Living without Ultimate Moral Responsibility:

“There is an undeniable human tendency to see ourselves as free and morally

responsible beings. But there’s a problem. We also believe-most of us

anyhow-that our environment and our heredity entirely shape our characters

(what else could?). But we aren’t responsible for our environment, and we

aren’t responsible for our heredity. So we aren’t responsible for our

characters. But then how can we be responsible for acts that arise from our

characters? There’s a simple but extremely unpopular answer to this question:

we aren’t. We are not and cannot be ultimately responsible for our behavior.” — Galen Strawson interviewed in The Believer [via naturalism.org]