Copyright (C) 2019 Dennis Joe Darland
Galen Strawson has an argument against [ultimate] moral responsibility. It applies whether or not determinism is true. I take it as an argument by reductio ad absurdum against this notion of [ultimate] moral responsibility. It is no more possible than a round square. In my own thinking, I am returning to the view expressed by Daniel Dennett in his book Elbow Room. He has a more recent book Freedom Evolves, which I did not like quite as well. The difference in my view and Dennett’s is that he speaks as if determinism were true. I think he would admit the possibility of indeterminism occurring in quantum mechanics, but consider it irrelevant to freedom. My difference is to point out that if determinism were entirely true, then only one possible history of the universe would have been possible. It would be a vanishingly small probability that Dennett’s sort of freedom could evolve. The indeterminism of quantum mechanics makes the existence of an infinity of different futures to be continuously occur. Making it probable for Dennett’s sort of freedom to occur.