Abstract

The first part of this paper attempts to show, after D. Dennett and H. Frankfurt’s analyses, that the principle of alternate possibilities, which claims that a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise in the same circumstances, is false about determinism and is inconvenient about adscription of responsibility. In a second part, I hold that is still possible to maintain a “weak” version of that principle, if are kept up the main intuitions about the establishment of a criteria for adscription of responsibility. Even so, the new formulation of principle is not enough in order to explain how someone can do otherwise. For this purpose, it is necessary to propose a normative basis of responsibility, for which the criteria for adscription of responsibility is social, not natural. That is what I do in a third part of this paper.