CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2011
| Author | Ziegler, Zsolt |
|---|---|
| Title | Frankfurt-type Examples Flickers and the Guidance Control |
| Summary | This thesis critically investigates the so-called Frankfurt-type examples. Harry Frankfurt dramatically shaped the debates over freedom and responsibility. Frankfurt's 1969 paper "Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility" purports to refute the principle that a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. It offers a case in which, Frankfurt claims, the agent is morally responsible for an action even though he could not have done otherwise. One possible way to refute Frankfurt’s approach is to argue that the prior sign of a decision (often called flicker) present in many Frankfurt-type examples demonstrates that there are alternatives in such cases and thus, Frankfurt fails to present the irrelevance of the principle of alternative possibilities. In contrast with this argument, a defender of the Frankfurt-type examples may argue that the prior sigh (or the flicker) is insufficiently robust to constitute evidence for the possibility of an alternate decision, and therefore inadequate as a means of determining moral responsibility. Nevertheless, an independent objection against the Frankfurt-type compatibilism was developed by Michael Della Rocca by claiming that “the flicker thus guarantees that the action was not determined by external factors.” (Della Rocca 1998) In order to evaluate Della Rocca's argument I present John Martin Fischer's view on controls. He thinks that the so-called guidance control is the kind of control needed to initiate or originate an action which explain the agent’s responsibility in a Fankfurt-type example. By examining Della Rocca and Fischer's view I argue for two claims. First, I claim – according to the guidance control – that the agent has the possibility to (omit the action) not participate in action in a Frankfurt-type example, therefore he or she necessarily has the flicker of freedom. Second, I claim that the guidance control is not compatible with the concept of determinism. |
| Supervisor | Professor Ferenc Huoranszki |
| Department | Philosophy MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2011/ziegler_zsolt.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University