Ultimate Responsibility
Ultimate Responsibility (UR) is
Robert Kane's concept that we can be responsible for current actions, ones that are
essentially determined (this can only be
adequate determinism, of course) by our character and values, as long as we formed that character ourselves by earlier free actions that he calls Self-Forming Actions.
Self-Forming Actions (SFAs) are free actions in the distant past that contribute to our character and values. When we act out of habit today, we
trace the
Ultimate Responsibility (UR) for those actions back to those SFAs. Although current habitual actions may seem (
adequately) determined, they are still
self-determined and thus free.
Self-Determination is the idea of a
positive freedom, a
freedom for actions that we
originate, actions that are
up to us. "Up to us" (in Greek, ἐφ' ἡμῖν) was the phrase used by
Aristotle and
Epicurus for human freedom.
Such acts constitute the essence of
Free Will. Self-Determination is one of
Mortimer Adler's terms in his great compilation work
The Idea of Freedom, along with
Self-Perfection and
Self-Realization.
Origination is the idea that new
causal chains can begin with an agent, something that is not
predetermined to happen by events prior to the agent's deliberation (between
alternative possibilities) and decision. Origination accounts for human
creativity.
Ted Honderich is "dismayed" because the truth of determinism requires that we give up "origination" with its promise of an open future. For him, limiting freedom to
classical compatibilist voluntarism means we are not the authors of our own actions.
They are not "
up to us."
Kane's Ultimate Responsibility (UR) restores the case for self-determination and origination and makes our actions
up to us.
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