Argument on Moral Responsibility and Alternate Possibility (Essay Sample)

Name:
Course:
Tutor:
Date:
Argument on Moral responsibility and Alternate possibility
The ‘principle of alternate possibility’ is the term used to refer to the situation whereby an individual is considered to be morally responsible for a deed if only there was an opportunity where he/she could have opted to do otherwise. Alternate possibility principle has attracted criticism from philosophers since they challenge its credibility. They argue that it is false since a person could as well be held accountable or responsible for what he has done since he could not have otherwise. The principle of alternate possibility can be illustrated in several relevant ways (Widerker, David 21).
To begin with, a situation whereby an individual takes up a particular task or issue consequently makes it quite impossible to stop doing it. Such situations include coercion circumstances whereby an individual is compelled to do something or behave in a particular manner. This puts him in a situation where he cannot do otherwise. There are however some isolated instances whereby there are sufficient reasons to undertake an issue and those particular conditions make it impossible for him to do the contrary (Meyer, Lukas 293).
Moral responsibility on the other hand refers to the circumstances whereby a person does something in accordance to his intuition or free will. It is in this regard that a person who has done something as a result of being coerced is not morally responsible for that deed and should not claim any moral responsibility for having done it. This makes the principle of alternate possibilities relevant since it is made credible by the fact that moral responsibility do not get along with coercion. However, one can still bear this moral responsibility if his/her level of responsibility does not it any ways get affected by coercion. Such instances are whereby one is bound to do something in the presence or absence of coercion. It can therefore be concluded that the fact that coercion excludes moral responsibility does not qualify in any way to be a ‘version of alternate responsibility’.