Do_We_Have_Moral_Responsibility_

“We cannot be held morally responsible for our actions” Discuss In order to successfully consider this statement, we must attempt to answer two fundamental questions. Firstly, whether humanity is able to possess true free will, and secondly whether without freewill, we are ever able to take complete responsibility for our actions. The latter question is relatively easy to answer. If we accept that we have absolutely no free will, we must accept that we can never be held truly responsible for our moral behaviour. Without free will, humans lose the ability to control their own actions and therefore cannot be held responsible for them. If we reject determinism, at least in its purist sense, it is then necessary to judge the extent to which are actions have been influenced by outside stimuli. These questions call into question the very notions of human morality. Firstly we much attempt to explore whether people are truly free at all. This forms a philosophical topic that has been debated on for hundreds of years. Do humans act the way they do freely, out of moral obligation or other motivation, or are in fact our actions predetermined by our environment and our experiences' The case for determinism, the belief that humans conduct is dictated to them through outside stimuli has been forcibly put by many of the leading philosophers and religious thinkers throughout History. Martin Luther’s “On the bondage of will” coupled with John Calvin’s, beliefs in religious “predestination” which hoped to remove power from the Catholic Church in Rome, signalled the beginning of theological determinism. This school of theological thought argued that God had already determined fate of humanity, having chosen the few who are destined for heaven and the many condemned to damnation. These ideas were later manifested themselves in “antinomianism”, a theory which believed God had chosen a few Christians which would have the ability to exert their own form of freewill over those who do not. Hard determinism also proved to be particularly useful for Christians in addressing one of its fundamental flaws, the problem of Evil. It suggests that God is indeed omnipotent and omniscient and exerts evil over those who shall be damned. This essentially means that However, whilst achieving popularity at the time, these concepts of religious predeterminism have largely been rejected by modern day Christians from a range of denominations. The first to present a real challenge to Calvin and Luthur were the followers of Jacobus Arminius, otherwise known as the Arminians, who rejected all notion of predestination and embraced moral responsibility. Most Christians including the protestant church followed suit mainly because to believe in predetermination would be incompatible to Christianity. The traditional Christian view of a loving god would no longer be applicable to an almighty that damned his creations without giving them a chance to live their life. Indeed it would seem that creating life simply to lead them to damnation is wasteful. “Sin” as a concept would be made redundant, as those blessed to go to heaven would have no reason to avoid Sin along with those who are damned. Catholicism, which Calvin and Luther so vociferously attacked, presents a much more viable attitude towards freewill, with people making choices, and having to confess if they know that they have done wrong. Therefore Christianity is unable to truly present a convincing case for the deterministic nature of humanity. It is therefore necessary to look at more philosophical thinking to analyse whether humanity actually possess freewill, and it is not difficult to find many great minds who have come to the conclusion that our existence is determined through experience and other outside influences. John Locke is perhaps the most notable of these philosophers and his belief that “we are like chameleons, we take over the hue and colour of our moral characters from the humans that are around us” was illustrated through a famous analogy. He asked us to imagine a man sleeping in complete darkness in a locked room. The man believes the room to be unlocked, but prefers not to leave the room out of choice. Locke believed that man thinks he has the capacity for free will but really he is locked within his own determinism. Many other thinkers, not least Clarence Darrow, support Locke’s ideas. He was one of the first lawyers to bring to the publics attention the idea that a defendant could be found not guilty because of the traits that they had inherited from birth.Darrow went as far as to describe them as “broken machines” .His defence of murderers Leopold and Loeb was watermark moment in determinist thinking. Even modern philosophers such as Ted Honderich continue to argue, "all of our choices, decisions, intentions and other mental events and actions are no more than effects of other necessitated events." There is also significant scientific evidence that could be used to support these views. Experiments pioneered by Canadian physician Wilder Penfield showed us the way in which electronic stimulus to the brain could directly control the actions of man, whilst Pavlov’s dogs and the radical behaviourist theories of Skinner all point towards human actions which can be forced and controls through the correct application of outside stimuli. The theory of cultural relativism lends further support to the idea that the way our mind words are dictated to by the experience of culture and other humans. However despite this collection of evidence supporting the idea of hard determinism, the concept itself has too many flaws in itself to be considered completely viable. Firstly Determinism is self-defeating. A determinist believes that both determinist and libertarians have been predetermined to hold their beliefs. A determinist also says that Libertarians are wrong and should change their view. However, by implying that they “ought to change”, you are also implying that they are free to change, which undermines their own determinism. Another flaw to be found in determinist thinking is that it requires a rational basis for thought, but how can you have that without Free Will. However, this form of determinism is truly undermined by the most simple of flaws. James Rachel’s attempts to argue in his article “Doing Without Free Will” that humanity maintain reasoning for their actions. We traditionally have a motive, except these motives are simply consist of our pre-determined make up. He similarly argues that the denial of free will is not the end of ethics, as people are able to properly distinguish between right and wrong. However he ignores the fact that by simply talking to different people we have the power to influence their moral code. The criticism still stands that the removal of free will makes any sort of morality redundant in human existence. This flaw has lead to may people becoming “pragmatist”. Although they are unable to find any conclusive proof for the existence of freewill, they believe it is most practical to accept that we do, in order to successfully maintain moral harmony. Although having illustrated why hard determinism is ultimately futile as a school of thought, I still do not find myself a natural Libertarian. To agree with Daniel Dennet’s conclusion that “Human freedom is not an illusion; it is an objective phenomenon, distinct from all other biological conditions and found in only one species, us”, would be to underestimate the importance of human experience which had been highlighted earlier in the essay. The economist Adam Smiths theories concerning the need for personal choice both in business and society makes plausible sense only when coupled with an acknowledgement of the role “predestined” factor play on our existence. In the words of former Indian Prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru “Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will.” Despite a personal distaste for non-committal, middle of the road beliefs, soft determinism appears to pose the most realistic answer to the human problem of free will. Schopenhaurs assertion that “"Man is free to do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills" clearly illustrates to us the view held by others such as Hume, that although we do have freedom in many aspects of our lives, we are still limited by our past experiences. This school of thought has undoubtedly come in for its fair share of criticism, not least from William James who believed soft determinist or “compatibilists” created a "quagmire of evasion" by stealing the name of freedom to mask their underlying determinism. This view is similarly shared by “Incompatibilists who claimed that compatibilists are showing something to be compatible with determinism, but they think that something ought not to be called 'free will'. Essentially, they are asking more from the definition of free will than simply the ability to act differently in certain situations.