Soft Determinism and moral responsibility

 Soft determinism says that even if (and even though) determinism is true, we are still responsible for our actions. What does that mean exactly,  that we are responsible for our actions? Moral responsibility seems to have two distinct meanings, and you might answer the question of soft determinism differently depending on which one you mean.  One meaning it might have is that, even if determinism is true, our motives cause our actions, therefore actions that attempt to correct our motives in order to change our future actions are warranted. Whatever might be causing me to contemplate  committing a cold-blooded murder, if you don't want me committing that cold-blooded murder, then whose motive needs to be modified? Well, mine. So you may want to attach penalties to cold-blooded murder so that have a countervailing motive to whatever my motive for murder might be, and not commit the act. If I do commit the act, then you are going to want to find out who did it, and maybe do something to me that will deter others from doing the same thing. But what if determinism is true, and the fact that I am a murderer and you are a law-abiding citizen is, in the final analysis, the result of factors beyond my control, or yours. If you are trying to correct someone's motives and change their behavior, pushing the question of "responsibility" further back like that doesn't make sense. But what if what you are doing is first and foremost trying to give me what I really deserve, to approximate in human terms what presumably God, if there is one, will be doing at the Final Judgment? Then it seems to me that being concerned about determinism is more plausible, since it seems to be a matter of cosmic luck that I happened to end up on the end of a causal chain that made me a murderer, but made you a law-abiding citizen.

The case against soft determinism

The main arguments against soft determinism are there. 1) There is insufficient reason to believe that determinism of any sort is true with respect to human actions. 2) If soft determinism is true you are being praised or blamed for actions that, in the final analysis, are the result of circumstances beyond your control.

 

Assume, for example that there is a God. Suppose God creates you in such a way that he guarantees that, on 8/3.2020, you commit the crime of murder. Suppose the day after that, you die. You meet God at the last judgment, and God tells you that you are going to have to spend eternity in hell because you are a murderer. But God, you  reply, given the way you created me, I could not have avoided committing the murder. What are you damning me for something you made me do. Can God reasonably say “You wanted to do it, so it really is your fault, not mine.”

Soft Determinism: The key difference

The key difference between soft determinism and the other views is the definition of freedom. For them, freedom means being able to carry out your will. But, you will is just as strictly determined on soft determinism as it is on hard determinism. The question is, if your will is determined by past causes, but you can carry out your will, do you have an excuse if you act wrongly. You did what you wanted to do, but, given the past, you could not have done otherwise from what you did.

 

Punishment, freedom, and determinism

This post was prepared for my ethics course.

This section is devoted to two topics: One is freedom and determinism, and the other is criminal punishment. Although the issues seem to be very separate, I have put them together for a reason. One significant motivation for criminal punishment has been the issue of desert. That is pronounced like dessert, but it comes from the same root word as the word deserve. Now there are other reasons, perhaps, for criminal punishment (deterrence, protection of society, etc.), but some people think criminal punishment is first and foremost about giving people what they deserve.




On the other hand, we might ask why one person is virtuous and the other vicious? How did Mother Teresa end up the way she did, and how did Jeffrey Dahmer end up the way he did? Are they both simply the inevitable products of heredity, environment, or even (if you believe in God), God's predestination, or fore-ordination of all events before the foundation of the world (a belief held by Calvinists even today). Is it possible that if Jeffrey had had Teresa's heredity and environment, he (she?) would have been virtuous, and if Teresa had had Jeffrey's heredity and environment, she would have been a serial killer? This is the thesis of determinism, and some people have the inclination to withdraw claims of desert when they start thinking things through from a deterministic perspective. The line of thought leads us to think that the very idea of one person deserving one outcome, and another deserving another outcome, doesn't make sense. But this is a difficult conclusion to accept, it is the idea that in the last analysis, nothing is really anyone's fault, since their actions are the inevitable result of what came before.



There are a couple of ways of responding to this. The first approach, taken by philosophers such as Moritz Schlick and J. J. C. Smart, suggests that what moral responsiblity is all about it finding the right behavior to modify. They maintain that the very idea of deserving punishment is a barbaric notion we need to just get over.



The second approach is to say that looking all the way up the causal chain and seeing someone's actions as the result of past causes obscures the most important fact, and that is the fact that the person not only performed the act, but wanted to perform the act. It wasn't as if Jeffrey Dahmer wanted to be virtuous, but some alien power forced him to commit murder against his will. No, these crimes were willed actions, however inevitably they might have followed from past events.



The third option is the option of libertarian free will. When we act, we can do otherwise. Perhaps this kind of free will is a gift from God. Even the physical world, if we accept what modern physicists tell us, isn't strictly determined. So, perhaps, our actions aren't strictly determined either.



So, I would ask two questions: Can we talk about what people deserve? To do so, do we have to reject determinism? If we can deserve something good for doing something good, and deserve something bad for doing something bad, should that be the primary basis on which we determine how criminals should be punished? And does it provide a basis for the traditional doctrine of eternal hell?