Is Moral Responsibility Compatible With Determinism?

[vulcanlogician]

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."

1 & 2- Sure, anger has its place. But for some of us, anger can be a prison... something that gnaws at us and prevents us from thinking clearly. In instances such as these, it may help to take a step back and see how our anger may be attached to an erroneous idea. That's all. Actually, embedded in the philosophy from which I have obtained these ideas is the idea that one should accept the anger of others, but (in pursuit of a higher wisdom) one should carefully strive to replace anger with logic within oneself. For those who aren't interested in this "higher wisdom" --they're fine. Leave them alone and let them get angry. Anger certainly has its uses.

Whether anger is good or not has been an issue for debate since Plato and Aristotle. Spinoza, my reference here, was heavily influenced by the Stoics. Long story short: the Stoics, for some decently argued reasons, thought that there was nothing that anger could do that logic couldn't. And since anger can be reckless or even dangerous, the Stoics favored logic in every circumstance.

People can prevent themselves from getting angry in a deterministic universe... it's just that there is no free will involved. People choose they just don't choose freely. Again, I'll draw upon Spinoza who noticed that we all have in our heads a mix of (what he calls) adequate and inadequate ideas.

Let's create a example and watch John Doe make his way through a deterministic universe. From the outset of our example, John (mistakenly) believes that free will is true. At one point, he discovers his wife has been cheating on him. He bitterly holds it against her. He divorces her. He puts himself to sleep every night by imagining all sorts of misfortunes falling upon her. Angry thoughts about his wife interrupt his thinking throughout the day. John Doe is miserable as a result. Then, one day, he reads Spinoza and comes to realize that everything happens due to natural processes. His wife's choice to cheat on him was due to "a substance acting upon itself." In short, he realizes that she could not have done otherwise. With this adequate idea, John Doe is able to overcome his anger.

No free will required in that example. John Doe, through a series of unfree choices, came to realize that the universe is deterministic and was henceforth able to overcome his anger. Note that (for the sake of brevity) I made the assumption that reading Spinoza led a person to instantly overcome his anger. That's unrealistic, of course. I was just trying to show how (in principle) adequate and inadequate ideas can influence a person in a deterministic universe... and I cut quite a few corners along the way.

(I'll treat your third objection later. Just remind me... but I think I may have treated it already above.)

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.

I'm not begging the question. My statement is this: scientists have not observed matter making a motion that cannot be explained by a prior cause. If every motion of matter is determined by a prior cause, then determinism is true.

You may think that some extraordinary thing happens in the brain causing matter to move because of something other than prior causes, but there is no reason to think there is, and certainly no evidence that this is the case.