EleutherIA — Defined term

Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP)

Contemporary

The Principle of Alternate Possibilities says that moral responsibility for an action requires the ability to have done otherwise. Frankfurt's 1969 article names and states this already influential principle in order to reject it, using cases in which an inactive counterfactual intervener would have ensured the same result. Van Inwagen's Consequence Argument supports incompatibilism between determinism and free will, not PAP; in An Essay on Free Will chapter V he accepts Frankfurt-style counterexamples to PAP and develops different principles connecting responsibility with freedom. Fischer and Ravizza later defend semicompatibilism through reasons-responsive guidance control, which does not require access to alternatives.

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