Harry Frankfurt's Argumentative Analysis

Regardless of the action, in society everyone is morally responsible for their actions. However, in to hold a person morally responsible for action or decision he must make that decision freely. Philosophers have argued about this concept of the existence of free will and having moral responsibility. Furthermore, there are those philosophers that do not question free will, but rather the idea of being help morally responsible for an action. In this essay we will discuss free will, the Principle of Alternative Possibilities and Harry Frankfurt’s argument against it.
The idea behind the Principle of Alternative Possibilities is that, “An action is free in the sense required for moral responsibility only if the agent could have done otherwise than she actually did” (McKenna, Pereboom). This means that in order to hold a person morally responsible, he must have had another option to choose from. This idea has become a key rule when talking about free will. Especially, libertarian philosophers believe this principle to be necessary for someone to be held morally responsible. In fact, free will is generally referred to as the ability to do otherwise. In order to understand Harry Frankfurt’s argument, we must first …show more content…
This goes completely against the principle of alternative possibilities. In order to show this point of view, Frankfurt provides with an example that is similar to the one that follows. There are three characters, Black, Jones, and Smith. Black wants Jones to kill Smith, but he does not want to be involved in the actual act. Black needs to make sure that Jones in fact shoots Smith; therefore, he has ways to manipulate Jones into killing Smith. Black has planted a neuroscientist’s device into Jones brain. This device will activate in case Jones decides not to shoot Smith. In the end, Jones shoots Smith without Black needing to