Ⅰ．Hard Determinism's Objection Against Moral Responsibility

The most well-known form of determinism is causal determinism,which is also the main version of the interpretation of determinism by contemporary hard determinism. Causal determinism holds that the movement of all things is in a causal chain, and everything that happens at the moment is decided by what happened a moment ago. Hard determinists use a classic explanation of moral responsibility, namely, “basic argument”. The “basic argument” advocates that moral responsibility and determinism are incompatible, and its argument process is as follows:

1．Nothing can be causa-sui;

2．If you want to be morally responsible for your actions, you should be causa-sui;

3．Therefore, people cannot be morally responsible for their own actions.

Next, I will interpret the views of hard determinists in detail from two angles.

Hard determinists believe that human beings cannot be morally responsible for the environment in which they make decisions. When we say that a person is morally responsible for his own actions, we naturally acquiesce that this person's decision is the reason for his actions. For example, people often say, “I decided to eat.” People's own decision of“deciding to eat” is the reason for the action of eating. However, it is not difficult to find that there may be a deeper reason behind eating: hunger,which forces this person to make the decision to eat. Similarly, when we do something, there is always a reason behind it. The reason for eating may be hunger, the reason for drinking water may be thirst, and the reason for wanting to read books may be for recreation or homework. Therefore,a person's behavior is always determined by a reason that precedes the person's behavior, and the reason leads to the resulting behavior. Strangely,one reason can always be traced back to the earlier reason, and the earlier reason is bound to be caused by the earlier reason, and so on, which leads to infinite retrogression. Obviously, an individual person can't be responsible for the causes of this sequence, because the individual person is only a part of the causal sequence and is the one who accepts the decision in the causal sequence.

Hard determinists also believe that people are always influenced by external value judgments and their own growth experiences when making decisions, and that human beings can't be responsible for these factors that they can't decide. For example, a child who grew up in a gang may think that killing and drug trafficking are normal behaviors when he grows up.A child who has been abused since childhood may be disgusted when he sees someone who has the same hairstyle with the perpetrator. People from different cultural communities often give completely different answers to the same ethical question. Undeniably, many standards of people's judgment are influenced by external factors such as their own environment,cultural background, personal history, etc., and these things that exist before individuals cannot be held responsible by individuals. In the society, people are always affected by trends, and they have formed their own judgment standards and guidelines of action imperceptibly. These guidelines directly or indirectly determine the final action. For example, a person who thinks that killing doesn't matter won't have moral concerns and hesitation when judging his motive for killing.

In the above two levels, human beings can't bear moral responsibility for their own actions, because human beings are only a link in the causal chain, determined by previous events. Does this mean the end of moral responsibility? Without the legitimacy of moral responsibility, how can human moral standards and punishments be established? This has become a very serious problem.