In his new book, Things that Bother Me, Galen Strawson argues against ultimate moral responsibility (or free will) as follows:
(1) You do what you do—in the circumstances in which you find yourself—because of the way you are.
(2) So if you’re going to be ultimately responsible for what you do, you’re going to have to be ultimately responsible for the way you are—at least in certain mental respects.
(3) But you can’t be ultimately responsible for the way you are. [I will say something about his reasons for this below.]
(4) So you can’t be ultimately responsible for what you do. (p. 113)
This argument goes wrong at the first premise, which is only half the truth. You do what you do because of the way you are, AND you are the way you are because of what you do. And this explains why premise 3 is also wrong.
Strawson says, “Sometimes people explain why number 3 is true by saying that you can’t be causa sui—you can’t be the cause of yourself. You can’t be truly or ultimately self-made in any way.” The unqualified (“in any way”) claim here contrasts with the qualification he added in number 2: “you’re going to have to be ultimately responsible for the way you are—at least in certain mental respects.” (Emphasis added by me) Why can’t you be truly or ultimately self-made, not in all ways, but in certain mental respects, and thus ultimately responsible for what you do?
I agree that I am not ultimately responsible for being a human with certain physical and biological features, who is male or female, or short or tall, who is subject to physical laws and biological needs and desires. I just find myself in that situation. But we don’t hold someone responsible for being male or female, short or tall, or for being subject to the law of gravity or for needing to eat food, drink water, and breathe air to stay alive. The question is whether I or anyone else is ultimately responsible for the kind of choice as in Strawson’s example of choosing on a particular occasion between buying a cake for a party or, instead, giving the money to a person in obvious need outside the cake store. True, I or someone else could explain the choice I make in that situation as the effect of the way I am in terms of what I most want. I choose to buy the cake because I want the party to be a success more than I want to help someone who wants and needs my help. Or vice-versa. So, we could say that I made the choice I made because of the way I am. But it would take a pattern of such choices to justify the claim that this is the way I am. At any rate, we could say that I am the kind of person who made this choice on this occasion. But what does that add to saying more simply that I made this choice on this occasion? The only thing it could add is the claim that this choice is part of a pattern of similar choices, and that whatever caused the pattern of past choices is what determined this choice and will determine future choices in relevantly similar situations. Unless determinism is true—and Strawson said that his argument is independent of whether or not determinism is true—this leaves it open that I am what caused the pattern of past choices by making those choices. When it comes to what counts for believing someone is ultimately responsible, the kind of person I am = what I do. So yes, it’s true that in order to be ultimately responsible for what I do I would have to be ultimately responsible for the way I am, because what I do = the way I am. This leaves it open that I can do something different from what I have done in the past, so the way I am does not have to be the same as the way I was in the past. That is why, in regards to the kinds of situations in which we normally believe someone is ultimately responsible, I am ultimately responsible both for what I do and for the way I am.
In addition to simply finding myself being a human who is subject to physical laws and biological necessities for which I am not responsible at all, there is another, deeper fact about who I am for which I am not ultimately responsible, and that is which person, out of all the persons there are, that I am. I am not responsible for which person I am. That is just given. This is the sense in which I can’t be the cause of myself. But given which person I am out of all the persons there are, I am ultimately responsible for what kind of person I am = what I do. I am the cause of myself in this way: I am the cause of the kind of person I am.