6．Moral Responsibility and Determinism

Generally speaking, we intuitively think that we are free to make choices and actions. For example, it seems that we are free to choose to eat, sleep, work, and leisure every day. But are these choices really free, or is “free will” just an illusion? Imagine such a world where all individual behaviors are determined by Causal Chain. Every action of human beings does not depend on their free will, but only the result of previous reasons. In this world, how can human beings be morally responsible for their own actions? In the collision of traditional views,libertarianism and hard determinism have become two important views on moral responsibility. They all believe that determinism and moral responsibility are incompatible: if determinism is established, the agents will have no moral responsibility. Although they have different conclusions about whether determinism is true or not, they both believe that the core of proving moral responsibility lies in proving human freedom. This paper aims at introducing libertarianism's objection of hard determinism and expeading libertarianism's argument. I will start with the premise that moral responsibility is incompatible with hard determinism, and briefly introduce the basic viewpoint of hard determinism. And then, this paper will respond to hard determinism based on Chisholm's libertarianism.