Responsibility
The problem of moral responsibility is intimately connected with the
problem of free will.
If our actions are causally determined by prior events, including a chain of events that goes back before we were born,
libertarians do not see how we can feel responsible for them.
If our actions are
directly caused by chance, they are simply random and
determinists do not see how we can feel responsibility for them.
But we do feel responsible.
Despite more than twenty-three centuries of philosophizing, most modern thinkers have not moved significantly beyond this core problem of randomness and free will - the
mistaken idea that
free actions are caused directly by a random event.
To be responsible for our actions, they must have been caused by something within us, they must "
depend on us" (the Greeks called this ἐφ ἡμῖν). Modern "agent-causal" theorists demand that something in the agent's mind - perhaps a uniquely mental substance - gives us the power to cause our actions.
In our
Cogito model, responsibility comes from an
adequately determined will choosing from among randomly generated
alternative possibilities.
We have identified a number of critical
requirements for our Cogito model of free will.
Some of these are requirements for
freedom. Others are requirements for an adequately determined
will.
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