Ⅱ．Libertarianism's Answer of Moral Responsibility

First of all, I will introduce Chisholm's libertarianism. Read the following two sentences:(a) He could have chosen to do otherwise.(b) If he had chosen to do otherwise, then he would have done otherwise.According to Chisholm, the second sentence is compatible with the position of determinism. Because if a person chooses to do otherwise in the past, then his choice constitutes the cause of the result of “doing otherwise”. It is the choice of the agent to do otherwise that leads to the result of doing otherwise. According to this theory, it is deterministic for a person to do event a; however, one's choice to do event b is also in accordance with determinism. Therefore, the two possible choices are in accordance with determinism, but people have also made choices.

However, this is obviously not enough, because hard determinists can completely deny the possibility of alternative choices. For example, a hard determinist can challenge that choice b is not really a possible choice at all, because in that case the agent will only and indeed make choice a. Therefore, Chisholm also needs to prove that this agent can indeed choose to do otherwise, instead of just offering a theoretical possibility.Chisholm's solution is to mold human beings into beings different from non-living beings. Non-living beings, such as stone blocks, trees, and rivers, are strictly bound by the laws of physics, and every activity of them can be completely determined by the previous causal chain. Human beings,different from non-living beings, have the ability to cause. For example,human beings can choose to move a stone, or they can choose not to move a stone. Both situations can form a causal chain. He named this ability of human agents as “prime mover unmoved” . In other words, human beings have the ability to make a free decision, and it constitutes the beginning of the causal chain, not just the affected and decided part of the causal chain. However, this explanation is far from enough to solve the challenge from hard determinists. Because this explanation is highly dependent on a premise that has not been fully demonstrated: human beings are such movers. Next, I'll try to complement Chisholm's idea.

In fact, when an agent makes a decision, he always considers a variety of possible choices (subconscious behavior is not taken into consideration),while the main retort of a hard determinist is that a rational agent always chooses the one with the greatest utility in his own judgment, so this agent will eventually go to path a whatsoever. For example, although it seems that a thirsty agent can choose to drink tea or drink water to relieve the thirst, his own preference for tea determines that drinking tea is the biggest choice, so he doesn't really choose to drink water. In other words, he has already been decided to drink tea by his preference, and the choice of being able to drink water is just an illusion.

Imagine the following scene: Zhang is a lover of black tea. He has two identical cups of black tea in front of him. These two cups of tea are the same in temperature, tea type and taste, so that human beings can't tell any difference. Obviously, these two cups of tea bring exactly the same effect to Zhang. Due to the problem of time, he can't drink two identical cups of black tea at the same time, but he has to make a choice. According to the daily situation and experience, Zhang will finally make a decision to drink one of them.

I think the hard determinism based on utilitarianism can't make a choice in this situation, so this hard determinism based on utilitarianism can't describe the actual situation. I will discuss it in three situations below. Firstly, utilitarians may ask Zhang to choose both, because drinking a and b is the same utility maximization choice. However, the scenario of this thought experiment has limited Zhang to do both at this time, so the first response is invalid. Secondly,utilitarians may ask Zhang to choose neither, because they bring the same utility, and it is not in line with the principle of utility maximization to choose one. But obviously Zhang can always make a choice, so the second response can't describe the reality either. Thirdly, utilitarians may say that Zhang will choose a bottle at random, because the utility of drinking tea is greater than not drinking it. In response to the last response, I think the point is that Zhang can clearly feel that his will agrees with his decision. In this sense, Zhang didn't just take a cup blindfolded, but his will decided to drink this cup of tea. At the same time, we can imagine a conflict situation in our life, in which people struggle even more. The complexity of an agent may lead to his conflicting desires. For example, when a warrior is at the battlefield, he may have a desire to survive,which requires him to retreat. On the other hand, he may have the desire to fight at the same time, which requires him to move forward. Assuming that these two desires have the same utility, the warrior is faced with a dilemma.In the absolute dilemma (same and conflicting utility), according to the above determinist's point of view, it seems that this agent can't make a choice. But this is obviously not in line with reality. In reality, there are reasons to think that the warrior finally made a choice, and both choices are possible.

Based on the discussion of the above two examples, simply decided desires can't constitute a reason for the behavior. People have reason to think that the agent is not simply determined by his own desire, but there is a “decider” who is higher than his desire to make the final decision, and this decider has successfully solved the dilemma.

Therefore, we can go back to the first part of the basic argument and refute it: nothing can be causa-sui. Objection is as follows: If all agents are completely determined by the previous causal chain and they make the choice with maximized utility, then people can't be responsible for their own actions. The premise here is that human decision system is unique, and the result caused by desire is unique. However, in the previous exploration,this concept could not make an effective choice when faced with a dilemma, because there is no so-called optimal solution (same utility).Therefore, in this case, the decider going beyond desire has the ability to make a decision, and theoretically he can choose either a or b. Through this practice, the agent becomes the “prime mover unmoved” mentioned in the previous article.