Not Convinced Determinism Makes Sense of Moral Responsibility. Convince Me It Does

[Angrboda]

Dennett and Taylor, in the article included in the Oxford Handbook of Free Will, appeal to counterfactuals ala David Lewis. To my mind, Dennett has taken several whacks at the apple without a clear kill. My copy of Harris is electronic, and not accessible at the moment. I'll see if I can find a definitive statement from Harris, but he doesn't write like a compatibilist in his "Free Will". (For another variant of compatibilism, look at Gazzaniga.)

Harris’s position on free will is straightforward enough. (See this post by Harris for more background.) The universe is deterministic, and the behaviour of every entity in the universe is determined by the fixed laws of nature. This includes everything from the motion of atoms and the planets to human behaviour. On this view, according to Harris, there is no such thing as deep responsibility, and humans are no more responsible for their actions (in a deep sense) than mountains are for having avalanches.

Hard determinism and moral responsibility

This is Free Will 101, as Paul Bloom said of another recent essay outlining a position similar to Harris’s. (It’s well worth reading both the target essay and Bloom’s response.) This take on free will sometimes goes by the name of hard determinism, and is defined by two key claims: first, that determinism is true; and second, that free will therefore does not exist....