Hard Determinism and Hard Incompatibilism

If your choice was completely determined by events before you were born, are you ultimately responsible for it?

Hard determinists answer:

no.

Hard incompatibilists make an even broader claim:

whether the universe is deterministic or indeterministic, the kind of free will required for ultimate moral responsibility does not exist.

Hard Determinism

Hard determinism combines two claims:

1. determinism is true,
2. determinism is incompatible with free will.

Therefore:

free will does not exist.

Incompatibilism

The second premise is incompatibilism.

It says genuine free will cannot coexist with determinism.

Libertarians also accept incompatibilism.

They simply reject determinism or claim human action escapes it in the relevant way.

Hard Incompatibilism

Hard incompatibilism is broader.

It says:

determinism would undermine free will,

but:

indeterminism would not rescue it.

Therefore the required freedom is unavailable either way.

Derk Pereboom

Philosopher Derk Pereboom is strongly associated with contemporary hard incompatibilism.

His work argues we lack the kind of free will needed for basic desert moral responsibility.

Basic Desert

Basic desert means:

a person deserves blame or praise simply because of the moral quality of the action,

independent of future benefits of blaming or praising.

Hard incompatibilists challenge this idea.

Ultimate Responsibility

The problem centers on ultimate authorship.

For an action to be ultimately yours, perhaps you must be ultimately responsible for:

the kind of person you are.

But how could that begin?

Galen Strawson’s Basic Argument

Galen Strawson presents a famous argument.

Roughly:

1. You act as you do because of the way you are.
2. To be ultimately responsible for your action, you must be responsible for the way you are.
3. To be responsible for the way you are, you must have intentionally shaped yourself.
4. But that earlier shaping depended on how you already were.
5. The regress cannot begin.

Therefore ultimate responsibility is impossible.

Self-Creation Problem

You did not choose:

• your genes,
• first language,
• childhood environment,
• early temperament.

These shape later choices.

You can change yourself, but the capacity to change also comes from prior conditions.

Recursive Self-Formation

Suppose at age thirty you deliberately change your habits.

That choice reflects:

• prior values,
• motivations,
• cognitive abilities.

You did not create those from nothing either.

The regress continues.

Causa Sui

Friedrich Nietzsche criticized the idea of being causa sui:

cause of oneself.

To create yourself completely would require existing before yourself.

The idea is incoherent.

Deterministic Horn

If your action is determined, then given the exact past:

you could not have done otherwise.

This seems to remove ultimate alternative possibility.

Indeterministic Horn

If your action is partly random, then the random component is not under your control.

Randomness does not make you the author.

This creates a dilemma.

Luck Objection

Suppose two possible choices remain open because of indeterminism.

If nothing about the agent explains which occurs, the result seems partly lucky.

How does luck increase responsibility?

This is the luck objection.

Agent-Causal Replies

Libertarians may propose that the agent, rather than prior events, causes the action.

This is agent causation.

Hard incompatibilists ask:

what determines how the agent exercises that power?

If Nothing Determines It

Then the choice may seem arbitrary.

If something determines it, the problem returns.

The challenge is obtaining both:

• control,
• genuine openness.

Four-Case Manipulation Argument

Pereboom developed a set of manipulation cases.

They compare ordinary deterministic agency with increasingly indirect manipulation.

The aim is to show that causal history can undermine responsibility even when local psychology looks normal.

Direct Manipulation

Imagine neuroscientists directly program a person to form a particular intention.

The person acts willingly.

Most people think full moral responsibility is reduced.

Remote Programming

Now make the manipulation occur earlier.

Perhaps the person’s character was engineered years before.

Does temporal distance restore responsibility?

Hard incompatibilists say not obviously.

Ordinary Determinism

Finally, replace manipulators with:

genes, environment, natural laws.

If the resulting psychology is structurally similar, why should ordinary causation suddenly create ultimate responsibility?

This is the force of the argument.

Manipulation Reply

Compatibilists answer:

manipulation differs because the mechanism bypasses or corrupts the person’s authentic reasons-responsive capacities.

Ordinary development need not.

The historical structure matters.

Authenticity

Hard incompatibilists reply that ordinary character formation is also largely unchosen.

Why should natural causes count as more authentic than artificial ones?

This keeps the debate open.

Responsibility Without Free Will?

Rejecting basic desert does not mean:

nothing matters.

Society can still respond to harmful behavior for reasons such as:

• protection,
• rehabilitation,
• deterrence.

Quarantine Model

Pereboom compares justified restriction of dangerous offenders to quarantine.

A carrier of a dangerous disease may be isolated without moral hatred.

Similarly, dangerous people may be restrained without retributive desert.

Forward-Looking Justification

Punishment can be justified by future benefits:

• preventing harm,
• reforming behavior.

This differs from retribution.

Retribution

Retribution says punishment is justified because:

the offender deserves suffering.

Hard incompatibilism strongly challenges this.

Moral Anger

If no one is ultimately self-created, should we abandon anger?

Perhaps some forms:

• resentment,
• moral hatred

should be reduced.

But emotions can also signal boundaries and motivate protection.

Blame vs Accountability

We can distinguish:

blame as condemnation

from:

accountability as requiring explanation, repair, and behavioral change.

Hard incompatibilism need not abolish accountability.

Relationships

Critics worry that free-will skepticism would destroy:

• gratitude,
• love,
• trust.

Hard incompatibilists respond that these relationships do not require ultimate desert.

We can value people causally.

Gratitude

You can be grateful that someone helped you even if their kindness had causes.

Causal explanation does not eliminate value.

Moral Education

Holding people responsible can shape future behavior.

Under determinism, this makes sense because behavior is causally responsive.

Responsibility practices themselves are causes.

Paradoxical Benefit

Free-will skepticism can therefore support behavior change.

If people are causally influenced, then:

education, therapy, institutions

matter greatly.

Social Determinants

A strong focus on causal history highlights:

• poverty,
• trauma,
• education,
• opportunity.

This can shift moral attention from blame toward prevention.

Risk of Excusing Everything

A common objection is:

If nobody is responsible, why stop criminals?

Because protection does not require hatred.

A dangerous event still requires intervention.

“He Could Not Help It”

This phrase can mean:

he lacked local control.

Hard incompatibilism makes a stronger claim:

even people with local control lack ultimate self-authorship.

The distinction matters.

Local Control

A person may:

• understand reasons,
• regulate impulses,
• respond to evidence.

These capacities are real.

Hard incompatibilists need not deny them.

Ultimate Desert vs Agency

This is a key distinction.

A person can be an agent without being ultimately responsible in the metaphysical sense.

Agency survives skepticism.

Praise

What about praise?

If no one ultimately deserves blame, perhaps no one ultimately deserves praise either.

But admiration and encouragement can remain meaningful.

Achievement

A scientist’s discovery may result from:

• talent,
• training,
• effort.

All have causes.

The achievement can still be real.

Causal history does not make accomplishment disappear.

Merit and Luck

Hard incompatibilism draws attention to moral luck.

People do not choose:

• natural ability,
• supportive parents,
• historical opportunity.

This complicates strong merit-based judgments.

Social Consequences

If taken seriously, free-will skepticism could influence:

• criminal justice,
• education,
• inequality policy.

The philosophical issue becomes institutional.

Neuroscience and Skepticism

Some popular discussions claim neuroscience proves free will is an illusion.

That is too strong.

Hard incompatibilism is primarily a philosophical argument.

Neuroscience may inform it but does not settle it alone.

Libet Is Not Required

Even if Libet-style experiments vanished tomorrow, the self-creation problem would remain.

Hard incompatibilism does not depend on one neural timing result.

Quantum Mechanics Does Not Rescue Ultimate Responsibility

Indeterminacy changes the causal structure.

It does not explain how a person becomes the ultimate source of the random outcome.

The luck objection remains.

Could Emergent Agency Help?

One might say persons are emergent higher-level causes.

Hard incompatibilists can accept this.

The problem is not causal efficacy.

It is ultimate responsibility.

Ultimate Sourcehood Is Extremely Demanding

Perhaps the skeptical argument works only because ultimate responsibility is defined too strongly.

A compatibilist can reject that standard.

We never needed causa sui freedom.

Revisionary Possibility

Maybe our ordinary concept of responsibility contains incompatible elements.

We may need to revise it.

Philosophy can refine concepts rather than preserve every intuition.

Strawson vs Strawson

Galen Strawson is a free-will skeptic.

P. F. Strawson, his father, developed a famous compatibilist approach centered on human reactive attitudes.

The contrast is philosophically striking.

Reactive Attitudes Preview

P. F. Strawson argues practices such as:

• resentment,
• gratitude,
• forgiveness

are deeply embedded in interpersonal life.

Responsibility may not depend on abstract metaphysical freedom.

This leads toward compatibilism.

The Philosophical Lesson

Hard determinism says:

determination destroys free will.

Hard incompatibilism says:

indeterminism does not help either.

Their deepest challenge is not that humans lack decision-making mechanisms.

It is that no person seems able to become the ultimate cause of themselves.

The Next Question

Perhaps that standard is unnecessary.

Maybe freedom does not require escaping causation.

Maybe it means acting through:

• your own reasons,
• values,
• capacities for control.

That is the compatibilist proposal.

The next essay is:

Compatibilism.