True and Ultimate Responsibility

Abstract

We are cruelly deluded about moral responsibility if Galen Strawson's view of the matter is right. He thinks that the moral responsibility which most of us want, and believe we have, and indeed at least intermittently can't help believing we have, is not really something that we can ever actually possess. 'True and ultimate responsibility' is Strawson's name for this unattainable object of belief and desire. An action is truly and ultimately responsible if and only if (1) the agent had a reason R1 for which he did it, (2) the agent deliberately brought about in himself one at least of the mental states which constituted his having R1, and had a reason R2 for that Rl-related bringing about, (3) the agent deliberately brought about in himself one at least of the mental states which constituted