Strawson's Argumentative Analysis

I assert that Strawson successfully argues his view that free will and moral responsibility do not exist whether or not determinism is true or false through his argument on self-origination or causa sui. Strawson begins by differentiating the various view of free will. Compatibilists believe that free will is simply having multiple options for action, being able to choose them without constraint and choosing the option that one thinks is best. Incompatibilism is broken into two groups. Libertarians who think that people have free will and that free will is not compatible with determinism. The second groups are pessimists that argue that compatibilist’s views are inadequate and are not compatible with determinism and pessimists believe that free will is necessary for moral responsibility which is impossible to achieve. Strawson supports the pessimist's view of free will because he believes that for you to be morally responsible for your actions you must be the ultimate cause or creation of oneself or of your mental states (causa sui) which is impossible. We ourselves cannot be the cause for our creation. People are the way they are due to hereditary and environmental experiences so how can we be morally responsible for our actions if our actions are based off of recent
experiences that were from other people? How can one be morally responsible to change oneself if our recent experiences where from other people? The answer is that it is impossible for use to have free will because the actions that we think are free are actually from hereditary and environmental experiences that were given to us so our actions cannot be our own and we cannot change the way we are. The weak link in Strawson’s argument is when Strawson state that “to be truly or ultimately morally responsible for what you do, you must be truly or ultimately responsible for the way you are, at least in certain crucial mental respects.” (Strawson p.
4) The weak link in this statement is the part that says certain mental respects. By including “certain mental respects,” someone can give an example of a situation where one can have a high mental state due to “one’s self-conscious awareness of one’s situation” (Strawson p. 8) that can hold you morally responsible for your actions. So by being self-conscious in a situation can be enough for someone to be morally responsible for their
actions. A pessimist can defend this argument by stating that in the end of this self-conscious situation, the person will still be making a decision to act based off of recent experiences that were given to the person from hereditary or environmental factors. Technically the person cannot be morally responsible for his actions if his action are based off experiences that were taught to him and not created by himself. This rebuttal can fail however if you can provide a situation where someone has a mental state where his experiences are not from hereditary or environmental factors and put him in a new situation where past experiences have no role in his actions which would therefore make him morally responsible for his actions.