The Frankfurt-style cases: extinguishing the flickers of freedom

Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 65 (9):1185-1209 (2022)
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Abstract

ABSTRACT The Frankfurt-style Counterexamples to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities have been controversial. I sketch some of the major moves in the debates surrounding the FSCs, and I seek to provide an answer to a big challenge: the indeterministic horn of the ‘dilemma defense’. Given indeterminism, it is unclear how Black can know with certainty what Jones will choose and do in the future; this leaves at least some open alternatives for Jones. I adopt the strategy of positing God in Black’s place. The challenge now is to explain how God can have knowledge with certainty of future free human behavior in an indeterministic context, insofar as there is no entailing evidence in available in advance in such a situation. I present the Bootstrapping View of God’s knowledge to solve this problem. If we replace Black with God, we have an indeterministic case in which an agent acts freely, and yet cannot do otherwise. My account of God’s knowledge provides an interpretation of Luis de Molina’s notoriously obscure notion of Supercomprehension.

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John Fischer
University of California, Riverside

Citations of this work

Foreknowledge requires determinism.Patrick Todd - 2022 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 107 (1):125-146.
Foreknowledge and Free Will.Linda Zagzebski - 2011 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:online.
Foreknowledge and Free Will.Hunt David & Zagzebski Linda - 2022 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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References found in this work

Divine omniscience and voluntary action.Nelson Pike - 1965 - Philosophical Review 74 (1):27-46.
Responsibility and control.John Martin Fischer - 1982 - Journal of Philsophy 79 (January):24-40.
Responsibility and Control.John Fischer - 1982 - Journal of Philosophy 79 (1):24-40.

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