This post is a summary of Galen Strawson’s basic argument against ‘ultimate moral responsibility’ (which he also refers to as ‘deep moral responsibility’).
“The Basic Argument appears to show that we can never be ultimately morally responsible for our actions … You are a thing made not ultimately by you … How might we be changed by dwelling intensely on the view that ultimate responsibility is impossible?” — Galen Strawson
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Post Contents:
The Basic Argument against Ultimate Moral Responsibility (Galen Strawson Summary)
Basic Argument (Short Version)
Galen Strawson’s basic argument in a nutshell:
One version:
- “You do what you do—in the circumstances in which you find yourself—because of the way you then are.”
- “So if you’re going to be ultimately responsible for what you do, you’re going to have to be ultimately responsible for the way you are—at least in certain mental respects.”
- “But you can’t be ultimately responsible for the way you are in any respect at all.”
- “So you can’t be ultimately responsible for what you do.”
Another version:
- “Nothing can be causa sui—nothing can be the cause of itself.”
- “In order to be truly or ultimately morally responsible for one’s actions one would have to be causa sui, at least in certain crucial mental respects.”
- “Therefore, no one can be truly or ultimately morally responsible.”
Basic Argument (Expanded Version)
Galen Strawson’s basic argument expanded with more supporting detail:
1. You do what you do—in the circumstances in which you find yourself in any given situation—because of the way you then are.
- “Interested in free action, we’re particularly interested in actions performed for reasons (as opposed to reflex actions or mindlessly habitual actions). When one acts for a reason, what one does is a function of how one is, mentally speaking. (It’s also a function of one’s height, one’s strength, one’s place and time, and so on, but it’s the mental factors that are crucial when moral responsibility is in question.)”
2. So, if you’re going to be ultimately responsible for what you do, you’re going to have to be ultimately responsible for the way you are—at least in certain mental respects.
- “In order to be truly or ultimately morally responsible for one’s actions one would have to be causa sui, at least in certain crucial mental respects.”
- “If one is going to be truly or ultimately responsible for how one acts, one must be ultimately responsible for how one is, mentally speaking—at least in certain respects. To be ultimately responsible for how one is, in any mental respect, one must have brought it about that one is the way one is, in that respect. And it’s not merely that one must have caused oneself to be the way one is, in that respect. One must also have consciously and explicitly chosen to be the way one is, in that respect, and one must also have succeeded in bringing it about that one is that way.”
3. But, you can’t be ultimately responsible for the way you are (one’s character or mental nature) in any way or respect at all.
- “Nothing can be causa sui—nothing can be the cause of itself.”
- “You can’t get ‘back behind yourself’ in such a way as to be responsible for the kind of person you are.”
- “You can’t be ultimately responsible for the way you are because you’d have to be there already to kind of set yourself up, and that would lead to an infinite regress.”
- “In order for one to be truly or ultimately responsible for how one is in such a way that one can be truly responsible for what one does, something impossible has to be true: there has to be, and cannot be, a starting point in the series of acts of bringing it about that one has a certain nature; a starting point that constitutes an act of ultimate self-origination.”
- “Suppose you do want to acquire a want you haven’t got. The question is, where did the first want—the want for a want—come from? It seems it was just there, just a given, not something you chose or engineered. It was just there, like most of your preferences … The question just re-arises: Where did that want come from? You certainly can’t go on like this forever. At some point your wants must be just given. They will be products of your genetic inheritance and upbringing that you had no say in. In other words, there’s a fundamental sense in which you did not and cannot make yourself the way you are.”
- “It’s undeniable that the way you are initially is a result of your genetic inheritance and early experience. It’s undeniable that these are things for which you can’t be held to be in any way responsible (morally or otherwise). But you can’t at any later stage of life hope to acquire true or ultimate moral responsibility for the way you are by trying to change the way you already are as a result of genetic inheritance and previous experience. Why not? Because both the particular ways in which you try to change yourself, and the amount of success you have when trying to change yourself, will be determined by how you already are as a result of your genetic inheritance and previous experience. And any further changes that you may become able to bring about after you have brought about certain initial changes will in turn be determined, via the initial changes, by your genetic inheritance and previous experience.”
- “One can’t really be said to choose, in a conscious, reasoned, fashion, to be the way one is in any respect at all, unless one already exists, mentally speaking, already equipped with some principles of choice, ‘P1’ — preferences, values, ideals — in the light of which one chooses how to be. But then to be ultimately responsible, on account of having chosen to be the way one is, in certain mental respects, one must be ultimately responsible for one’s having the principles of choice P1 in the light of which one chose how to be. But for this to be so one must have chosen P1, in a reasoned, conscious, intentional fashion. But for this to be so one must already have had some principles of choice P2, in the light of which one chose P1. And so on. Here we are setting out on a regress that we cannot stop. Ultimate responsibility for how one is is impossible, because it requires the actual completion of an infinite series of choices of principles of choice.”
4. So, you can’t be truly or ultimately responsible for what you do. No one can.
- “Ultimate, buck-stopping moral responsibility is impossible, because it requires ultimate responsibility for how one is.”
Follow-up Questions
You may be wondering…
What’s the role of luck?
- “In the final analysis the way you are is, in every last detail, a matter of luck – good or bad.”
- “No one can be ultimately deserving of praise or blame for anything. It’s not possible. This is very very hard to swallow, but that’s how it is. Ultimately, it all comes down to luck: luck—good or bad—in being born the way we are, luck—good or bad—in what then happens to shape us.”
What about free will?
- “I don’t know what ‘free will’ means really, but the thing I say is impossible is what I call ‘ultimate, moral responsibility.'”
- “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.”
- “You arrive at a bakery. It’s the evening of a national holiday. You want to buy a cake with your last 10 dollars to round off the preparations you’ve already made. There’s only one thing left in the store — a 10-dollar cake. On the steps of the store, someone is shaking an Oxfam tin. You stop, and it seems quite clear to you — it surely is quite clear to you — that it is entirely up to you what you do next. You are — it seems — truly, radically, ultimately free to choose what to do, in such a way that you will be ultimately morally responsible for whatever you do choose. Fact: you can put the money in the tin, or you can go in and buy the cake. You’re not only completely, radically free to choose in this situation. You’re not free not to choose (that’s how it feels). You’re ‘condemned to freedom,’ in Jean-Paul Sartre’s phrase. You’re fully and explicitly conscious of what the options are and you can’t escape that consciousness. You can’t somehow slip out of it.”
What about science and determinism?
- “It’s a completely a priori argument, as philosophers like to say. That means that you can see that it is true just lying on your couch. You don’t have to get up off your couch and go outside and examine the way things are in the physical world. You don’t have to do any science.”
- “According to the Basic Argument, it makes no difference whether determinism is true or false. We can’t be ultimately morally responsible either way.”
- “There may be all sorts of other factors affecting and changing you. Determinism may be false: some changes in the way you are may come about as a result of the influence of indeterministic or random factors. But you obviously can’t be responsible for the effects of any random factors, so they can’t help you to become ultimately morally responsible for how you are.”
- “Even if quantum mechanics had shown that determinism is false (it hasn’t), the question would remain: how can indeterminism, objective randomness, help in any way whatever to make you responsible for your actions? The answer to this question is easy. It can’t.”
How do you live like this?
- “There’s a fundamental sense in which free will is impossible, and it doesn’t make any difference whether the world is determined or not—it’s impossible either way. At the same time, I think we can’t help believing we’ve got it. So, it’s perhaps the most dramatic, irresoluble clash in the whole of philosophy.”
- “We can’t be ultimately responsible for how we are in such a way as to have absolute, buck-stopping responsibility for what we do. At the same time, it seems we can’t help believing that we do have absolute buck-stopping responsibility.”
- “I can’t really accept it myself—I can’t live it all the time. If someone harmed or tortured or killed one of my children I’d feel everything almost anyone else would feel. I’d probably have intense feelings of revenge. But these feelings would fade. In the end they’re small and self-concerned. Only the grief would last.”
- “As a philosopher I think the impossibility of free will and ultimate moral responsibility can be proved with complete certainty. It’s just that I can’t really live with this fact from day to day. Can you, really?”
- “I don’t think living without the feeling of deep moral responsibility is a realistic option for most of us.”
The way to move beyond belief:
- “(Jiddu) Krishnamurti convinces me that it’s not actually impossible for human beings to live the fact that there is no deep moral responsibility.”
- “The Indian mystical thinker Krishnamurti reports that the experience of radical choice simply fades away when you advance spiritually: ‘You do not choose … You do not decide, when you see things very clearly . . . Only the unintelligent mind exercises choice in life.'”
- “It might take years of spiritual discipline to get to ‘living the fact’ (though actually one can get quite a way by ordinary secular reflection).”
- “The only thing we absolutely know for certain is the existence of qualitative consciousness … What do we know for sure about reality? We know that there’s consciousness.”
You May Also Enjoy:
Sources:
- Your Move: The Maze of Free Will (The New York Times)
- Skepticism About Moral Responsibility (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
- An Interview with Galen Strawson (The Believer)
- Luck Swallows Everything (Naturalism)
- Moral responsibility without free will (Institute of Art and Ideas)
- Free will is a necessary illusion (Institute of Art and Ideas)
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