Caring and importance According to Frankfurt, a lot of the philosophical discourse concerns either the domain of
epistemology, which asks what we should believe, or
ethics, which asks how we should
act. He argues that there is another branch of inquiry that has received less attention, namely the question of what has importance or what we should
care about. An agent cares about something if he/she has a certain attitude of the will: He/she sees the entity in question as important to them. For Frankfurt, what we care about reflects our
personal character or who we are. This also affects the person on the practical level concerning how he/she acts and leads his/her life. In the academic literature, caring is often understood as a
subjective attitude in contrast to importance as an
objective factor. On this view, the importance of something determines whether it is appropriate to care about it: people should care about important things but not about unimportant ones. Frankfurt defends a different perspective on this issue by arguing that caring about something makes this thing important. So when a person starts caring about something, this thing becomes important to them even if it was unimportant to them before. Frankfurt explains this in terms of needs: the caring attitude brings with it a need. Because of this need, the cared-for thing can affect the person's well-being and has thereby become important to them. However, there is wide disagreement, both within the academic discourse and between different cultures about what the essential features of personhood are. One influential and precisely formulated account of personhood is given by Frankfurt in his "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person". He holds that persons are beings that have
second-order volitions. A volition is an effective desire, i.e. a desire that the agent is committed to realizing. Not all desires become volitions: humans usually have many desires but put only some of them into
action. For example, the agent may have one desire to eat an unhealthy cake but follows their other desire to have a healthy salad instead. In this case, eating the cake is a mere desire while eating the salad is a volition. Frankfurt places great importance on the difference between first- and second-order desires. Most regular desires, like the desire to eat healthy food or to buy a car, are first-order desires. Second-order desires are desires about desires. An important principle in this regard is the
principle of alternative possibilities. It states that "a person is morally responsible for what she has done only if she could have done otherwise". Having this
ability to do otherwise is usually associated with having
free will. So under normal circumstances, a person is morally responsible for stealing someone's lunch at the cafeteria. However, this may not be the case under special circumstances, for example, if a
neurological disorder compelled them to do it. Frankfurt has rejected the principle of alternative possibilities based on a series of counterexamples, the so-called "
Frankfurt cases". In one example, Allison's father has implanted a computer chip in Allison's head without her knowing. This chip would force Allison to walk her dog. However, Allison freely decides to do so and the chip is thus not activated. Frankfurt argues that, in this case, Allison is morally responsible for walking her dog even though she lacked the ability to do otherwise. The crux of this and similar cases is that the agent is morally responsible because he/she acted in accordance with his/her own will. This is so despite the fact that, usually unbeknownst to the agent, there was no real alternative. This line of thought has led Frankfurt to advocate a form of
compatibilism: If free will and moral responsibility do not depend on the ability to do otherwise, then they could even exist in a fully
deterministic world. Frankfurt cases have provoked a significant discussion of the principle of alternative possibilities. However, not everyone agrees that they are successful at disproving it. ==Personal life and death==