Frankfurt-style cases are purported counterexamples to the principle of alternate possibilities, since they arecases in which agents appear to be morally responsible for their actions, even though they lack the ability todo otherwise. Philip Swenson has recently challenged these Frankfurt-style cases as effective counterexamplesto PAP by presenting a scenario in which an agent seems to lack morally responsibility for failing to save achild, since he couldn’t do otherwise. And since there’s no morally relevant difference between this case ofomission, and the traditional Frankfurt-style cases, we should therefore conclude that the agents in theFrankfurt-style cases lack morally responsibility for their actions as well. In the following paper I argue thatone could simply run Swenson’s argument in reverse, thereby showing that it is the agent in his case that ismorally responsible for his omission, rather than the other way around, and that Swenson therefore has failedto demonstrate that Frankfurt-style cases should be rejected as effective counterexamples to PAP.

In a fascinating article in The Journal of Ethics, Eleonore Stump contends that while the flicker of freedom defense is the best available strategy for defending the principle of alternative possibilities against the threat posed to that principle by the Frankfurt cases, the defense is ultimately unsuccessful. In this article I identify a number of difficulties with Stump’s criticism of the flicker strategy. Along the way, I also clarify various nuances of the strategy that often get overlooked, and I highlight the advantages of one version of it in particular.

Frankfurt cases are supposed to provide us with counterexamples to the principle of alternative possibilities. Among the most well known responses to these cases is what John Fischer has dubbed the flicker of freedom strategy. Here we revisit a version of this strategy, which we refer to as the fine-grained response. Although a number of philosophers, including some who are otherwise unsympathetic to Frankfurt’s argument, have dismissed the fine grained response, we believe there is a good deal to be said on its behalf. We argue, in particular, that reflection on certain cases involving omissions undermines the main objections to the response and also provides the groundwork for an argument in support of it.