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. — Andrew4Handel

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

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 — 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. — Andrew4Handel

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.

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

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.

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 — Andrew4Handel

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.

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. — Joshs

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.

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. — Joshs

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.

Which is why I find the Strawson et al stance patronising and undermining the remarkable powers of self reflection humans possess and autonomy — Andrew4Handel

‘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.

You are neither engaging with his argument nor mine.

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. — ChrisH

In that interview he says:

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. — Strawson

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:

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. — Strawson

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".

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. — Joshs

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.

You are neither engaging with his argument nor mine — Bartricks

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.

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

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 — SophistiCat

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.

Determinism trumps rationalism. — Richard B

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.

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. — Herg

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

Determinism it giveth and it taketh away.

Determinism it giveth and it taketh away. — Richard B

"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?

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? — Janus

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.

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. — Joshs

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.

Again, how are you engaging with any argument?

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

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.

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.

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. — Janus

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.

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. — Isaac

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.

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?

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.