Michael McKenna
Michael McKenna is a
compatibilist and
naturalist who is a prominent defender of
Harry Frankfurt's attempts to deny the principle of
alternative possibilities (or PAP).
McKenna's recent attempts are notable in that they openly grant libertarian freedom involving alternative possibilities.
John Martin Fischer described any remaining alternative possibilities as miniscule "flickers of freedom" that are not morally significant.
McKenna argues that Frankfurt defenders should not struggle to block these many alternative possibilities that are not morally significant. They should grant indeterministic libertarian freedom to those and concentrate on blocking the morally significant.
McKenna extends Fischer's morally "robust" alternatives, saying that they must figure in the ground upon which an agent is morally responsible for her action.
McKenna hopes for a strategy that will not simply discount all the alternative possibilities, because that might appear to be determining the agent's action.
Can Frankfurt examples achieve both the results of polluting all robust alternatives and at the same time not presupposing determinism? The trouble seems to be that effectively polluting all alternative actional pathways within an agent's control comes dangerously close to making that problematic deterministic assumption. But loosening the restraints so as to avoid this problem seems to invite sufficient slippage that the incompatibilist will be able to locate some robust alternative.
I suggest that the Frankfurt-defender attempt to close off all morally significant alternatives without attempting to pollute all alternative actional pathways within an agent's control. To do this a Frankfurt-defender must identify some class of actional pathways comprising morally insignificant alternatives — alternatives that could not aid in grounding the judgment that an agent in a Frankfurt example is morally responsible for what she does. The Frankfurt defender can leave these actional pathways entirely open and within the control of the agent. No fancy gizmos or crafty interveners need to be present to achieve the modest ensuring conditions required simply to close down some, but not all, alternatives. It is easy to imagine contingencies entirely consistent with indeterminism in which some range of an agent's options are blocked. Call this the limited blockage strategy for defending Frankfurt examples.
(Robustness, Control, and Moral Alternatives, in Moral Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities, p.206)
With his "limited blockage strategy" McKenna can allow "oodles and oodles" of unimportant alternatives.
The theoretical advantage the limited blockage strategy offers over other recent Frankfurt example strategies is that limited blockage cases openly grant libertarian freedom involving alternative possibilities. The examples. therefore, clearly do not require any special considerations that might tacitly import a deterministic relation between agent and action. Indeed, they allow an agent in a Frankfurt example oodles and oodles of alternatives. lmagine in the case Brain Malfunction, the many further possibilities open to Casper.
Casper could have sung a little ditty and done a cutesy jig like Shirley Temple, finishing off with a set of jazz hands; or begun citing nursery rhymes; or made an attempt to eat his fist; or any of a number of equally ludicrous and irrelevant things.
(Robustness, Control, and Moral Alternatives, in Moral Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities, p.212-3)
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Ooodles and Oodles of Alternatives
The buzz about the success of Frankfurt examples has centered around whether any such examples can succeed in eliminating all robust alternative possibilities while preserving the integrity of judgments of moral responsibility. According to the traditional incompatibilist, robust alternatives figure in the ground upon which it is judged that an agent is morally responsible for what she has done. I believe that one way in which Frankfurt defenders have been too generous with their adversaries is in the basis for granting an alternative the status of robustness. Recall the earlier explanation of the two conditions required for a robust alternative: (1) the alternative must be morally significant, and (2) it must be within the scope of the agent's control. By and large, Frankfurt defenders, especially those recently responding to the loci protection strategy, have assumed that any alternative within the scope of an agent's voluntary control is thereby morally significant and is, hence, sufficient for robustness. I believe that they have mistakenly fixed all of their attentions on the second condition for a robust alternative. This makes their task too hard. It requires that they construct complicated scenarios that rule out all alternative courses of action at, but not prior to, the locus of a freely willed action. By carefully restricting the range of morally significant alternatives to those that are deliberatively significant as well, the Frankfurt defender, via the limited blockage strategy, can exploit the first condition for a robust alternative, leaving the second condition well enough alone. In doing so, she can grant an agent control over a range of unpolluted actional pathways — oodles and oodles of them — while still denying that any of those alternatives could play a proper role in contributing to the ground on which an agent is deemed morally responsible. This allows the Frankfurt defender to avoid the compelling case made by those incompatibilists who defend the alternative possibilities at the loci of freely willed actions.
Limited blockage Frankfurt examples prove that, properly articulated, morally significant alternative possibilities are not required for moral responsibility. This is what Frankfurt and the actual sequence compatibilist should be shooting for, and this is what the limited blockage strategy establishes. Determinism cannot rule out free will and moral responsibility by ruling out morally significant alternatives. Perhaps an incompatibilist can make the case that determinism rules them out by ruling our morally insignificant alternative possibilities. But that, dialectically, is a far less compelling defense of the incompatibilist position. The actual sequence compatibilist has won the battle over the alleged importance of alternative possibilities for free will and moral responsibility.
(Robustness, Control, and Moral Alternatives, in
Moral Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities, p.213)
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