One can be responsible for an act one could not have failed to do.

Objects to

Harry Frankfurt · Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility · 1969

Imagine a neurosurgeon who wants you to make a certain choice. He implants in your brain a device able to force that choice, but set to fire only if you were about to choose otherwise.
When the moment comes, you make that choice on your own: the device stays inert, it never intervenes.
Yet you could not have done otherwise, the device would have prevented it. And nonetheless, having acted of your own accord, you are indeed the responsible author of your act.

Therefore So responsibility does not require the power to : the argument that grounded free will on responsibility no longer holds.

Deepenings

The "flicker" of freedom

It has been replied that an alternative remains: you still kept at least the power to begin to choose otherwise, which would have triggered the device.
But this "flicker" is very thin to bear the whole of responsibility: can a flutter at once short-circuited really be said to ground our merit or our fault?

Possible resolutions of the objection

Your choice is recorded in your profile, like a questionnaire answer.

Challenges

Problem