Is Moral Responsibility Compatible With Determinism?

[Alan V]

Having a deterministic worldview is not only extremely logical, it can help you to overcome "moral anger." Sometimes, we are prone to think that "such and such deserves our wrath" when they do things that harm us. A determinist is able to stand back and look at the whole picture. Sure, a wrong was committed. But it is senseless to get angry over it. It is better to proceed logically through the situation, understanding that there were exterior causes leading the person to do what they did. The most fruitive activity then is to prevent further harm to oneself and others--not anger or revenge.

First, let me point out that you are inconsistent. If people can't prevent themselves from making certain choices then others can't prevent themselves from getting angry about it.

Second, you are defining anger as a negative, when it has its own useful place among our range of emotions.

Third, you are saying that, regardless of all subjective experiences to the contrary, we have no choice in how we interpret events. In most cases we respond to our interpretations, not directly to "causes."

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I am in no way convinced that determinism is true. But of all the metaphysical theories concerning free will, it seems the most plausible. After all, all matter that scientists observe obey the laws of cause and effect. We are made of matter. Therefore, the motion of the matter in our brains and bodies must also obey those same laws of cause and effect. There is no evidence for Kant's "noumenal self" and all bringing quantum physics into the argument does is add an element of randomness to the picture. It doesn't imply free will of any kind. That's why I tend toward determinism.

With the bolded statement above, you are begging the question. On the contrary, we observe material people, including ourselves, make choices. Determinists conflate material causes with our reasons for our behaviors, when they are two distinct things. That is reductionism, but materialism is not necessarily reductionistic. Reasoning is an emergent property of a very complex arrangement of matter in our brains.

So determinism is a property of simple material objects, not a law of physics.