mind & identity · new to this edition
the device that never fired
a man tells a lie he could not have avoided telling. he would have told it anyway. harry frankfurt asked whether that gets him off the hook.
Almost everyone agrees that you cannot be blamed for something you could not have avoided. Philosophers call it the principle of alternate possibilities, and for centuries it framed the argument about free will: if the past and the laws of nature fix everything we do, then nobody could ever have done otherwise, and so nobody is ever to blame. In 1969 Harry Frankfurt published a short paper with a story designed to show that the principle is false. Five scenes put you inside it. Commit to an answer at each one; the later scenes are built to test the earlier answers.
further reading
- alternate possibilities and moral responsibility original paper
- libertarianism and frankfurt’s attack on the principle of alternative possibilities original paper
- moral responsibility and the principle of alternative possibilities stanford encyclopedia of philosophy
- moral responsibility stanford encyclopedia of philosophy
- frankfurt cases wikipedia