Strawson's Basic Argument Analysis

Within this essay, I will argue that Galen Strawson’s basic argument, presented in Your Move: The Maze of Free Will, is correct about the impossibility of ultimate moral responsibility. I will do this by first explaining the basic argument as proposed by Strawson, then raising an objection to it concerning the distinction between the self and the way you are by denying the second premise. And finally, I will be refuting the objection. Strawson’s basic argument can be boiled down to the simple notion that one cannot be ultimately morally responsible. He claims that anything you do in any circumstance is an effect of who you are, and the way you are. Thus, in order to be ultimately morally responsible for anything you do, you must be ultimately morally responsible for who you are. Strawson continues by saying that because you did not create yourself (causa sui), or have any control over many of the influential events in your life, you cannot be ultimately responsible for who you are. Therefore, you cannot be ultimately responsible for what you do. This gives Strawson’s basic argument two implications. The first is that nobody is ultimately morally responsible for their actions, and the second is that nobody is truly free. The argument completely crumbles the concept of free will – if you cannot be ultimately responsible for anything you do, you’re also not ultimately responsible for the decisions you make. Most critiques of the basic argument revolve around libertarianism or determinism, but, what if we were to refute the second premise? …show more content…
The second premise goes as follows, “[So] if you’re going to be ultimately responsible for what you do, you’re going to have to be ultimately responsible for the way you are — at least in certain mental respects.” I can concede that we cannot be ultimately responsible for the way we are, but I deny the fact that ultimate responsibility for our actions necessitates ultimate responsibility for the way we are. It is important, for the rest of the argument that we make the distinction between you and the way you are. ‘You’ are the same as your Self, whereas ‘the way you are’ is identified by factors such as your motivations, personality, and character (MPC) – your Self and your MPC are separate from each other. Under this assumption, any actions you make are decided by your Self, not your MPC. Obviously, your Self might, and probably will be influenced by your MPC, but your Self has the ultimate decision. Thus, if your Self decides to do something, and you act upon that, then you are ultimately morally responsible for your action. This remains true despite the fact that you’re not ultimately morally responsible for your MPC. Therefore, even though you aren’t ultimately morally responsible for the way you are, you can be ultimately morally responsible for what you do. Fundamentally, there is no problem with the proposition that your Self is separate from your MPC. The problem is in the fact that the argument is subjected to the infinite regress problem, which is at the heart of the basic argument. An infinite regress presents itself when we ask what the justifications are for the reasons themselves. If the reasons that are given as justification count as knowledge, they must themselves be justified with more reasons for the reasons, and so on,