Strawson: The Basic Argument

Strawson presents what he calls The Basic Argument, which is supposed to show that moral responsibility is impossible.  The argument goes like this:

1.  You do what you do because you are the way you are.

2.  To be truly morally responsible for what you do, you must be responsible for the way you are.

3.  Since you can't be responsible for the way you are, you can't be truly responsible for what you do.

4.  To be truly responsible for the way you are, you must have intentionally brought it about, which is impossible.

5.  If you intentionally brought about how you are, you must have first had a certain nature that allowed you to intentionally choose to be a certain way.

6.  In order to be truly responsible for how you are, then you must be responsible for the 'certain nature' that allowed you to choose.

7.  If you could intentionally bring about a certain nature, then you must have already had a prior nature that allowed you to choose the 'certain nature' that allows you to choose the way you are...

The problem is that if you try to explain your behavior in terms of your own choices, you must also appeal to a capacity for choice that must be present before your choices are made.  For each choice, there must be the ability to make that choice.  So if you want to explain behavior in terms of choice, you always must introduce a capacity for choice-making.  Doing so leads to an infinite regress.

The main point is that humans are not causa sui.  In other terms, human are not the ultimate causes of themselves.  It seems like true moral responsibility requires that we are causa sui.  Because we are not the ultimate causes of ourselves, we cannot be truly morally responsible.