Libertarianism and Frankfurt's Attack on the Principle of Alternative Possibilities

Abstract

challenged.' In this paper, I wish to take a fresh look at Frankfurt's attack on PAP from a libertarian viewpoint. I shall try to show that it does not succeed when applied to mental acts such as deciding, choosing, undertaking, forming an intention, that is, mental acts that for the libertarian constitute the basic loci of moral responsibility. If correct, this result will enable us to formulate a necessary condition for moral responsibility that is more adequate than PAP and not vulnerable to Frankfurt's criticism. At the outset, let me state a number of assumptions that I shall employ in the discussion to follow. First, the version of libertarianism I intend to defend is the view that an agent's decision (choice) is free in the sense of freedom required for moral responsibility only if (i) it is not causally determined, and (ii) in the circumstances in which the agent made that decision (choice), he could have avoided making it.2 Second, I take 'a given act A' in

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