Galen Strawson - Free Will

Free Will

In the free will debate, Strawson holds that there is a fundamental sense in which free will is impossible, whether determinism is true or not. He argues for this position with what he calls his "basic argument," which aims to show that no-one is ever ultimately morally responsible for their actions, and hence that no one has free will in the sense that usually concerns us. In its simplest form, the Basic Argument runs thus:

1. You do what you do, in any given situation, because of the way you are.
2. In order to be ultimately responsible for what you do, you have to be ultimately responsible for the way you are — at least in certain crucial mental respects.
3. But you cannot be ultimately responsible for the way you are in any respect at all.
4. So you cannot be ultimately responsible for what you do.

This argument resembles Schopenhauer's position in On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, summarized by E. F. J. Payne as the "law of motivation, which states that a definite course of action inevitably ensues on a given character and motive."