Angelina Quan · Fall 2025
Metaphysics
The Principle of Alternative Possibilities says that a person acts freely only if they could have done otherwise. This principle is intuitive. If someone had no other option, it feels unfair to call their action free. Freedom seems to require a real choice between alternatives. If a person could not avoid doing something, then holding them responsible for it can seem unjust.
I argue that this principle is false. A person can act freely even when they could not have done otherwise. What matters for freedom is not always the availability of alternative choices. What matters is whether the action comes from the agent's own will, reasoning, and character. Frankfurt-style examples show this clearly. In these cases, a person acts from their own motives, even though a backup mechanism would have prevented them from doing otherwise. The person lacks alternatives, but their actual action is still free.
Consider a standard Frankfurt case. Jones is deciding whether to perform some action, such as voting for a certain candidate. Black wants Jones to vote for that candidate. Black has secretly implanted a device in Jones's brain. If Jones begins to decide otherwise, Black will intervene and force him to vote the way Black wants. But if Jones decides on his own to vote that way, Black does nothing.
Now suppose Jones votes for the candidate entirely on his own. Black never intervenes. Jones acts because of his own reasons and desires. Still, Jones could not have done otherwise, because if he had tried to choose differently, Black would have stopped him. So Jones lacks alternative possibilities. But it still seems that Jones acts freely. The actual source of the action is Jones's own decision, not Black's intervention.
This case puts pressure on the Principle of Alternative Possibilities. If PAP were true, then Jones would not act freely, because he could not have done otherwise. But that seems wrong. The fact that Black would have intervened does not explain Jones's actual action. Jones did not vote that way because he was forced. He voted that way because he wanted to. The backup mechanism removes alternatives, but it does not control the actual action.
This suggests that freedom depends more on the source of an action than on the mere availability of alternatives. If an action flows from the agent's own reasoning, values, and desires, then the action can be free even if no other option was genuinely available. Freedom is about internal alignment, not just external possibility.
A related example comes from addiction. Suppose someone is a willing addict. They are addicted to a drug, and because of the addiction they may not be able to stop taking it. But they also endorse their desire. They want to take the drug and do not wish to resist. This person may not be able to do otherwise. Still, there is a sense in which they act according to their own will. Their action expresses what they want, not a conflict between their will and an alien force.
This example is more complicated than the Frankfurt case, because addiction can clearly undermine freedom in many situations. An unwilling addict, for example, wants not to take the drug but is overcome by compulsion. That looks unfree. But the willing addict helps show why the ability to do otherwise is not the only relevant factor. The difference between the willing and unwilling addict is not just whether they have alternatives. It is whether their action lines up with their own higher-order will.
A defender of PAP can object that these examples do not fully remove alternatives. Maybe Jones still could have done otherwise in some tiny way. He could have tried to decide differently, even if Black would have stopped him. Or maybe the willing addict is not truly free, because addiction undermines responsibility no matter what the addict endorses. More generally, the defender might argue that if a person genuinely could not have avoided an action, then blaming them for it is unfair.
This objection captures an important concern. Responsibility should not be detached from control. If someone is physically forced to move their hand, or if their body is controlled by another person, then they are not responsible for what happens. So the PAP defender is right that freedom requires some kind of control.
But the objection assumes that control must mean the ability to do otherwise. Frankfurt cases show that this is not true. Jones controls his action because the actual action comes from him. Black's device is only a backup. It would have removed alternatives, but it did not produce the action. So Jones lacks alternative possibilities but still has source control. He is the psychological source of what he does.
The deeper problem with PAP is that it focuses on paths not taken instead of the actual source of action. When we ask whether someone acted freely, we should ask why they acted as they did. Did the action come from their own reasoning? Did it express their will? Were they manipulated, coerced, or bypassed? These questions matter more than whether some alternate path was open. If the actual action is produced in the right way, then the person can be responsible even without alternatives.
This also explains why the principle feels so intuitive at first. In many ordinary cases, lacking alternatives does indicate a lack of freedom. If someone hands over money because a robber points a gun at them, they are not acting freely. They could not reasonably do otherwise, and their action is caused by coercion. But the lack of alternatives is not doing all the explanatory work. The real problem is that the action comes from the coercive threat, not from the person's own will. Frankfurt examples separate these two things. They show that no alternatives and external control can come apart.
In conclusion, the Principle of Alternative Possibilities is false. A person can act freely even when they could not have done otherwise, as long as the action comes from their own reasoning and will. Frankfurt cases show this by removing alternative possibilities without changing the actual source of action. The PAP defender is right that responsibility requires control, but wrong that control always requires alternatives. Freedom depends less on whether other paths were open and more on whether the path actually taken came from the agent.
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