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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that The principle of alternative possibilities (PAP) is false.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Frankfurt cases presuppose the counterfactual intervener can detect the agent's prior sign deterministically, but this detection itself requires a causally sufficient prior state.
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    • 2.If causal determinism is required to make Frankfurt cases work, then Frankfurt cases beg the question against the libertarian who holds that genuine agency requires indeterminism.
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    • 3.Therefore, Frankfurt cases do not independently refute PAP but merely restate the incompatibilist's burden, making the argument circular against its intended target.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Roderick Chisholm and others in the agent-causation tradition argue that moral responsibility requires the agent to be the originating cause of her action in a way that entails she could have done otherwise.
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    • 2.If an agent could not have done otherwise, then some prior state or mechanism—not the agent herself—is the ultimate source of the action, undermining agent-causation.
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    • 3.Therefore, PAP is not a detachable intuition but is constitutively linked to the agent-causation account of free will, and rejecting PAP entails rejecting agent-causal libertarianism wholesale.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Since God infallibly believed yesterday that you will answer the phone at 9:00 am tomorrow, there is no alternative possibility on which you fail to answer the phone at 9:00 tomorrow morning.
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    • 2.A man does not therefore sin because God foreknew that he would sin; God's foreknowledge does not force the future to happen.
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    • 3.Therefore we can still regard the action as free, even in the libertarian sense, despite the absence of alternative possibilities.
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