Galen Strawson's Basic Argument

Quoting Sargon

You do what you do, in any given situation, because of the way you are.

Okay, this doesn't make sense. You also behave the way you do based on external constraints. You might will one thing over another because of some event or conclusion reached through deduction, for instance. You might choose a vanilla ice cream cone semi-arbitrarily even if you prefer chocolate because chocolate isn't available.

Or you might act in such a way as is contrary to the way you are, insofar as you could want to stop smoking crack even if you are addicted to smoking crack because someone persuaded you to quit. You are acting in a way that is antithetical to the way you are; you are a reluctant crack smoker.

Furthermore, if you have libertarian free-will you are not necessarily choosing based on the way you are, but rather your choices originate with some magical mechanism that allows you to choose unimpeded. So, (1) presupposes that we don't have free-will. Unless you can demonstrate how choice is only determined by the way one is?

It seems to me Strawson must have had some other premises in there.

Quoting Sargon

1. You do what you do, in any given situation, because of the way you are.

A meaningless statement. "The way you are" is too vague.

The whole thing sounds like a campaign slogan for someone running for District Attorney of Las Angeles.

Quoting Sargon

Galen Strawson's argument against free will, and if not, why?

I disagree with this argument because we are caused to will.

Reply to Richard B

I think Strawson would argue that the way we are is caused itself. That seems implicit in (3).

edit: thus, our will would be caused because we will what we will because of the way we are

I agree we are caused, but to will. And what you will, well take responsibility for.

Reply to Richard B

So, we are caused to will, but we are still willing one thing over another. Seems like a safe thing to say. How does that relate to the (probably misrepresented) argument in the OP? The argument seems to dispute that we can will one thing over another in any meaningful sense.

Quoting Sargon

1. You do what you do, in any given situation, because of the way you are.

This is problematic. The argument declares for determinism in the first premise, and then discovers it at the end as if it has proved it. But of course the cause of my actions is my imagination. I imagine the pleasant taste of beer and that might cause me to head to the fridge, or I might catch sight of my burgeoning beer-gut and think again. The causal path of thought cannot be predicted even if it is mechanical because of the halting problem. So the question is begged as it always must be.

But the argument is further disguised by talk of "ultimate responsibility" as if it is something deeper than ordinary responsibility. Which it clearly isn't. I choose to drink beer and then I am drunk, and I am responsible for the way I am - drunk. And if I get in a fight or run someone down, I am responsible for that because I am responsible for the way I am. And of course the law recognises that one attains an age of responsibility, one is not born with it, but develops the capacity to change one's state. It also recognises diminished responsibility, when circumstances are overwhelming. There is a lot of work being done by that weasel word, 'ultimate', that it has no permit for.

Reply to ToothyMaw

Can one overcome a born predisposition to harm others? Circumstances are strong factors, as are upbringing. In the end we are largely responsible for our actions.

Well, according to Galen I say what I say about this argument because of the way I am. So, if you want to ultimately understand what caused me to say “I am caused to will”, you will have to go back in the causal train in which I believe we have no hope to determine.

So, the puzzle is 1. does the argument provide the reason to accept the conclusion? or 2. should we go with some arational natural cause

Quoting jgill

Can one overcome a born predisposition to harm others?

Yes, one can overcome such a predisposition. I have a predisposition for doing self-destructive things, but with time that has diminished. Sometimes you also have to shift the goalposts to something more reasonable than some ideal you have in your head. But largely, yes.

Quoting jgill

In the end we are largely responsible for our actions.

I agree.

Reply to jgill

In my experience, you can't cure a sadist or a psychopath, but you can get them to play by the rules.

edit: for whatever that's worth

The opening argument is taken from Galen Strawson.

https://iai.tv/articles/moral-responsibility-without-free-will-auid-2115

Reply to Sargon

This topic wasn't my focus when I wrote about Strawson, so I can say very little. Free will arguments often get stuck really quickly on intuitions.

I think we should distinguish personal pre-disposition with choices. I have a pre-disposition to get really bored in large crowds, but I still have a choice to remain or to leave.

I can't, of course, force myself to be pre-disposed to change what I like or dislike, with some minor exceptions. But within this constraint, I have plenty of options.

Reply to Sargon

I’m not sure how it is possible that you cannot be ultimately responsible for the way you are in any respect at all, given that so much of oneself (genes, body, hormones, and so on) is responsible for “the way you are”.

Quoting Sargon

1. You do what you do, in any given situation, because of the way you are.

Not sure about the explanatory power of this premise. It's not clear to me to what extent one can determine the way we are prior to determining what we do: e.g. if X kills somebody, X is a murderer. In this case, we wouldn't explain X killed somebody (what X did) because X was a murderer (the way X was) but the other way around: X is a murderer because X killed somebody. One could claim that some set of X’s features pre-existing the murder explain why X committed a murder: all right, what is this set of features exactly? One can claim that thanks to some human science research (sociology, criminology, psychology, etc.) we can determine at best some set of features correlated with unleashing murderous impulses with great probability.There are 2 problems with that: 1. Great probability doesn’t mean “necessary” 2. Unleashing murderous impulses doesn’t necessarily lead to murder (think of all the ways murder attempts could fail), so my features would explain my doing when it succeeds and it fails. Yet it’s what results from our doing that may loop back to gratify or frustrate, reinforce or weaken those features, as well as the pool of related possibilities and expectations, so again changing what I am. In other words our doing redefine our identity, the way we are.

Strawson's argument boils down to us having no say, no say at all, in, as hs puts it, the way we are. The rest follows of course.

Metaphysics is too speculative and too vast to navigate, relatively speaking; simplify at your own risk.

Here is Strawson's paper: Galen Strawson: The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility (1994)

Reply to Sargon summarizes it accurately. Much of the short paper consists of restatements and elaborations (or belaboring) of this thesis. Here is a longer version from the paper:

Strawson:(1) You do what you do because of the way you are.

So

(2) To be truly morally responsible for what you do you must be truly responsible for the way you are – at least in certain crucial mental respects.

But

(3) You cannot be truly responsible for the way you are, so you cannot be truly responsible for what you do.

Why can’t you be truly responsible for the way you are? Because

(4) To be truly responsible for the way you are, you must have intentionally brought it about that you are the way you are, and this is impossible.

Why is it impossible? Well, suppose it is not. Suppose that

(5) You have somehow intentionally brought it about that you are the way you now are, and that you have brought this about in such a way that you can now be said to be truly responsible for being the way you are now.

For this to be true

(6) You must already have had a certain nature N in the light of which you intentionally brought it about that you are as you now are.

But then

(7) For it to be true that you and you alone are truly responsible for how you now are, you must be truly responsible for having had the nature N in the light of which you intentionally brought it about that you are the way you now are.

So

(8) You must have intentionally brought it about that you had that nature N, in which case you must have existed already with a prior nature in the light of which you intentionally brought it about that you had the nature N in the light of which you intentionally brought it about that you are the way you now are …

Here one is setting off on the regress. Nothing can be causa sui in the required way.

Reply to SophistiCat

Thanks for the extended version of the argument and link to the article. Makes a lot of sense, and I certainly have no immediate objections.

Quoting unenlightened

This is problematic. The argument declares for determinism in the first premise, and then discovers it at the end as if it has proved it.

Although the main argument seems to leave out the possibility of indeterminism, Strawson does discuss indeterminism and argues that, if anything, "random factors, for which one is ex hypothesi in no way responsible" make matters worse for personal responsibility. This is the part of the argument with which I unreservedly agree. (But these are well-known objections - cf. Ayer: "But if it is a matter of pure chance that a man should act in one way rather than another, he may be free but can hardly be responsible.")

Quoting unenlightened

But of course the cause of my actions is my imagination. I imagine the pleasant taste of beer and that might cause me to head to the fridge, or I might catch sight of my burgeoning beer-gut and think again. The causal path of thought cannot be predicted even if it is mechanical because of the halting problem. So the question is begged as it always must be.

I don't really understand what this has to do with predictability. The argument is that, assuming causal determinism and a fixed past, you could not have become anything other than what you are. (And furthermore, if a non-deterministic component is also in play, you have no more control of it than you have of the past.) Predictability does not play any role here. (And halting problem?)

Quoting unenlightened

But the argument is further disguised by talk of "ultimate responsibility" as if it is something deeper than ordinary responsibility. Which it clearly isn't. I choose to drink beer and then I am drunk, and I am responsible for the way I am - drunk. And if I get in a fight or run someone down, I am responsible for that because I am responsible for the way I am. And of course the law recognises that one attains an age of responsibility, one is not born with it, but develops the capacity to change one's state. It also recognises diminished responsibility, when circumstances are overwhelming. There is a lot of work being done by that weasel word, 'ultimate', that it has no permit for.

I agree. If "utlimate responsibility" is defined as causa sui, against which Strawson needlessly argues, then it has little to do with what we normally understand by responsibility. And if it is his argument that what we take responsibility to be is reducible to mechanistic causation, then he is plainly wrong.

In an Interview with Galen Strawson:

"I just want to stress the word “ultimate” before “moral responsibility.” Because there’s a clear, weaker, everyday sense of “morally responsible” in which you and I and millions of other people are thoroughly morally responsible people."

I don't know what he means by "ultimate" responsibility.

Reply to Sargon

Quoting ChrisH

I don't know what he means by "ultimate" responsibility.

I think I have an idea. As a blame skeptic, like Pereboom, Nussbaum and others, Strawson rejects the kind of radical free will that makes the subject responsible in an ultimate way. I take this to mean the deliberately willed actions of an autonomous, morally responsible Cartesian subject. Those who believe in such an ultimately responsible subject are necessarily harsher and more ‘blameful' in their views of justice than deterministic , non-desert based modernist approaches, which rest on shaping influences (bodily-affective and social) outside of an agent's control.

The very autonomy of the Cartesian subject presupposes a profound arbitrariness to free will. We say that the subject who has free will wills of their own accord, chooses what they want to choose , and as such has autonomy with respect to ‘foreign' social and internal bodily influences. The machinations of the free will amount to a self-enclosed system.

This solipsist self functions via an internal logic of values that, while rational within the internal bounds of its own subjectivity, is walled off from the wider community of selves and therefore can choose value in a profoundly irrational or immoral manner with respect to social consensus.

Therefore, the very autonomy of the Cartesian subject presupposes a profound potential laxity and arbitrariness to individual free will in relation to the moral norms of a wider social community. Modernist deterministic moral arguments of those like Pereboom, Strawson and Nussbaum surrender the absolute solipsist rationalism of free will-based models of the self in favor of a view of the self as belonging to and determined by a wider causal empirical social and natural order. If we ask why the agent endowed with free will chose to perform a certain action , the only explanation we can give is that it made sense to them given their own desires and whims. If we instead inquire why the individual ensconced within a modernist deterministic or postmodern relativist world performed the same action, we would be able to make use of the wider explanatory framework of the natural or discursive order in situating the causes of behavior.

Quoting SophistiCat

Here is Strawson's paper: Galen Strawson: The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility (1994)

?Sargon summarizes it accurately. Much of the short paper consists of restatements and elaborations (or belaboring) of this thesis. Here is a longer version from the paper:

(1) You do what you do because of the way you are.

Not if I have free will, because if I have free will, I can do what I do in spite of the way I am. Strawson's initial premise therefore begs the question, and his argument is therefore circular. Why are we wasting our time with this?

For the record, I don't believe in free will, but that's because
a) no-one seems to be able to explain how it works, and
b) the only available options seem to be full determinism, indeterminism, or some mixture of the two, none of which seem to deliver free will, and
c) the only way you can prove you could have acted differently is to have acted differently, which is impossible.

Reply to Sargon Premise 3 is false.

Strawson believes that to be morally responsible you need to have created yourself. And he believes that is impossible. That's his justification for 3.

But both claims are false, I think. First, literal self creation is possible. The only reason to think it isn't is because a cause must come before its effect. However, a cause does not have to come before its effect (and thus that to create yourself you would need to exist prior to your own existence). However, simultaneous causation is possible (indeed, arguable all effects are simultaneously with their causes). So, self creation is possible (or at least the burden of proof is now on its denier). But even if it wasn't, selfcreation is not necessary for moral responsibility. The only reason to think it is, is that if you have self created then nothing external to you is responsible for how you are. But that will also be the case if nothing created you. That is, it will be true if you exist uncreated.

Thus his argument is unsound. It might be objected that this hardly restores faith in our moral responsibility as surely we are not self created or uncreated things.

However, that is bad reasoning. As our reason represents us to be morally responsible we should assume we are and the burden of proof is on the denier. So, absent evidence to the contrary, we should conclude that we are morally responsible and that we satisfy whatever conditions on responsibility our reason tells us it has.

Quoting Sargon

1. You do what you do, in any given situation, because of the way you are.

There is no such thing as "the way you are". We are constantly active, changing, and each activity you are engaged in is making you different from before. So the premise is self-contradicting. The fact that you are doing what you are doing implies that you are actively changing, therefore it is impossible that there is such a thing as the way you are.

Quoting Herg

Why are we wasting our time with this?

:up:

Quoting Joshs

If we instead inquire why the individual ensconced within a modernist deterministic or postmodern relativist world performed the same action, we would be able to make use of the wider explanatory framework of the natural or discursive order in situating the causes of behavior.

Some people are born bad. End of story.

Strawson:8) "You must have intentionally brought it about that you had that nature N, in which case you must have existed already with a prior nature in the light of which you intentionally brought it about that you had the nature N in the light of which you intentionally brought it about that you are the way you now are …"

This is an example of world class philosophical thinking?

Reply to Joshs Thanks.

Reply to jgill

Quoting jgill

Some people are born bad. End of story

Yes, but if you agree with the following, then you are actually in Strawson’s camp:

“what we do and the way we are is ultimately the result of factors beyond our control, whether that be determinism, chance, or luck, and because of this agents are never morally responsible in the sense needed to justify certain kinds of desert-based judgments, attitudes, or treatments—such as resentment, indignation, moral anger, backward-looking blame, and retributive punishment.” “In the basic form of desert, someone who has done wrong for bad reasons deserves to be blamed and perhaps punished just because he has done wrong for those reasons, and someone who has performed a morally exemplary action for good reasons deserves credit, praise, and perhaps reward just because she has performed that action for those reasons (Feinberg 1970; Pereboom 2001, 2014; Scanlon 2013). This backward-looking sense is closely linked with the reactive attitudes of indignation, moral resentment, and guilt, and on the positive side, with gratitude (Strawson 1962); arguably because these attitudes presuppose that their targets are morally responsible in the basic desert sense.” (Caruso 2018)

“The more you believe in a person's free will, the more you will hold them morally responsible for their actions. ...and the amount that you hold a person responsible is related to how much they deserve to be praised or blamed, rewarded or punished, which, of course, affects the entire justice system.”

In sum, Strawson et al are not arguing against blame , punishment and justice but against revenge, retribution and backward-looking blame, which they see as the outcome of a traditional belief in free-will. They are advocating instead for a forward-looking constructive form of justice and blame no longer tied to revenge and anger. You dont have to go back too far in history to find
rampant examples of systems of justice based on retribution and an eye for a eye ( or a hand for a theft).

Quoting Bartricks

Strawson believes that to be morally responsible you need to have created yourself. And he believes that is impossible. That's his justification for 3.

This excludes every child that learns from their parents, that is convenient.

I think Galen was not convince of this argument
, but was caused by his rebellion to his father, P.F Strawson, who defended free will. I think he would have to agree to stay consistent with his argument.

Reply to Richard B Quoting Richard B

I think Galen was not convince of this argument
, but was caused by his rebellion to his father, P.F Strawson, who defended free will. I think he would have to agree to stay consistent with his argument.

Nothing about Strawson’s general philosophical outlook leads me to think he would share his father’s view on free will, especially his belief that the self is continually changing.

Quoting Joshs

In sum, Strawson et al are not arguing against blame , punishment and justice but against revenge, retribution and backward-looking blame, which they see as the outcome of a traditional belief in free-will.

They are presenting a straw man then or being patronising.

It does not follow that if you believe in free will you become a foaming at the mouth lynch mob. People who have believed in predestination have also supported punishment. People that don't believe in free will can believe in punishment as a deterrent to others

A lot of Christians have believed in the theory that we are born sinful not by choice and have total depravity which is not a free will stance but that we deserve to be punished.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_depravity

"Total depravity (also called radical corruption[1] or pervasive depravity) is a Protestant theological doctrine derived from the concept of original sin. It teaches that, as a consequence of man's fall, every person born into the world is enslaved to the service of sin as a result of their fallen nature and, apart from the efficacious (irresistible) or prevenient (enabling) grace of God, is completely unable to choose by themselves to follow God, refrain from evil, or accept the gift of salvation as it is offered."

I think the no free will brigade commit themselves to denying blame where it is due in an inappropriate way that has a negative effects on the victims of someone else. It is the culture of making bullies equal victims to their victims and further victimising victims.

Reply to Andrew4Handel

Quoting Andrew4Handel

I think the no free will brigade commit themselves to denying blame where it is due in an inappropriate way that has a negative effects on the victims of someone else. It is the culture of making bullies equal victims to their victims and further victimising victims.

Sounds like you are an adherent of conservative social politics. No bleeding heart nonsense for you.

Quoting Andrew4Handel

People who have believed in predestination have also supported punishment. People that don't believe in free will can believe in punishment as a deterrent to others

Quoting Andrew4Handel

as a consequence of man's fall, every person born into the world is enslaved to the service of sin as a result of their fallen nature and, apart from the efficacious (irresistible) or prevenient (enabling) grace of God, is completely unable to choose by themselves to follow God, refrain from evil, or accept the gift of salvation as it is offered.

Deterrents are a form of forward-looking , or consequentialist, blame, which Strawson and other blame skeptics endorse. Predestination and total depravity are linked to free will in the following way. In an earlier post I wrote:

“The very autonomy of the free willing subject presupposes a profound arbitrariness to free will. We say that the subject who has free will wills of their own accord, chooses what they want to choose , and as such has autonomy with respect to ‘foreign' social and internal bodily influences. The machinations of the free will amount to a self-enclosed system.

This solipsist self functions via an internal logic of values that, while rational within the internal bounds of its own subjectivity, is walled off from the wider community of selves and therefore can choose value in a profoundly irrational or immoral manner with respect to social consensus.

Therefore, the very autonomy of the Cartesian subject presupposes a profound potential laxity and arbitrariness to individual free will in relation to the moral norms of a wider social community. Modernist deterministic moral arguments of those like Pereboom, Strawson and Nussbaum surrender the absolute solipsist rationalism of free will-based models of the self in favor of a view of the self as belonging to and determined by a wider causal empirical social and natural order. If we ask why the agent endowed with free will chose to perform a certain action , the only explanation we can give is that it made sense to them given their own desires and whims. If we instead inquire why the individual ensconced within a modernist deterministic or postmodern relativist world performed the same action, we would be able to make use of the wider explanatory framework of the natural or discursive order in situating the causes of behavior.”

This solipsist autonomy, cut off from a wider social ecology and cultural community, also characterizes the conditions of predestination and total depravity. Blame can reasonably be distributed within a community as well as within the isolated individual for free will skeptics, but this doesnt makes sense for perspectives which see individual motivation and values as walled off from the influence of the community, whether of their own choosing or because God made them this way.

Quoting Joshs

Sounds like you are an adherent of conservative social politics. No bleeding heart nonsense for you.

How does that follow? I am actually opposed to the notion of punishment and a prison abolitionist.

But I believe in truthfully and correctly attributing responsibility. I accept and understand the notion of mitigating circumstances.

There are degrees of mitigating circumstances from severe mental illness to having some adversity like everyone but not enough to act to causally determine ones criminal activity.

Reply to Andrew4Handel

Quoting Andrew4Handel

There are degrees of mitigating circumstances from severe mental illness to having some adversity like everyone but not enough to act to causally determine ones criminal activity

Are you familiar with Martha Nussbaum’s positions relating to issues of blame, anger and justice? They seem reasonable to me, striking a balance between mitigating circumstances and assigning responsibility.

Quoting Joshs

Therefore, the very autonomy of the Cartesian subject presupposes a profound potential laxity and arbitrariness to individual free will in relation to the moral norms of a wider social community.

That is how we have progress because people reject social norms by thinking for themselves and not being bound by social norms and reasoning models.

Quoting Joshs

If we ask why the agent endowed with free will chose to perform a certain action , the only explanation we can give is that it made sense to them given their own desires and whims.

This doesn't follow.

We do live in our own solipsists universe where we have to judge the contents of our perceptions that doesn't mean we can't cast moral judgement on our own actions and have standards we created that we want to conform to.
I have never believed in hitting children despite at times most people supporting smacking children. This was a conclusion I reached myself with nobody else expressing it or prompting it.

So if I became angry and hit a child I would be failing myself based on the Standards I have formed over the years.

I don't need anyone else to dictate my morality to me. Which is why I find the Strawson et al stance patronising and undermining the remarkable powers of self reflection humans possess and autonomy.

Reply to Andrew4Handel
Quoting Andrew4Handel

Which is why I find the Strawson et al stance patronising and undermining the remarkable powers of self reflection humans possess and autonomy

‘Patronizing’ is a common accusation leveled against the postmodern and ‘woke’ left. But I’d hardly put Strawson in that category. We’re talking about a pretty mild version of social constructionism here, if we can call it that. If you’re that taken aback by his tame argument , I can’t imagine what you must think of the social justice crowd, influenced by folks like Foucault , Butler and Fanon.

Reply to Richard B You are neither engaging with his argument nor mine.

Quoting ChrisH

In an Interview with Galen Strawson:

"I just want to stress the word “ultimate” before “moral responsibility.” Because there’s a clear, weaker, everyday sense of “morally responsible” in which you and I and millions of other people are thoroughly morally responsible people."

I don't know what he means by "ultimate" responsibility.

In that interview he says:

Strawson:Almost all human beings believe that they are free to choose what to do in such a way that they can be truly, genuinely responsible for their actions in the strongest possible sense—responsible period, responsible without any qualification, responsible sans phrase, responsible tout court, absolutely, radically, buck-stoppingly responsible; ultimately responsible, in a word—and so ultimately morally responsible when moral matters are at issue. Free will is the thing you have to have if you’re going to be responsible in this all-or-nothing way. That’s what I mean by free will. That’s what I think we haven’t got and can’t have.

He uses similar superlatives in the "The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility" essay. According to his thesis, what this "ultimate responsibility" amounts to is being self-caused in a God-like way, having no causal history whatsoever, so that you are the sole originator not only of your actions, but of your personality - "what you are." He continues with this admonition to his fellow philosophers:

Strawson:I like philosophers—I love what they do; I love what I do—but they have made a truly unbelievable hash of all this. They’ve tried to make the phrase “free will” mean all sorts of different things, and each of them has told us that what it really means is what he or she has decided it should mean. But they haven’t made the slightest impact on what it really means, or on our old, deep conviction that free will is something we have.

This is hilariously lacking in self-awareness. You might think that, unlike all those armchair philosophers who just make shit up, he, Strawson, went out and did some actual research. But he does exactly what he accuses others of doing: he tells us "that what [moral responsibility] really means is what he... has decided it should mean."

Meanwhile, if you want to know what ordinary people, not philosophers, think about things like agency, responsibility and free will (what he in passing refers to in the interview as "the weaker, everyday sense"), a body of research does exist in sociology and a relatively new discipline of Experimental Philosophy (which in this area is basically a crossover between sociology and philosophy). And for my money, it is this everyday sense that actually matters, not the artificial constructs that philosophers make up, such as Strawson's "ultimate responsibility".

Quoting Joshs

Modernist deterministic moral arguments of those like Pereboom, Strawson and Nussbaum surrender the absolute solipsist rationalism of free will-based models of the self in favor of a view of the self as belonging to and determined by a wider causal empirical social and natural order.

Who are they arguing against? No one but no one believes in Strawson's strawman of a self-caused, perfectly autonomous agent.

If we ask why the agent endowed with free will chose to perform a certain action , the only explanation we can give is that it made sense to them given their own desires and whims. If we instead inquire why the individual ensconced within a modernist deterministic or postmodern relativist world performed the same action, we would be able to make use of the wider explanatory framework of the natural or discursive order in situating the causes of behavior.

That's news to absolutely no one. The understanding that our decisions are influenced by many things, and furthermore that the development of our character is influenced by many things, is already built into ordinary interpersonal relationships, as well as modern justice systems.

Quoting Bartricks

You are neither engaging with his argument nor mine

I find P.F Strawson defense of free will more compelling that Galen, but fundamentally, all Galen can say is that at some point in the past I was determine to take such a position. Determinism trumps rationalism.

Reply to SophistiCat Yes, this was pretty much my take on Strawson's position.

Reply to SophistiCat Quoting SophistiCat

The understanding that our decisions are influenced by many things, and furthermore that the development of our character is influenced by many things, is already built into ordinary interpersonal relationships, as well as modern justice systems

Martha Nussbaum has put a lot of work into spelling out specific implications for the dispensing of legal justice of her forward-looking approach to blame. What she advocates does not seem to be “already built into modern justice systems”. On the contrary, it has had a lot of influence in those circles.

Quoting Richard B

Determinism trumps rationalism.

If determinism trumps rationalism, then any argument that purports to show that determinism trumps rationalism may be invalid; we may only think it's invalid because it is determined that we do so. Thus the position 'determinism trumps rationalism' undermines itself.

Quoting Herg

If determinism trumps rationalism, then any argument that purports to show that determinism trumps rationalism may be invalid; we may only think it's invalid because it is determined that we do so. Thus the position 'determinism trumps rationalism' undermines itself.

You got it, and you were determine to say that.

Determinism it giveth and it taketh away.

Quoting Richard B

Determinism it giveth and it taketh away.

"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away"—Tom Waits

This can be applied to free will, where the "small print" of causal determinism makes it seem impossible, whereas the large print of personal experience makes freedom of the will seem certainly (if not always) so.

Which dictum you gonna believe? Is it even up to you?

Reply to Janus Quoting Janus

the "small print" of causal determinism makes it seem impossible, whereas the large print of personal experience makes freedom of the will seem certainly (if not always) so.

Which dictum you gonna believe? Is it even up to you?

One way out of this is to dump linear causal
determinism for a dynamical reciprocal determinism. This is the route Dennett and embodied psychology take. Natural systems are non-linear and self-referential, creatively redefining the role and meaning of their constituents via the temporal evolution of the whole.

Quoting Joshs

One way out of this is to dump linear causal
determinism for a dynamical reciprocal determinism. This is the route Dennett and embodied psychology take. Natural systems are non-linear and self-referential, creatively redefining the role and meaning of their constituents via the temporal evolution of the whole.

Insofar as I understand them such non-linear, 'dynamic systems', 'embodied' approaches intuitively appeal to me in a kind of aesthetic way. Efficient, linear causation is the general, practical way we understand how things work, though, and the modeling it enables is relatively easy to grasp and thus seems to make good intuitive and practical sense.

This probably says more about the dualistic ways our minds work than it does about what is actually so. This intuitive ease of understanding and the difficulty of clearly grasping what's going on with the other approaches seems to make efficient causation a hard presumption to shake.

Reply to Richard B Again, how are you engaging with any argument?

Quoting Janus

Which dictum you gonna believe? Is it even up to you?

One can make a decision only on the supposition that one can make a decision. If it's not up to me, or down to me, then there is no decision to be made, ever. I will be determined to sit here and piss-my pants, because I cannot decide to go to the toilet. I conclude that everyone who wills anything believes they can do so; one cannot write without choosing one's words, thus even Galen has to believe he has a choice to make that he can make and that hasn't already been made. This doesn't answer the free-will determinism question, of course, but I think it answers your question, universally. Everyone is pre-determined to believe in free-will by virtue of there being, as it were, 'forks in the road'. See also, The Diceman by Luke Rhinehart.

Reply to unenlightened Right, if we make decisions or choices (which we obviously do) then it seems inevitable that we will feel those options to be selected freely. The notion that everything we do is predetermined (by prior chains or networks of causation) is difficult, if not impossible, to parse other than in an attenuated, abstract way.

So, there's a kind of irony in, as you say, the thought that we are "pre-determined" by the very existence of alternative courses of action, to believe we are free.

I haven't (and probably won't) read The Diceman, but it is based on an interesting premise; I have heard of it before, thanks for reminding me of it.

Quoting Janus

The notion that everything we do is predetermined (by prior chains or networks of causation) is difficult, if not impossible, to parse other than in an attenuated, abstract way.

I don't have any such difficulty. The choice I'm going to make is the one I think best and the values by which I'll judge that are already in place prior to the choice, so it seems very intuitive that the choice is predetermined.

The alternative is thinking that I might suddenly choose an option which I don't think is best, that is what seems impossible to parse. The very act of 'deciding' is one of judging some option to be the best relative to my values, and my values must already be in place prior to that judgement, so the option which most aligns with them is already determined.

Reply to Isaac Quoting Isaac

The alternative is thinking that I might suddenly choose an option which I don't think is best, that is what seems impossible to parse. The very act of 'deciding' is one of judging some option to be the best relative to my values, and my values must already be in place prior to that judgement, so the option which most aligns with them is already determined.

The feeling of guilt reminds us that we frequently choose options that conflict with the way we see our values. In guilt, our falling away from another we care for could be spoken of as an alienation of oneself from oneself. When we feel we have failed another, we mourn our mysterious dislocation from a competence or value which we associated ourselves with. One feels as if having fallen below the standards one has erected for themself. It follows from this that any thinking of guilt as a `should have, could have' blamefulness deals in a notion of dislocation and distance, of a mysterious discrepancy within intended meaning, separating who we were from who we are in its teasing gnawing abyss.

Reply to Richard B Again, still no engagement. You're talking 'about' his argument, but not actually addressing it.

Here's what you should do, Identify Strawson's premises and then ask whether those premises are self-evidently true - that is, directly represented to be true by our reason - or whether they can be deduced from some that are.

There are three premises central to his case. First, that you are not morally responsible for what you do if everything you do traces to external factors that you had no hand in.

The second is that it is necessary to satisfy this condition that one create oneself.

The third is that it is impossible for a thing to create itself.

Now, are those premises true? That is, are they self-evident to reason?

The first is, I think. At least, it is self-evident to me, and self-evident to Strawson, and as he himself states and I can confirm, it is self-evident to most students when they are acquainted with it.

The second and third premises, however, are dubious. Indeed, I argued -and you ignored my argument entirely - that the second is false, for it seems sufficient for nothing external to oneself to be causally responsible for what one does that one has not been created. One does not need to have positively created oneself. So, the second premise seems false upon reflection.

And the third is dubious too (though less so than the second). Again, I presented a case against it that you ignored. The only reason to think self-creation is impossible is the assumption that a cause must precede its effect. However, that assumption is false - a cause does not have to precede its effect, but can exist simultaneous with it (indeed, arguably this is always the case). If causes do not have to precede their effects, then in principle self-creation is possible and thus premise 3 is false too.

See? That's engaging with an argument.

I agree with the argument but I don't understand what he means by ultimate moral responsibility. As opposed to non-ultimate moral responsibility? What is that?

Reply to GodlessGirl By ultlimate moral responsibility Strawson means being such that one can be deserving of harm. That is to say, it would be intrinsically good if you came to harm.

There are lots of weaker senses of the term 'moral responsibility'. 'Having moral obligations' would be one. That is, we sometimes say that we're 'morally responsible' and mean by this nothing more than that we have moral obligations.

But that's not what Strawson is talking about when he talks about 'ultimate' or 'true' moral responsibilty (so this would be an example of non-ultimate moral responsibility). He is talking about a kind of control or free will that makes one's behaviour capable of making one 'deserve' to be flung to hell (to use his example).

Sometimes it is morally justifiable to harm a person due to the benefits that may come from it, or due to the fact doing so will prevent greater harm in the future. But if harming Jim is morally justified on these grounds alone, then although it is morally permissible - perhaps even right - to harm Jim, Jim does not 'deserve' to come to that harm. It remains, for instance, 'regrettable' and 'bad' that Jim had to come to harm in order to secure those benefits or prevent those other harms. Whereas if Jim 'deserved' to come to harm in Strawson's 'ultimate responsibility' sense of the term, then it would not be regrettable at all or bad, but good.

So anyway, he doesn't mean anything wishy washy. He means 'capable of becoming deserving of hell and damnation depending on how one behaves'. And he thinks that to be capable of that, one would have to have created oneself.

But he's confused. A) you don't have to have created yourself, you just have not to have been created by anything other than yourself.
B) even if A is false, creating yourself is not impossible.
And finally C) even if A and B are false, it is more reasonable, given how powerfully our reason represents us to be morally responsible in the ultimate sense, to conclude that self-creation is not needed for it than to conclude that we are not morally responsible. To do the latter is to let less powerful intuitions trump more powerful ones.