Traversing the Maze of Free Will

Arete's Editor-in-Chief, Andrea Lowry, sent me a link to an article by professor Galen Strawson of Reading University. Written for the New York Times, the article can be read by clicking here. It argues that one cannot be "ultimately responsible" for what one does, and that any actions will be "determined... by your genetic inheritance and previous experience." Bold statements, to be sure. He offers two arguments, the latter "expanded" from the former. Let's look at the former first:

(1) You do what you do — in the circumstances in which you find yourself—because of the way you then 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 in any respect at all.

(4) So you can’t be ultimately responsible for what you do.

Is his argument sound? It seems to have problems-- for example, the first premise begs the question, because it assumes that you do what you do because of "the way you are", which implicitly denies any sort of volition-- and responsibility, presumably, requires volition. I don't want to spend too much time on this argument, because Strawson seems to desire us to consider it in light of his expanded argument:

(a) It’s undeniable that the way you are initially is a result of your genetic inheritance and early experience.

(b) It’s undeniable that these are things for which you can’t be held to be in any way responsible (morally or otherwise).

(c) But you can’t at any later stage of life hope to acquire true or ultimate moral responsibility for the way you are by trying to change the way you already are as a result of genetic inheritance and previous experience.

(d) Why not? Because both the particular ways in which you try to change yourself, and the amount of success you have when trying to change yourself, will be determined by how you already are as a result of your genetic inheritance and previous experience.

(e) And any further changes that you may become able to bring about after you have brought about certain initial changes will in turn be determined, via the initial changes, by your genetic inheritance and previous experience.

I believe that Strawson errs in several of his premises. First, premise (a)-- that it is "undeniable that the way you are initially is a result of your genetic inheritance and early experience"-- is actually contradictory. The way you are initially (meaning, at the earliest moment of personhood) cannot result from earlier experience, which he said it does. Strawson might wish to make the conjunction apply only to post-initial status, but the premise loses its power, and it is clearly false that a person is how they are initially as a result of genetic inheritance (for example, because two individuals with the same genetic inheritance might not act the same way). The premise fails.

Premise (d) asserts that "both the particular ways in which you try to change yourself, and the amount of success you have when trying to change yourself, will be determined by how you already are as a result of your genetic inheritance and previous experience", but this to a large degree what needs to be proved. Strawson has constructed an elaborate format to beg the question, which is hidden behind a series of arguments whose foundation is problematic (the first premise). Of course, if Strawson had his way, his mistake would be seen as a result of experience and genetic inheritance. Personally, though, I think he should have known better.