It is clear to Galen Strawson that there cannot be any valid notions of ultimate moral. Responsibility due to the irrefutable status of the ‘basic argument’. Which ultimately invalidates any supposed veritable libertarian or compatabilist explanation of freewill in a positive light. The basic argument implies that in order to be fully morally responsible. And by extension be a free agent, one needs to have been able to decide on their internal. Mental constitution, personality. And preferences such that their decisions to these ends are not determined by previously existing constitutions. Personality and/or preferences-shaped by heredity, environment and/or luck.
Because our actions are inextricable to who we are, in order to be truly responsible for and in control of what we do. To Galen Strawson, we have to be truly responsible for and in control of who we are. Following on from this, because there is no possibility that the above situation happens in a crucial sense(where our mental constitutions are concerned). That one can make internal choices independent of previously. Deterministically rooted internal landscapes -there is. Consequently, no possibility of true moral responsibility, and by extension, true freedom of will. This is the maxim of Galen Strawsons paper.
To aid his conception of how freewill works and thereby his notion of the impossibility of it. Galen Strawson uses the ‘Heaven and Hell’ thought experiment to illustrate. That true moral responsibility(and the qualification of heaven or hell deserving-ness) requires that, to our presiding intuitions of moral responsibility, we be fully in control of the decisions we make and fully in control over who we are. Therefore, if one cannot reckon with or dispute the fact that at all points our preferences and internal constitutions link back to and are marred by evermore deeply rooted preferences which are determined by, to some crucial degree, factors that we had no control over; that these internal constitutions could not have made themselves, which Galen Strawson maintains that one cannot, then there is truly no hope for free will in the way our intuitions present them to us.
The first main response, of the compatibalist, explains that one need not be truly responsibly for who they are and what they do, only partially. But Galen Strawson shows, through the ‘Heaven and Hell’ experiment. That this kind of quasi-responsibility bears no weight on the argument of true moral responsibility and our in most intuitions about it. The second response is that of the libertarian which comes in the form of: quantum indeterminacy creates a situation such that when one is faced with two choices facilitated by the same internal constitution, determinism is suspended such that the outcome is akin to a free and undetermined choice which, to the libertarian, equates to free will or free agency. Galen Strawson counters that all this indeterminacy equates to is luck and that luck is simply not enough to ascribe full moral responsibility to an action.
The third response equates to the notion that ones ‘self’ can make presiding decisions over and against ones internal landscape. However, Strawson again arrives at the point that at no time this ‘self’ and its agency of choice over the somewhat determined internal landscape, caused it self. It has to be responsible for the way it is, which to Strawson, is impossible. Therefore, to Galen Strawson, no response in favour of ultimate free will, whether it be in favour of determinism or against it, can reckon with the fact that true moral responsibility is impossible.
