Countering Cova: Frankfurt-Style Cases are Still Broken

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 17 (3):523-527 (2014)
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Abstract

In his “Frankfurt-style cases user manual”, Florian Cova (2013) distinguishes two kinds of Frankfurt-style arguments against the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP), and argues that my attack on the soundness of Frankfurt-style cases succeeds, at most, only against one kind. Since either kind of argument can be used to undermine PAP, Cova suggests, the fact that my attack fails against at least one means that it does not succeed in rescuing PAP from the clutches of Frankfurt enthusiasts. In this brief response I will argue that my attack undermines both kinds of Frankfurt-style arguments. It shows that we are not entitled to rely on the intuitions that these arguments provoke, whether they are produced by the direct version of the Frankfurt-style argument or the indirect.In a typical Frankfurt-style case (FSC), an agent performs a bad action for which, intuitively, they seem to be morally responsible, despite the fact that they lack alternative possibilities (see Frankfurt 196

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Neil Levy
Macquarie University

Citations of this work

Frankfurt in Fake Barn Country.Neil Levy - 2014 - Metaphilosophy 45 (4-5):529-542.
Alternate Possibilities and Moral Asymmetry.Daniel Avi Coren - 2018 - Acta Analytica 33 (2):145-159.
Leeway Compatibilism and Frankfurt‐Style Cases.Yishai Cohen - 2016 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 5 (2):89-98.

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References found in this work

Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility.John Martin Fischer & Mark Ravizza - 1998 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Mark Ravizza.
Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility.Harry G. Frankfurt - 1969 - Journal of Philosophy 66 (23):829-839.
Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility.John Martin Fischer - 1998 - Philosophical and Phenomenological Research 61 (2):459-466.

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