NTU Philosophical Review

Issue 30, October 2005

The Principle of Alternative Possibilities and Causal Determination

Some compatibilists believe that the principle of alternative possibilities has been shown to be false by Frankfurt-style arguments, and this gives way to the compatibility of causal determination with moral responsibility. Those incompatibilists who defend the principle of alternative possibilities, on the other hand, insist on the truth of the principle and on the incompatibility of causal determination with moral responsibility. In this article, I argue that Frankfurt-style counterexamples are unsuccessful in indicating the falsity of the principle of alternative possibilities, and yet this failure is inconclusive to prove the correctness of incompatibilism. In fact, the principle of alternative possibilities is, I show, compatible with causal determination and thus with compatibilism on a specific understanding of determinism and compatibilism.