Reasons-Responsiveness, Frankfurt Examples, and the Free Will Ability

Abstract Reasons-responsive theories explain the free will ability in terms of an agent’s responsiveness to reasons. An agent acts freely on such a view just in case she is responsive to a suitable range of potential reasons for acting as she does or for acting other than as she does. One key question for any such view concerns the spectrum of reasons to which an agent must be suitably responsive in order for her to act freely. Another is whether any such theory of freedom can be fitted for the lessons that some take from Frankfurt’s argument. In the sort of example figuring in this argument, an agent cannot do otherwise because an intervener would force her to do what he would have her do on her own were she to be about to do otherwise. But then how can an agent be responsive to reasons to do otherwise in the context of a Frankfurt example? If different reasons were present, she would not do otherwise due to the intervener. Some reasons-responsive theorists address this by rejecting Frankfurt’s argument. Others try to show that an agent can retain the relevant kind of responsiveness when she acts freely on the context of a Frankfurt example. This issue aside, a further one has to do with whether the disposition to respond differently to a range of reasons supplies a reductive analysis of the free will ability. Either option encounters problems. This chapter explores these issues.