The principle of alternate possibilities as sufficient but not necessary for moral responsibility: a way to avoid the Frankfurt counter-example

Young, G ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0628-0931, 2016. The principle of alternate possibilities as sufficient but not necessary for moral responsibility: a way to avoid the Frankfurt counter-example. Philosophia: Philosophical Quarterly of Israel. ISSN 0048-3893

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Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present a version of the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP) which is not susceptible to the Frankfurt-style counter-example. I argue that PAP does not need to be endorsed as a necessary condition for moral responsibility and, in fact, presenting PAP as a sufficient condition maintains its usefulness as a maxim for moral accountability whilst avoiding Frankfurt-style counter-examples. In addition, I provide a further sufficient condition for moral responsibility – the twin world condition – and argue that this provides a means of justifying why the protagonist in Frankfurt-style scenarios (e.g., Jones) is still felt to be morally responsible. I conclude by claiming that neither the amended PAP nor the twin world condition is necessary for the ascription of moral responsibility; rather, what is necessary is simply that one of these conditions is satisfied.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Philosophia: Philosophical Quarterly of Israel
Creators:	Young, G.
Publisher:	Springer
Date:	2016
ISSN:	0048-3893
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Linda Sullivan
Date Added:	21 Jan 2016 12:11
Last Modified:	09 Jun 2017 13:58
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/26834

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