David Widerker

A defense of Frankfurt-friendly libertarianism

Elsewhere, I proposed a libertarian-based account of freedom and moral blameworthiness which like Harry Frankfurts 1969 account rejects the principle of alternative possibilities (which I call, Frankfurt-friendly libertarianism). In this paper I develop this account further (a) by responding to an important objection to it raised by Carlos Moya; (b) by exploring the question why, if unavoidability per se does not exonerate from blame, the Frankfurt-friendly libertarian is justified in exculpating an agent under determinism; (c) by arguing that some main compatibilist alternatives to the account are unsatisfactory; and finally (d) by defending it against a general criticism of certain libertarian theories made by Derk Pereboom.

TWO FALLACIOUS OBJECTIONS TO ADAMS' SOFT/HARD FACT DISTINCTION

about the past such as (3) Hitler attacked Russia in 1941, 46 years before Caseys involvement in the Iranian affair. (4) Jack correctly believed in 1982 that Casey will be involved in a scandal in 1987, which, although being facts about the past, obtain in virtue of certain states of affairs or events occurring in the future. A philosopher who has made an attempt to give a precise account of this distinction is Marilyn Adams ([1] pp. 493--494). According to her: (AD)

On the Luck Objection to Libertarianism

Libertarians typically believe that we are morally responsible for the decisions (or choices) we make only if those decisions are free, and our decisions are free only if they are neither deterministically caused nor nomically necessitated by antecedent events. A well-known objection to their view is what we may call ‘The Randomness Objection’: (RO) A decision (choice) that is not causally determined by antecedent events is a random occurrence and, therefore, cannot be regarded as a free action.

Contra Snapshot Ockhamism

ConclusionGiven the failure of Fischers and other entailment accounts of the soft/hard fact distinction, the conclusion that emerges is that the Ockhamist cannot justify his treating the likes of F1 as soft facts about the past by appealing to an entailment account of soft/hard facthood. As we have seen, accounts of this sort are seriously flawed in that they overlook the point that a fact may entail a fact about the future and still be a genuine past fact. Call this problem ‘the entailment problem’. Even if the Ockhamist can evade this problem by adopting a different account of the soft/hard fact distinction, he is still faced with what Fischer has called the problem of ‘hard-core soft facts’,I am not particularly happy with ‘hard-core soft facts’ since it suggests that Gods prior beliefs about human actions are soft facts about the past; whereas in my view, those beliefs should be treated as hard facts about the past. i.e. the problem that by having power over facts such as F1, the agent also gets power over hard facts about the past. Although Fischers way of raising the problem is certainly convincing,By saying this, I do not, of course, mean to imply that I accept his solution to the problem. the problem can be raised also in another way by means of the following consideration. Note that (unlike regular soft facts) facts regarding Gods forebeliefs of human actions can causally contribute to the occurrence of events preceding those actions. For example, we can conceive of a situation in which God, in the light of his belief that Jones will attempt to murder Smith at T5, reveals this fact to Smith at T3 by causing the occurrence of an event E, e.g. Smiths hearing at T3 a voice telling him about what is going to happen. Now, if Gods belief that Jones will attempt to kill Smith were, as the Ockhamist maintains, a soft fact about the past over which Jones has power, Jones could by refraining from his attempt to kill Smith, bring about the non-occurrence of E. This would be a violation PFP.I develop this consideration at greater length in Widerker (1990: 475–478). Both the ‘entailment problem’ and the problem of ‘hard-core soft facts’ pose a serious difficulty for the Ockhamistic approach to the freedom-foreknowledge dilemma. Hence, in the absence of an adequate solution to them, the theological compatibilist would be well-advised to turn to other ways of solving that dilemma.