On the Impertinence of Frankfurt-Style Argument
نویسنده
چکیده
As Daniel Speak notes in a recent article, the debate over Frankfurt-style examples (FSE) has focused overwhelmingly on whether such examples in fact show the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP) to be false. According to Speak, in the rush to attack and defend the examples themselves, a subtler and more devastating criticism of the FSE has been missed. For even if the FSE falsify PAP, Speak claims, they are " impertinent " as refutations of the incompatibilist's use of PAP to ground an inference to the incompatibility of determinism and moral responsibility. Speak's case turns on Frankfurt's own explanations for why, in the examples, the agent (Jones) is responsible despite lacking alternatives. The explanations, Speak claims, rely on counterfactual stability (that the agent would have done what he did even if he could have done otherwise), which cannot be said to obtain in a deterministic context. Hence what saves responsibility in the FSE is no more compatible with determinism than having alternatives is thought to be. The FSE therefore cannot show that the absence of alternatives in a deterministic context does not in fact defeat responsibility. As Speak puts it, the FSE cannot falsify PAP in the right way, a way that would undermine the use to which it is put in drawing the incompatibilist inference. In reply to Speak's article, John Martin Fischer concedes that the FSE are not decisive in the way sometimes claimed. Furthermore, he accepts that Frankfurt ought not to have used counterfactual stability as a way of explaining the force of the examples. But Fischer also thinks that Speak is guilty of an " all-or-nothing " interpretation, such that in treating the
منابع مشابه
Vihvelin on Frankfurt-Style Cases and the Actual- Sequence View
This is a critical discussion of Vihvelin’s recent book Causes, Laws, and Free Will. I discuss Vihvelin’s ideas on Frankfurt-style cases and the actual-sequence view of freedom that is inspired by them.
متن کاملAnalysis of the Concept of Ethics in the School of Frankfurt
Background: The science of ethics is one of the most complete basic sciences that human beings urgently need, because the subject of knowledge of ethics is the human soul and its inner construction. The moral thinking of the thinkers of the Frankfurt School, as one of the ideas of the twentieth century, is based on the ethics of virtue; because the moral act is known as the act which is the res...
متن کاملOnly T3-AI can reach human-level intelligence: A variety argument
Department of Neurophysiology, Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Deutschordenstraße 46, D-60528 Frankfurt/M, Germany Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS), Ruth-Moufang-Straße 1, D-60438 Frankfurt/M, Germany Ernst Strüngmann Institute (ESI) for Neuroscience in Cooperation with Max Planck Society, Deutschordenstraße 46, D60528 Frankfurt/M, Germany Department of Psychology, Facul...
متن کاملPercutaneous microwave ablation of thyroid nodules: efficacy evaluation with 99m Tc - pertechnetate and 99mTc-MIBI functional imaging
Background: Local ablative treatments play an important role for patients who cannot be treated surgically. Radiofrequency ablation is a well-established alternative to surgical treatment of thyroid nodules, however it also has disadvantages. Microwave ablation (MWA) is a new minimally invasive treatment promising several improvements. The aim of this retrospective study was to evaluate the eff...
متن کاملذخیره در منابع من
با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید
عنوان ژورنال:
دوره شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2008