Ⅲ．A Kind of Censure and Solution

Libertarianism seems to have been established in this way, and the possibility of moral responsibility has been successfully preserved. Finally,I will introduce a possible objection and response. Libertarians may face such censure: how do decision makers make decisions? The answer is either random or follows a certain standard. If the decider in a person's mind is completely random, then obviously this person can't be responsible for his actions, because there is essentially no difference between his actions and rolling the dice. Therefore, the decider must have the ability to think or be responsible for his actions. At this time, opponents can argue that libertarians must admit that the decider also has a psychological mechanism: the previous causal chain led to the decider's decision, and then everything falls into the same dilemma: how can the decider be responsible for its psychological mechanism? If not, then human beings are still not free in essence.

The point is whether the decider is free or not. First of all, if the previous causal chain still allows the possibility of doing otherwise (as discussed at the beginning of the second section), then having the previous causal chain by the decider does not pose a serious threat. If the decision of the decider also depends entirely on its own previous causal chain, then we should say that the causal chain that the decider was in earlier is the necessary and sufficient condition for him to make such a decision, because determinism requires the previous cause to strictly determine the behavior of the agent. If a determinist's point of view cannot deduce that his own history and experience are the necessary and sufficient conditions for a person to do something, then there is the reason to believe that this person is indecisive or free.

But in fact, knowing the causal chain that a person has experienced before can't help to talk about this person's decision. In other words,history doesn't constitute a sufficient condition for a person's behavior.For example, if a person is very hungry, then according to the causal chain,he has to have a meal to feel full, and so this explanation is certainly valid.However, just because a person is hungry doesn't mean that he will take action to fill his stomach. According to the daily context, he is fully capable of being hungry temporarily and ignoring the desire to “become not hungry”. At the same time, it doesn't mean that this person will continue to eat hamburgers because of the desire of “not wanting to be hungry”.In order to achieve the goal of not being hungry, he can also choose to do other alternative things. Therefore, the causal chain before the existence of a decider cannot be a sufficient condition for an agent to act, and he still has the ability to do otherwise (not eating when hungry). And because historical experience as a sufficient condition is the basic position of determinism, in this sense, the decider in human mind is not decided, but can only be free. Therefore, although the decision mechanism of the decider still needs further research to give an exact answer, we can still think that the decider will not lose the freedom to make other decisions because of the existence of the previous causal chain.