project.1 In this paper, we do not aim to add directly

to either of these projects. Rather, we aim to avoid both of them in a

way that we hope will shed light on the debate as a whole.

1. The Debate Over the Success of FSCs

But in order to sidestep, we need to know what it is we are sidestep-

ping. So allow us to give a bit of background. Prior to 1969, most phi-

losophers accepted the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP),

which is the thesis that an agent is morally responsible for an action

only if the agent could have done otherwise.2 But, as is now well

known, Harry Frankfurt (1969) challenged this thesis by constructing

what appears to be a counterexample to it. Frankfurt’s basic insight

was the following: it seems that there are situations in which certain

factors block an agent’s access to any alternative courses of action, but

that nevertheless play no role in bringing about the action that the

1 For an excellent collection of papers on this topic, see McKenna and Widerker

2003.2 This is how Frankfurt 1969 puts it. But it should be noted that the ‘could’ indicates

ability and not mere possibility.

WHY FRANKFURT-EXAMPLES DON’T NEED TO SUCCEED TO SUCCEED 551

Philosophy and Phenomenological ResearchVol. LXXX No. 3, May 2010� 2010 Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LLC

Philosophy andPhenomenological Research

Page 2: Why Frankfurt-Examples Don’t Need to Succeed to Succeed

agent actually performs. In cases like this, where the agent still acts for

his own reasons despite having no alternative course of action open to

him, it is intuitive to suppose that the agent is morally responsible

despite the lack of alternatives. Such cases would show that PAP is

false. For concreteness, let’s consider one of these sorts of cases, struc-

tured after Frankfurt’s own (and inspired by John Fischer (1982)):

Jones goes into a voting booth, deliberates in the normal way about

whom to vote for, decides to vote for the Democrat, and then votesfor the Democrat. Unbeknownst to Jones, however, his neural activitywas being monitored from afar by Black, who had implanted a chip

into Jones’ brain that would enable Black to directly stimulate partsof Jones’ brain. Had Jones shown any sign that he would vote Repub-lican instead, Black would have directly manipulated Jones via thechip to make it so that Jones decided to vote for the Democrat

instead, and did vote for the Democrat. But, as it turned out, Blackdid not need to step in, since Jones did not show any sign that hewould vote Republican instead.

Now, as we mentioned above, cases like this are supposed to elicit the

following two intuitions:

(1) The agent, S, could not have done other than perform action A.

(2) S is morally responsible for performing A.

But if (1) and (2) are both true in the case described, where ‘S’ is Jones

and ‘A’ is voting for the Democrat, then PAP must be false, because we

would then have a case in which Jones is morally responsible for an

action even though he could not have done otherwise than perform that

action. Consideration of these two intuitions leads to a natural under-

standing of what it would be for an FSC to succeed. Since, as you have

no doubt guessed by this point, the argument of this paper will turn on

distinguishing two different notions of ‘success’, let’s call this first under-

standing ‘the traditional definition of success’, which can be stated as

follows. An FSC can be considered a success if and only if it describes a

metaphysically possible scenario in which an agent is morally responsi-

ble for some action even though the agent could not have done other-

wise than perform that action. Without a doubt, an FSC that succeeded

in the traditional sense would show that PAP is false.3

The major point of contention between proponents and opponents

of FSCs has been whether any FSC can be constructed in which (1)

and (2) really are both true at the same time with respect to the same

3 At least on one charitable understanding of the principle. See section 5 below.

552 FELIPE LEON AND NEAL A. TOGNAZZINI

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action. That is, the debate has focused on whether any FSC succeeds,

in the traditional sense. Although the case described above sure seems

like a case in which Jones could not have done other than vote for the

Democrat, opponents of FSCs have proven extremely adept at finding

alternative courses of action open to Jones. For instance, even in the

case above, it does seem like there is something open to Jones—after

all, it is still open to Jones to show a sign that he is not going to vote

for the Democrat. And so it looks like it’s not true that the above situ-

ation eliminates all alternatives, because Jones could have exhibited the

relevant sign instead.

And of course this is hardly the final word on the matter. The pro-

ject of attempting to construct a (traditionally) successful FSC contin-

ues full steam ahead. We’re happy to leave this project to the side,

however. For we shall argue that there is a different (and perhaps pref-

erable) sense in which FSCs succeed even if they don’t succeed in the

traditional sense stipulated above. This brings us to a new account of

success, which we defend below: an FSC can be considered a success in

this new sense if and only if it describes a metaphysically possible sce-

nario in which both an agent, S, is morally responsible for a particular

action, A, and either (1) S could not have done other than A or (2) if S

could have done other than A, then this ability is irrelevant to S’s

moral responsibility for A. Call this ‘the revised definition of success’.

Now it should be a bit clearer what we mean when we say, in the title

of the paper, that FSCs don’t need to succeed to succeed. We mean

merely that FSCs don’t need to satisfy the traditional definition of ‘suc-

cess’ in order to satisfy the revised definition, since the revised defini-

tion adds clause (2) as a disjunct.4

But does our revised definition of success even make sense? PAP seems

to be a straightforward conditional, and how could one possibly provide

a counterexample to a conditional without constructing a metaphysically

possible scenario in which the antecedent is true while the consequent is

false? Such questions are quite reasonable. In the next two sections, we

will discuss some general considerations about philosophical claims and

thought-experiments to appease these sorts of worries. Afterward, we

will bring the discussion to bear on the case of FSCs in particular.

4 The point about irrelevance that is included in the second disjunct of our revised

definition should sound familiar to those who have followed debates about the dif-

ference between robust and non-robust alternatives. John Martin Fischer (1994) ini-

tially introduced the idea that the alternative possibilities in question must be

sufficiently robust specifically to directly our attention to the difference between

alternatives that are relevant to moral responsibility and alternatives that are not.

Our argument in this paper is importantly similar to Fischer’s arguments about

robustness. Indeed, our project might be seen as a way of interpreting and explain-

ing more fully Fischer’s point.

WHY FRANKFURT-EXAMPLES DON’T NEED TO SUCCEED TO SUCCEED 553

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2. General Considerations: Thought-Experiments

There are some important distinctions to be made that will help us

understand the difference between the traditional and the revised defini-

tions of ‘success’. First, let’s draw attention to the difference between

two sorts of thought-experiment: modal and non-modal. Modal

thought-experiments are those whose utility depends on whether the

thought-experiment justifies a modal claim—a claim that it’s possible

or necessary that something is or isn’t the case.5 For example, consider

the Cartesian thought-experiment involving conceiving or imagining

yourself existing apart from your body. This is a paradigm case of a

modal thought-experiment because it is useful only if it justifies the

modal claim that it’s metaphysically possible for your mind to exist

apart from your body. If it turns out that the thought-experiment does

not justify this modal claim after all, it can be put to no further use.

By contrast, non-modal thought-experiments are those whose utility

does not depend on whether they justify modal claims. Such experi-

ments have a variety of functions, but they typically involve showing

that a given philosophical position or thesis is inadequate. Here’s one

example. In debates about the nature of personal identity, those who

argue against certain ‘‘empiricist’’ accounts, such as psychological con-

tinuity accounts, sometimes use thought-experiments according to

which a person undergoes fission—two people are somehow created

from an original person. Richard Swinburne, for example, uses such a

thought experiment to show that if some psychological continuity

account is correct, then both of the resultant persons should be the

same person (by transitivity of identity), which is supposed to be

absurd—no one can be ‘‘of two minds’’ in such a literal sense.6 What

makes this a non-modal thought-experiment is that, for the purposes of

Swinburne’s argument, it really doesn’t matter whether the fission sce-

nario is metaphysically possible. Even if it turns out that fission cases

are metaphysically impossible, the thought-experiment can still be put

to good use because, arguably, it has succeeded in getting us to see that

psychological continuity theories of personal identity make identity

depend on the wrong sort of things (such as who else exists). And one

need not see into other possible worlds in order to see this latter point.

Or so the defender of the possibility of non-modal thought-experiments

would argue.

We’ll come back to the distinction between modal and non-modal

thought-experiments below in relation to the debate over FSCs. For

5 The relevant modality here is metaphysical.6 See Shoemaker and Swinburne 1984, pp. 12–19.

554 FELIPE LEON AND NEAL A. TOGNAZZINI

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now, keep it in the back of your mind as we move to a second sort of

general consideration relevant to our argument.

3. General Considerations: Types of Philosophical Claim

The second set of important distinctions deals not with thought-experi-

ments but with types of philosophical claim. Interesting philosophical

claims (like PAP, for instance), often come in the form of some sort of

conditional.7 But there are (at least) three importantly different sorts of

philosophical claim that are each some form of conditional:

(1) Ordinary conditionals

(2) Strict conditionals

(3) Constituent ‘‘conditionals’’8

Each type of claim has a set of truth-conditions, corresponding condi-

tions of evaluation, and characteristic proper methods of evaluation

and defeat. Let’s look at each kind of claim in turn.

Ordinary conditionals are the least common sorts of significant

philosophical claims. For they look only to the actual world—as

opposed to other possible worlds—and are thus contingent claims.

Ordinary conditionals are true just in case, actually, the consequent is

true whenever the antecedent is true. Thus, they can be defeated by

showing an actual instance where the antecedent is true and the conse-

quent is false. The most frequently relevant means of evaluating ordin-

ary conditionals is via observation and observation-sensitive theory.

Strict conditionals are probably the most common ways to construe

significant philosophical claims. They deal with what is necessarily the

case. Unlike ordinary conditionals, other worlds besides the actual

world are relevant to their truth-conditions, defeat conditions, and

means of evaluation. Strict conditionals are true just in case, necessar-

ily, the consequent is true whenever the antecedent is. They can thus be

defeated by showing a possible instance in which the antecedent is true

and the consequent false. The most frequently relevant means of evalu-

ating strict conditionals is thus via a modal thought-experiment, in the

sense outlined above.

7 Or a biconditional, though we are leaving biconditionals to one side here, since

PAP itself is not a biconditional.8 We put this term in scare quotes because the formulation of constituent conditionals

need not explicitly use words like ‘if’ and ‘then’. We will drop the scare quotes in

what follows.

WHY FRANKFURT-EXAMPLES DON’T NEED TO SUCCEED TO SUCCEED 555

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The final major kind of philosophical claim is one that asserts that

one (or more) entity is a constituent, or set of constituents, of another

entity. Arguably, these used to be the most common sorts of claim in

philosophy. Such claims have to do with essential properties. These

aren’t claims about contingent properties or extrinsic, Cambridge prop-

erties; rather, they are claims about what properties ‘‘enter into the

very being’’ of the thing being analyzed. The most cautious of these

sorts of claim merely assert that one or more entities are or are not

constituents of the essence of another entity. But the holy-grail type of

constituent-claim in philosophy is the analysis. Analyses attempt to

state the full essence—the recipe or blueprint—of some entity type or

token, as in ‘‘A = df BCD’’.

It is important to pause for a moment here and reflect on the impli-

cations of the truth-conditions of this last sort of philosophical claim.

Notice that their truth-conditions do not make essential reference to

other possible worlds. There is a good reason for this: a non-constituent

property can be necessarily co-extensive with a constituent property. So,

for example, the property of having three sides is necessarily co-exten-

sive with the property of having three angles (modulo certain qualifica-

tions about, for example, being a closed figure), but the former isn’t a

constituent—doesn’t enter into the being—of the latter. Or consider

Descartes’ account of epistemic justification in terms of clear and dis-

tinct perceptions of the intellect. On this account, it isn’t essential to

clear and distinct perceptions that they are true. For according to

Descartes, if it weren’t for an all-powerful god to ensure the connection

between clear and distinct perceptions and true beliefs, the former

wouldn’t be an infallible indicator of the latter. However, Descartes’

god ensures that the two are necessarily co-extensive. So again, being

an essential property is one thing, being a necessarily co-extensive

property is another, and the latter isn’t an infallible indicator of the

former. But if that’s right, then the methods of evaluation for constitu-

ent conditionals may diverge from those of strict conditionals.

The moral here is that constituent claims and analyses can be evalu-

ated and defeated without appealing to other possible worlds. And if

that’s right, then the door is open for evaluating them via non-modal

thought experiments—that is, via thought-experiments that don’t

depend for their utility on whether they justify claims about what is

necessarily or possibly the case.

4. Companions vs. Soul-mates

Perhaps a metaphor will help to really drive home the difference

between philosophical claims stated as strict conditionals, on the one

556 FELIPE LEON AND NEAL A. TOGNAZZINI

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hand, and philosophical claims stated as constituent conditionals, on

the other. Strict conditionals do tell us something interesting about the

relationship between two properties. What they tell us is that one prop-

erty is a companion of another, in the sense that wherever the other

goes, the one tags along. One property is a companion of another, in

this sense, just in case it shows up in every metaphysically possible

world where its companion shows up.

But mere companionship doesn’t tell us anything interesting about

the relationship between the two properties that are companions. Per-

haps there is a deep conceptual connection between the two, and per-

haps not. When there is a deeper conceptual connection between the

two, we might call the properties soul-mates, rather than mere compan-

ions. Roughly, one property is the soul-mate of another just in case it

‘‘enters into the very being’’ of its soul-mate—just in case it is part of

the conceptual fabric of its soul-mate. Of course, if two properties are

soul-mates, then they will ipso facto be companions, as well, but the

converse does not hold. Indeed, it is precisely because the converse

does not hold that we need to distinguish between strict conditionals

and constituent conditionals. Whereas strict conditionals tell us about

companions, constituent conditionals tell us about soul-mates.

5. What Sort of Philosophical Claim is PAP?

So we have two sorts of thought-experiment: modal and non-modal.

And we have three sorts of philosophical claim: ordinary, strict, and

constituent conditionals. With these distinctions in mind, let’s turn

back to the issue at hand. Regarding FSCs, then, there are now two

important questions we need to answer:

(1) What sort of philosophical claim is PAP?

(2) What sort of thought-experiment is Frankfurt’s attack on PAP?

Those familiar with the literature on FSCs will know that PAP is usu-

ally (though perhaps somewhat surprisingly) stated as an ordinary con-

ditional, as follows:

PAPoc: An agent is morally responsible for an action only if

the agent could have done otherwise.

But if this were the way PAP were intended, then Frankfurt’s counte-

rexamples wouldn’t even stand a chance, because nowhere does Frank-

furt say that his counterexample scenarios must exist in the actual

WHY FRANKFURT-EXAMPLES DON’T NEED TO SUCCEED TO SUCCEED 557

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world in order for PAP to be false. It’s more plausible to interpret

Frankfurt as thinking that all we need to do in order to show PAP

false is to find a possible world in which an agent is morally responsible

for an action even though the agent could not have done otherwise.

(This is, remember, the traditional definition for the success of an

FSC.) So, this suggests a second reading of PAP, put in terms of a

strict conditional:

PAPsc: Necessarily, an agent is morally responsible for an

action only if the agent could have done otherwise.

If this is how we read PAP, then at least Frankfurt’s alleged counterex-

amples don’t obviously miss the mark. But our discussion above tells us

that there is an even stronger way to read PAP. We could read it as a

constituent conditional instead:

PAPcc: A conceptually necessary constituent of being morally

responsible is having the ability to do otherwise.

This reading of PAP is stronger because it ties the ability to do other-

wise to moral responsibility in a much deeper way than PAPsc. In the

terminology of the previous section, another way to think about it is to

say that while PAPsc

only tells us that moral responsibility and the

ability to do otherwise are companions—in the sense that whenever you

have moral responsibility, the ability to do otherwise tags along—

PAPcc

tells us that the two notions are soul-mates, in the sense that the

ability to do otherwise is really part of the conceptual fabric of moral

responsibility. A less metaphorical way to put it would be to say that

PAPcc

tells us that when an agent is morally responsible, he is so partly

in virtue of his being able to do otherwise. If the in virtue of relation

obtains between two facts in this way, then it’s not enough to capture

that relation merely to say that both of the facts are true or even that

necessarily, both of the facts are true. In order to capture the relation,

something needs to be said about the conceptual connection between

the two facts in question. PAPcc

is an attempt to capture this concep-

tual connection.

6. What Sort of Thought-Experiment is an FSC?

Now, we have said that Frankfurt himself is plausibly interpreted as

attacking PAPsc. And it is PAP

scthat seems to have been the focus of

most contemporary discussions of FSCs. Let’s grant for the moment

that FSCs fail to show that PAPsc

is false. That is, let’s grant that

558 FELIPE LEON AND NEAL A. TOGNAZZINI

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Frankfurt (and others) failed to find a metaphysically possible world in

which it’s both true that an agent is morally responsible and that the

agent could not have done otherwise. If FSCs were modal thought-

experiments, then this information would be enough to justify our

scrapping them altogether. Since (we are granting for the moment) no

FSC can justify the modal claim in question, FSCs are useless. But are

FSCs modal thought-experiments? Or can they still be put to good use

even if they don’t justify the modal claim in question? We think there

is a good case to be made that FSCs are most plausibly thought of as

non-modal thought-experiments, and we will gesture at the case for this

below. For now, let’s note that if FSCs can plausibly be considered

non-modal thought-experiments, it follows that even if they can’t be

used to refute PAPsc, they may nevertheless be able to refute PAP

cc,

and thus still tell us something interesting about moral responsibility in

the process.

What might they tell us? Non-modal FSCs might tell us that the

ability to do otherwise is not a requirement of moral responsibility. But

we don’t mean ‘requirement’ here in the sense that one thing is a

requirement of another just in case necessarily, you can’t have the

other without the one. Rather, we mean it in the sense that even if it’s

true that the ability to do otherwise always tags along with moral

responsibility, it’s nevertheless false that they are connected in the same

way that a constituent is connected with the thing it is a constituent of.

Part of the problem here, we are suggesting, is that there are at least

three different ways to interpret the phrases ‘is a requirement of’ and

‘is a necessary condition for’, corresponding to the three different types

of philosophical claim identified above. Perhaps (and we stress we

aren’t making any commitments about this at this point) the ability to

do otherwise is a requirement of or a necessary condition for moral

responsibility in the sense of PAPsc. It still may not be in the sense of

PAPcc. In other words, even if FSCs don’t constitute a counterexample

to PAPsc, they still may constitute a counterexample to PAP

cc. Thus,

FSCs don’t need to succeed to succeed.

7. Objection: Sinning Against Plantinga9

We suspect that some will have a problem with our main line of argu-

ment. For our account relies on the idea that a property can be neces-

sarily coextensive with a thing’s essential properties without itself being

essential to the thing. But how can this be? Isn’t it part of philosophi-

cal orthodoxy that a property is essential to a bearer just in case the

9 Thanks to Kevin Timpe for raising this objection forcefully.

WHY FRANKFURT-EXAMPLES DON’T NEED TO SUCCEED TO SUCCEED 559

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bearer has the property in all possible worlds in which it exists? While

we agree that it is indeed orthodoxy, we think that this sort of modal

account is nonetheless inadequate. We’ll briefly discuss two reasons for

thinking so: (1) the modal account admits of counterexamples, and

more fundamentally, (2) the modal account is too coarse-grained to

adequately differentiate essential from non-essential properties. Let’s

discuss these criticisms in turn.

Alvin Plantinga’s account of essential propertyhood is representative.

Plantinga (1974) tells us that a property, P, is essential to its bearer, x,

if and only if x is P in all possible worlds in which x exists.10 So, sup-

pose that Ralph has the property of being a Californian in some possi-

ble worlds, but not in others. On Plantinga’s analysis, then, being a

Californian isn’t essential to Ralph. By contrast, suppose that Ralph

has the property of being a person in all possible worlds in which he

exists. In this case, Plantinga’s account would entail that being a per-

son is essential to Ralph.

We think Kit Fine (1994) provides a nice counterexample to

Plantinga’s analysis. Consider the set whose only member is Socrates,

and call that set ‘singleton Socrates’. There is no possible world in

which Socrates exists yet lacks the property of being the member of

singleton Socrates. So, by Plantinga’s modal definition of essence,

being a member of this singleton set is essential to Socrates. But intu-

itively, being a member of this set is not essential to or constitutive of

Socrates. As Fine puts it, ‘‘Strange as the literature on personal iden-

tity may be, it has never been suggested that in order to understand

the nature of a person one must know to which set he belongs. There

is nothing in the nature of a person…which demands that he belongs

to this or that set or which even demands that there be any sets.’’

(Fine 1994, p. 5.)

This brings us to our second complaint against Plantinga’s modal

account of essential properties: it’s too coarse-grained. For in Fine’s

case of Socrates and his singleton set, the set of worlds containing Soc-

rates and the set of worlds containing singleton Socrates are the same

set. Therefore, on the modal analysis of essential properties, we can’t

make sense of the intuitive asymmetry here: it is part of the nature of

singleton Socrates that it contains Socrates as a member, but it’s no

part of the nature of Socrates that he be a member of singleton Socra-

tes. Something has gone wrong here, and it is the adoption of a modal

analysis of essence. As Fine’s case nicely illustrates, possible worlds

are just too coarse-grained to do the work of singling out essential

properties.

10 This is a slight paraphrase of Plantinga’s account on p. 56.

560 FELIPE LEON AND NEAL A. TOGNAZZINI

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8. Reply: Toward a Non-Modal Account of Essential Properties

But if modal analyses are inadequate, what sort of analysis is adequate?

We don’t think we need to give a positive account (not here, anyway),

but perhaps it would be helpful to offer some suggestive remarks about

how such an account might go. Here again, Fine’s article is helpful. Fine

distinguishes between modal and definitional accounts of essential proper-

ties. Modal accounts are of the sort Plantinga gives. Definitional

accounts are of the sort that Aristotle gave. Thus, just as one can give the

definition of what a word means, so one can give the definition of what

an object—or kind of object—is. As Aristotle put it, ‘‘clearly, then, the

definition is the formula of the essence.’’ (Metaphysics 1031a12).11

To be sure, on definitional accounts, claims of essential properties

are inextricably tied to modal properties and modal claims. Thus, if F

is essential to x, then x is F in all possible worlds in which x exists. But

the difference is that on the definitional account, the relationship

between modal properties and essential properties is asymmetric: the

modal properties supervene on the essential properties, but the essential

properties do not supervene on the modal properties. Thus, the con-

verse of the conditional above holds for the modal account of essence,

but not for the definitional account—x might be F in all possible

worlds in which x exists, but for all that, F might not be essential to x

(hence the case of Socrates and singleton Socrates).

9. A Potentially Successful Non-Modal FSC

The main motivation behind FSCs, it seems, and behind rejecting PAP

in general, is that alternative possibilities in and of themselves seem

altogether irrelevant to our ascriptions of moral responsibility, even if

they are there. Indeed, one often hears talk of ‘irrelevance’ in the litera-

ture on FSCs, but such talk tends to arise within a discussion of PAPsc

.

Adopting our framework above, however, provides a more nuanced

way of understanding the idea of irrelevance, in terms of a rejection of

PAPcc

instead. If that’s right, then, as we have pointed out, it’s at least

coherent to suppose that FSCs succeed in establishing the irrelevance

claim even if they fail to establish the falsity of PAPsc. But enough

about what it is merely ‘‘coherent to suppose’’. What considerations

can be adduced in favor of the claim that we should view FSCs as non-

modal thought-experiments, despite the opposite tendency in the litera-

ture? To start, let’s look at a variant on an FSC that we think does

pretty well at bringing out the irrelevance intuition. After we have the

11 Both the reference and the definitional construal of Aristotle’s account of essence

are Fine’s. See Fine 1994, p. 2.

WHY FRANKFURT-EXAMPLES DON’T NEED TO SUCCEED TO SUCCEED 561

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case in front of us, we’ll make some suggestive (but ultimately incon-

clusive) remarks about how this case might help to show that FSCs

may still be useful even if there is no modal claim that they justify.

The case we have in mind is provided by John Martin Fischer, in

the following anecdote:

Some months ago, I was at the local supermarket. When I got to thecheckout counter, the checker asked, ‘‘Would you like a paper bag orplastic?’’ I thought for a moment and replied, ‘‘Plastic is fine.’’ Then

the checker smiled and said, ‘‘It’s a good thing—I see we only haveplastic!’’ (Fischer 2006, p. 62, n. 22)

We think it is plausible to say that Fischer is responsible for bringing

home plastic in this case, even though he couldn’t have brought home

paper. Were his wife to scold him for bringing home the groceries in

plastic bags on account of the fact that plastic is less friendly to the

environment than paper, for example, it wouldn’t be a good excuse for

Fischer to say, ‘‘But they were out of paper, so I had to take plastic!’’

(It would be an excuse, of course, but not a good one.) He chose plastic

for his own reasons and is therefore responsible for bringing home

plastic even though he couldn’t have brought home paper. Such a sce-

nario is like an FSC, of course, but it’s clearly not a case that rules out

all alternative possibilities. After all, Fischer could have chosen paper

instead. He would still have brought home plastic, of course, since that

was all they had, but he could have chosen something different. Never-

theless, we think that this sort of case makes plausible the claim that

whether there are any alternative courses of action open to Fischer is

just irrelevant to our assessment of Fischer’s choice and action.

What does seem relevant is the reason for which Fischer acted. Since he

believed that the store had paper bags in stock, his choice of plastic was

not at all influenced by the fact that plastic was all the store really had.

He thus made his decision for his own reasons. Of course, there is cer-

tainly much more that needs to be said about the details of this situation.

We can’t mount the full argument against PAPcchere, but we think that

considering the details of cases like Fischer’s can provide the resources

for making a plausible case that sometimes an agent’s ability to do other-

wise, even if it is there, is altogether irrelevant to the agent’s moral

responsibility. For the purposes of this paper, we are happy to leave our

discussion of this case here, merely as a suggestion for future work.

10. Final Thoughts

To conclude, we’d like to apply some of the above considerations to

the wider debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists about

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determinism and moral responsibility, of which the debate over FSCs is

most often a part.

It is often compatibilists who get excited about falsifying PAP, since

that principle figures in one of the most celebrated arguments for in-

compatibilism. That argument (which has sometimes been called the

‘indirect’ argument for incompatibilism) can be stated as follows:

(1) If determinism is true, then no one is ever able to do otherwise

with respect to any action.

(2) An agent is morally responsible for an action only if the agent

could have done otherwise.

(3) Therefore, if determinism is true, then no one is ever morally

responsible for any action.

Premise (1) is supported by arguments such as Peter van Inwagen’s

(1983) Consequence Argument, and premise (2) is Frankfurt’s familiar

PAP. Compatibilists will want to resist this argument in some way, and

although at one time it was thought that the best way to resist was to

deny premise (1), ever since Frankfurt’s article many compatibilists

think that the best way to resist is to deny PAP, and thus deny premise

(2). One might think, then, that the argument of this paper should be

welcomed by compatibilists.

But this reasoning moves a little too quickly. Remember that com-

patibilists, by definition, are committed to the existence of metaphysi-

cally possible deterministic worlds in which there are morally

responsible agents. Given the plausible claim that determinism rules

out the ability to do otherwise, compatibilists will then be committed

to the existence of metaphysically possible worlds in which some agent

is morally responsible even though he could not have done otherwise.

And it is precisely this claim that we have avoided defending in this

paper. For all we have said about PAPcc

, incompatibilism may still be

true. Since we have distinguished between different readings of PAP,

we would also distinguish between different readings of premise (2) in

the above argument for incompatibilism. What we have argued in this

paper is that such an argument may be unsound when premise (2) is

interpreted as PAPcc, even if it is sound when premise (2) is interpreted

as PAPsc. This amounts to a concession that incompatibilism may well

be true, even if it turns out that the ability to do otherwise is not part

of the conceptual fabric of moral responsibility.12

12 There are of course some incompatibilists who already believe this. Our argument

will no doubt be welcomed by these incompatibilists.

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So we should be wary about thinking that the argument of this

paper will be welcomed with open arms by compatibilists. That said,

however, we do think that our argument puts pressure even on those

who would defend the weaker PAPsc. For if a plausible case could be

made that PAPcc

is false, then wouldn’t it be mysterious if PAPsc

were

nevertheless still true? Or, to put it another way, one might wonder

why moral responsibility and the ability to do otherwise might be

thought to be companions. A natural answer is that they are soul-

mates, and any two properties that are soul-mates are automatically

companions. But if our argument above is right, then FSCs may indeed

succeed in showing that the two properties are not soul-mates after all.

And then what sort of explanation will be left for their supposed com-

panionship? Upon relinquishing a claim about soul-mates, it seems that

this should push one at least to suspend judgment regarding the paral-

lel claim about companionship. And insofar as that’s true, the compa-

tibilist will find this a happy result indeed.13

Finally, a word about the currently popular thesis that has come to be

known as ‘source incompatibilism’ (McKenna 2001). Although typically

the incompatibilist thesis has focused on the threat that determinism

would pose to the ability to do otherwise, and hence via PAP to moral

responsibility, more and more incompatibilists are becoming convinced

that there is a deeper threat from determinism. Rather than threatening

the ability to do otherwise, these source incompatibilists think that deter-

minism threatens some important notion of sourcehood or origination,

which is required for moral responsibility. This is not the place to discuss

the view in detail, but we would like to at least make one suggestion for

source incompatibilists that is inspired by the argument of this paper.

Many source incompatibilists formulate their view employing a

notion ‘fundamentality’ that is hard to interpret. To take just one

example, consider the following formulation from Michael McKenna:

[Source incompatibilists] hold that the fundamental threat to moralresponsibility from determinism derives, not from the thought that in

a deterministic world an agent cannot do otherwise; it derives, instead,from the thought that, if determinism is true, an agent’s actions donot originate in her. (McKenna 2001, p. 40)

Many other source incompatibilists have formulated the view similarly,

with language about how sourcehood, rather than the ability to do other-

wise, is more fundamental to moral responsibility, or is what gets to the

heart of the matter concerning moral responsibility. But many of these

13 We note that Michael McKenna has, independently, suggested something like this

line of reasoning to us (in conversation).

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source incompatibilists also think that something like PAP is true, and if

that’s right, then it’s hard to understand what could possibly be meant by

saying that sourcehood is ‘‘more fundamental’’ to moral responsibility. If

both sourcehood and the ability to do otherwise are necessary for moral

responsibility, then shouldn’t they both be considered fundamental?

A source incompatibilist who adopted the argument of this paper,

on the other hand, can make sense of this intuition about fundamental-

ity in a very straightforward way. Such a theorist can simply say that

the sourcehood condition is more fundamental because it is relevant to

moral responsibility in a way that the ability to do otherwise is not.

Though both sourcehood and the ability to do otherwise may be neces-

sary companions of moral responsibility, it’s only sourcehood that is

partly constitutive of it. And therein lies its fundamentality.14

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—— 1994. The Metaphysics of Free Will: An Essay on Control. Oxford:

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—— 2006. ‘‘Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities’’. In his My Way:

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Gettier, Edmund. 1963. ‘‘Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?’’ Analysis

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McKenna, Michael. 2001. ‘‘Source incompatibilism, Ultimacy, and the

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14 For helpful comments on previous drafts, we are grateful to John Martin Fischer,

Michael McKenna, Kevin Timpe, and an anonymous referee for Philosophy and

Phenomenological Research.

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