Defending Hard Incompatibilism Again - Derk Pereboom

non-derivative moral responsibility uncontroversially fail to hold. To my mind, this strongly
indicates that the application of Widerker’s PAP-schema to Joe’s case in the way suggested by the
objection is ruled out.
Finally, in his critical analysis of Tax Evasion, Widerker argues: “he should have been more
attentive to the moral reasons than he in fact was – something he could have done. And in that case,
he would not be blameworthy for deciding to evade taxes, as then he would be forced by the
neuroscientist so to decide” (Widerker 2006, 173). All of this is true, but it is not enough to make
the alternative possibility that is available to him robust relative to responsibility for deciding to
evade taxes, since Joe has no sense at all that becoming more attentive to the moral reasons would
result in his being forced to make this decision, and hence not blameworthy for doing so. Moreover,
given the set-up of the case, it is flase that Joe should have had even the slightest inkling that
becoming more attentive would have this result.
5. John Fischer’s argument that the earlier sorts of Frankfurt-style cases are effective.
In response to the Kane/Widerker/Ginet objection, Fischer has advanced a subtle claim
about the dialectical structure of the discussion of Frankfurt-style arguments, whose upshot would
be that even early Frankfurt-style cases, like his blush example, would have significant force against
a leeway position. Then Frankfurt-style cases that were not constructed with Kane/Widerker/Ginet
objection in mind, and thus did not take care to avoid causal determinism in the actual sequence,
would be effective, and the need for examples, like Tax Evasion, which were designed to answer this
objection, would not be pressing. Fischer contends that earlier cases, even if they assume causal
determinism in the actual sequence, nonetheless indicate that if the agent is not morally responsible,
this is not simply because she could not have done otherwise:
16