I’ve recently become puzzled about the best way to formulate the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP). Almost everyone follows Frankfurt (1969) who puts it like this: “a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise”. This is often sharpened like this: “for all persons S and actions A, S is morally responsible for doing A only if S could have done something other than A.”
But there seems to be an obvious problem with this formulation. Frankfurt, as everyone knows, claims that PAP is false; that is, he asserts the negation of PAP. But the negation of PAP (as formulated above) comes out as: “there is a person S and an action A, such that S is morally responsible for doing A and it is not the case that S could have done something other than A.” But this clearly isn’t what Frankfurt (or any contemporary ‘Frankfurtian’) has in mind. This is both too weak and too strong. Too strong: because Frankfurt isn’t claiming that any actual person is responsible. (Despite being a compatibilist about responsibility and determinism, he might think there are other actual considerations that universally rule out responsibility.) Too weak: because Frankfurt isn’t trying to say anything about the actual facts of responsibility; rather, he’s saying something about the conditions for responsibility.
Rather, in denying PAP, Frankfurt means to say that moral responsibility doesn’t require the ability to do otherwise; in other words: it is possible to be responsible despite lacking alternative possibilities. This suggests that PAP is best formulated as follows: “necessarily, for all persons S and actions A, S is morally responsible for doing A only if S could have done something other than A.” The negation of this is: “possibly, there is a person S and an action A, such that S is morally responsible for doing A and it is not the case that S could have done something other than A”, which seems closer to the mark.
Has anyone else noticed this?