Free Will, Moral Responsibility, and Reformed Theology - Analytic ...

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Paul L. Manata © 2011
for us, and it is up to us which alternative we take. On this intuitive view, Frieda
has control over which course she will take, the ability to select any of the
alternatives. We thus might think that there is a principle of alternative
possibilities at work here. This principle states that Frieda’s freedom is grounded
at least partly in the fact that she has different possible courses of action
available to her. A picturesque metaphor is that of Borges’s “garden of forking
paths.”
= history up to choice
= choice point
= actual path taken
= live possibilities
given same history
Garden of forking paths
The picture above nicely illustrates the principle. It is important to note a few
things about this picture. The straight line leading to the branches represents
Frieda’s past, the branches represent possible alternative courses of action Frieda
could bring about, Notice that several possible futures branch off from a single
past. In other words, this means that given the same past different futures are
possible. Philosophers sometimes like to express this idea in terms of possible
worlds. That is, they ask us to consider two worlds, W1 and W2. Both of these