Freewill,determinism and moral responsibility

Some random thoughts on the subject.

1) I don't know whether the universe is deterministic or not. I doubt if
anybody else does, and I don't see how the issue could be settled by
empirical evidence.

2) Non-determinism means that ,given a state of the universe 'A', at any
moment, a moment later the universe could be in state B, or C or D, or E
etc, and there is nothing about the state A which will tell us what
state B,C,D, E will occur. (A might give us information about the
probability of B,C,D or E , but no more)

This means that ,if non-determinism is true, we cannot know what we will
do next, and nothing we can do about arranging the circumstances of
state A will prevent C,D or E occurring.

In other words, if state A is the state of me praying for guidance,
studying morality, vowing to be good etc, state B is the state of me
behaving lawfully, and state C,D,E are the states where I rob ,murder or
rape, there is nothing I can do to prevent myself murdering, robbing or
raping.

This is what non-determinism means. No amount of fiddling with state A
will prevent undesirable states C,D or E from happening or ensure that
desirable state B does happen.

Non-determinism means that I cannot control myself. The mechanisms to do
so are , by definition, lacking.

3) In everyday speech, moral responsibility is not gauged by judging
what the person would do if placed back into a certain state.

Instead, it is gauged by judging what a morally responsible person would
do if placed back into that state.

4) A person can still be morally responsible (or not) even if they have
no alternative. Martin Luther's 'Here I stand. I can do no other' was
not an abdication of moral responsibility , *especially* if it was
literally true.

A person who declares that he would never under any circumstances kill
somebody for a fee of one dollar is more morally responsible, than
somebody who says that he possibly might do that. Being morally
responsible means having a nature which rules out certain choices for
you, rather than having a nature which leaves certain choices open for
you.

A Jew-hating SS officer who enjoyed killing Jews would not be excused
moral responsibility if he claimed that he had no choice but to obey
orders to shoot Jewish villagers, as he would have been shot if he had
disobeyed, and his family would have been sent to camps.

All that might be true. He might indeed have had no alternative, but he
is still morally responsible for his war crimes.

Hope that has given something to think about.

-- 
Steven Carr