Defending Hard Incompatibilism Again - Derk Pereboom

does recognize significant morally salient differences between the two options. One might propose
that the agent has a robust alternative possibility partly because there are good reasons available to
her for believing that she has an alternative in which her responsibility is different in the relevant
way, even though she does not appreciate those reasons adequately, but only partially. But, first,
imagine that Joe should have known what effect drinking the coffee would have, because he should
have been paying attention when this fact about the coffee was revealed at his Tax Evaders
Anonymous class. Does he, as a result, now have a robust alternative possibility? Not clearly, and I
would say not. Note that denying that he has a robust alternative possibility does not preclude the
advocate of a principle of alternative possibilities from assessing him as derivatively responsible for
evading taxes, for the reason that he may have met a relevant epistemic condition on derivative
moral responsibility when he neglected to pay attention in the class. In addition, I’m inclined to
deny that such an epistemic failing supplemented by a mere partial understanding of morally salient
differences between accessible alternatives is enough for robustness, given that the partial
understanding does not amount to an understanding that availing herself of an alternative possibility
would preclude the responsibility she actually turns out to have. Suppose that Suzy could have
saved Billy from a painful death by giving him an additional injection, but that she has no
understanding of this since she wasn’t paying enough attention to the instructions when she should
have been. But she was paying enough attention to understand that Billy would have been more
comfortable had she given him the injection. My sense is that she does not have a robust alternative
possibility in this case that would ground moral responsibility for allowing Billy to die, but still that
she is perhaps responsible for allowing Billy to die derivatively from her not paying attention when
she should have been – depending on the details of the case.
(b) In this example, is having a non-occurrent or even occurrent belief that taking a sip from
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