Joseph Keim Campbell is a rare critic of Frankfurt-style examples which are intended to deny the importance, even the existence, of alternative possibilities.

Campbell even argues that far from disproving alternative possibilities, the Frankfurt examples strengthen the case for a "strong compatibilism," one that includes alternative possibilities.

In his article "A Compatibilist Theory of Alternative Possibilities," Philosophical Studies, 88, pp.319-30, 1997, Campbell wrote:¹

In recent discussions of freedom and determinism, two views of compatibilism have emerged. One, which I call strong compatibilism,² assumes the following:

1. Alternative possibilities of action are necessary for both free will and moral responsibility.

2. Both free will and moral responsibility are compatible with causal determinism.

Strong compatibilism has long been thought to be incoherent by incompatibilists, who deny (2),³ but recently it has also received criticism from other compatibilists, who deny (1). In a celebrated essay, for instance, Harry Frankfurt has provided examples in which it seems that a person is morally responsible for some action even though she could not have done otherwise.⁴ This result has delighted many philosophers who find that attempts to establish (2) in light of (1) have generally led to failure,⁵ and has given rise to what I call weak compatibilism:

1'. Moral responsibility does not require alternative possibilities of action, so neither does any freedom that is necessary for moral responsibility.

2'. Moral responsibility – and any freedom that is essential to it – is compatible with causal determinism.⁶

The strength and uniqueness of weak compatibilism rests with (1') and, thus, the supposed counterexamples put forth by Frankfurt.

In this paper I prove that (1') is false. The Frankfurt examples,⁷ as I call them, not only fail to establish (1') but they lend support to strong compatibilism instead. The paper is a defense of the traditional theory of the will which states that a person has free will provided that she has certain powers of agency and cognition which are not in any way impeded. That one has such powers entails the existence of possibilities which can be used to construct a compatibilist account of ‘could have done otherwise’. Since agents in the Frankfurt examples have the appropriate powers they must also have alternative possibilities of action. At most, the agents lack categorical possibilities that are incompatible with determinism. Therefore, the Frankfurt examples promote strong, not weak, compatibilism.

According to the strong compatibilist, a person has free will only if she has alternative possibilities of action, that is, only if she could have, in some relevant sense, done otherwise.⁸ In addition, the strong compatibilist will also endorse the following:

The Principle of Alternative Possibilities [PAP]: A person is morally responsible for what she has done only if she could have done otherwise.⁹

Given PAP and a standard incompatibilist argument,¹⁰ one may contend that moral responsibility is also incompatible with determinism. Since many previous compatibilist accounts of alternative possibilities are flawed¹¹ some compatibilists have jettisoned the notion of alternative possibilities altogether and provided some other basis for a theory of freedom and moral responsibility. Thus, we are led to weak compatibilism, which is primarily driven by Frankfurt’s apparent counterexamples to PAP.

NOTES

1. I have benefited from many helpful comments on previous drafts of this paper. I especially thank Henry Byerly, Tom Christiano, Randolph Clarke, Robert Cummins, Hud Hudson, Robert Kane, Keith Lehrer, Kenneth Lucey, George Rainbolt, Russ Shafer-Landau, Jim Stone, Kadri Vihvelin, Jeff Wattles, Michael J. Zimmerman and a host of referees from assorted journals.
2. See especially Moore 1912, Lehrer 1966b, 1976 and 1980, and Lewis 1981.
3. See Campbell 1957, Taylor 1963, Chisholm 1966b, van Inwagen 1983 and Kane 1985.
4. Frankfurt 1969. See Davidson 1973 for a similar argument.
5. Many strong compatibilists adopt the hypothetical analysis of ‘could have done otherwise’ which is discussed and criticized in section (4).
6. Weak compatibilist accounts differ though most accept a notion of ‘acting freely’ which embraces (1') and (2') (See Fischer 1986b, pp. 46–47). Of course, weak compatibilists would reject any notion of freedom associated with alternative possibilities, such as ‘freedom of action.’ A collection of important writings is contained in Fischer 1986a, part I. John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza (1991) endorse a version of weak compatibilism but call it ‘semicompatibilism.’ Susan Wolf (1990) calls it the ‘Real Self View.’
7. Peter van Inwagen (1978) calls these ‘Frankfurt-type counter-examples’ but since I do not think that they are genuine counterexamples I have slightly altered the name.
8. Along with others, I regard the expressions ‘could have,’ ‘was able to,’ and ‘had it within her power’ as equivalent. Likewise, I treat the terms ‘capacity,’ ‘ability,’ and ‘power’ as synonyms. See van Inwagen 1983, p. 8.
9. Frankfurt 1969, p. 143.
10. See, for instance, van Inwagen 1983 for such an argument.
11 Many compatibilists – following Hume 1975, p. 447, and Moore 1912 – endorse a hypothetical account of ‘could have done otherwise.’ See section (4) for criticisms.

In his 2004 introduction to his book Freedom and Determinism, written with Michael O'Rourke and David Shier, Campbell describes the current context of the traditional problem of freedom and determinism.

Thoughts about freedom and determinism have engaged philosophers since the days of ancient Greece. On the one hand, we generally regard ourselves as free and autonomous beings who are responsible for the actions that we perform. But this idea of ourselves appears to conflict with a variety of attitudes that we also have about the inevitable workings of the world around us. For instance, some people believe that strict, universal laws of nature govern the world. Others think that there is an omnipotent God who is the ultimate cause of all things. These more global views suggest that each particular event — including each human action — is causally necessitated, and so they suggest a conflict with the claim that we are free. Hence, the problem of freedom and determinism is, at base, a problem about reconciling attitudes we have toward ourselves with our more general thoughts about the world around us. It is a problem about locating our actions within those streams of events that make up the broader universe.

Freedom is usually discussed within the context of theoretical concerns about the nature of moral responsibility. For it is a basic assumption that some kind of freedom — call it "moral freedom" — is a necessary precondition for our being accountable for our actions. Moreover, even those who endorse moral nihilism, the claim that no one is ever morally responsible for anything, usually do so because they also believe that we lack moral freedom...

In summary, the majority of contemporary philosophers agree that some kind of freedom — moral freedom — is required for moral responsibility. But they differ as to the nature of this freedom as well as some of the other necessary conditions for moral responsibility. Proponents of the traditional view continue to maintain that moral freedom is just free will, but a variety of philosophers have rejected the latter notion altogether. This is primarily due to the impact of the Frankfurt examples and formal arguments for moral nihilists, and incompatibilism. Moreover, while debate about the compatibility of moral freedom and determinism is still alive and well, most philosophers have rejected determinism given quantum mechanics. Gone are the labels of soft determinism and hard determinism, but the lion's share of opinions on the nature of freedom and determinism still fall into three main groups: libertarians, moral nihilists, and compatibilists, including semicompatibilists.

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