Why Is Strawson Wrong

In this paper, I am going to argue that Galen Strawson is wrong when he claims that we cannot be ultimately morally responsible for our actions. The basis of Strawson’s Basic Argument is that you act because of the way you are. So, he says that in order to be morally responsible for one’s actions, one must be responsible for their character, personality and motivational structure (CPM), but since you cannot be responsible for your CPM, then you are not morally responsible for your actions. Moral responsibility is the praise or blame a person deserves for their actions. According to Strawson, only if the person chose to be that way, then they are morally responsible for their actions. But, a person can never choose the way they are going to be because it is already determined by the genes they inherited from their …show more content…
In the beginning, he was not morally responsible for his actions because they were not actions that he wanted to take voluntarily, but actions controlled by his condition. On another case, if a child is born with a genetic condition of being violent, the child will have not have free will completely because the child will not think clearly because he will be overcome by his anger. But once he gets psychological help for his anger problem, then he will have control over his actions, have complete free will and can be held morally responsible for his actions. The exception to my argument is if the person’s change in CPM is non-intentional, then the person is not morally responsible for their actions because they had no choice and it was above their control. Take this scenario, where the mother is using drugs during her pregnancy and the baby is born with an addiction to the drug. Here, the baby is not morally responsible for the addiction because the baby did not choose to be