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Aristotle and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities

In his Nicomachean Ethics 3.5 Aristotle says that if acting is up to me, so too is not acting. This might be interpreted as saying that an action is up to me if I could have done otherwise than performing that action. Given that Aristotle also argues that an agent is responsible for an action only if it is up to her, it would follow that he endorses the principle of alternate possibilities, according to which an agent is responsible for an action only if she could have done otherwise. I will argue against such a reading. That is to say, I will argue that “If F-ing is up to me, so too is not F-ing” should not be interpreted as “F-ing is up to me i , if I have F-ed, I could have not-F-ed (or restrained from F-ing)”. I prefer a diff erent reading, according to which to say that an action is up to me is to say that I am its causal origin, or that I have causal control over it. But then the question remains as to how to understand the apparent two-sidedness included in Aristotle’s definition of “up to me”. I will consider several possibilities and conclude that it is misleading to talk of two-sidedness as a feature of agents’ ability to act.

Aristotle; principle of alternate possibilities; up to us; responsibility

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