Defending Hard Incompatibilism Again - Derk Pereboom

For we know in advance what, ultimately, the response to any such case will be: the agent is not
responsible because he lacks robust alternative possibilities.
Like many philosophical discussions, the correct outcome of the debate about the principle
of alternative possibilities should be viewed as a matter of reflective equilibrium. 6 On Frankfurt’s
side, we have the intuitions about examples, such as Tax Evasion, that skirt the
Kane/Widerker/Ginet objection. On the other side, there is the force of Widerker’s W-defense:
About an agent who breaks a promise, but could not have done otherwise he writes:
Still, since you, [Harry] Frankfurt, wish to hold him blameworthy for his decision to break
his promise, tell me what, in your opinion, should he have done instead? Now, you cannot
claim that he should not have decided to break the promise, since this was something that
was not in his power to do. Hence, I do not see how you can hold Jones blameworthy for his
decision to break the promise. (Widerker 2000, 191)
The Frankfurt-defender can point to no alternative possibility, and must instead focus attention on
how the agent actually did behave. Here I think that Michael McKenna has it right (2005, 177).
When Widerker asks of Joe, in view of the fact that he had no robust alternative possibility: what
would you have him do? one should admit that there is no good answer. But instead we should call
attention to what Joe has actually done, and to the causal history by which his action came about.
Moreover, this case should not be assimilated to one in which Joe acts in some sense against his will
because he has only one genuine option for action. He is a wholehearted tax evader; we might even
set up the case so that he wills to evade taxes, he wants to will to do so, and he wills to evade taxes
because he wants to will to do so.
Kane’s concern is somewhat different. His argument for requiring plural voluntary control
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On the advisability of thinking of such dialectical situations as a matter of reflective equilibrium,
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