Strawson's Argument Analysis

In this paper I am going to argue that Strawson’s argument, which says that people cannot be ultimately morally responsible for who they are, is wrong. I base my answer in the concept of free will, which I am going to explain once I have clearly established Strawson’s point of view. Strawson claims that we cannot be ultimately morally responsible for our actions whether or not determinism is true. Strawson’s claim is based in the Basic argument, which states the following: (1) nothing can be the cause of itself. (2) For one to be ultimately morally responsible for one's actions one would have to be the cause of itself, at least in certain vital mental respects. (3) Hence nothing can be ultimately morally responsible for its actions. In his
But what do I mean by free will? Free will is the ability that allows a person to perform a different action than the one actually taken. If we all have freedom of the will, then we all must be ultimately morally responsible for our actions. According to the deterministic view, all our actions are already predetermined by external factors, such as our background, environment, and the particular situations that we face at the moment of making a decision. Hence, this suggests that we are not free to decide what to do, which basically means that free will does not exist, and thus we could not possibly be responsible for any of our actions. However, even though our actions might be affected by external factors that will strongly influence us toward different directions. Yet, in the end, it is us who decide in which direction we move. As a consequent, we are indeed, ultimately morally responsible for who we are and what we
Do we not have free will in this case and thus are not morally responsible for who we are? I would say to whomever asks this question: it is a fact that when we are babies, we are at the mercy of our parents, but it is not true that we are not able to make any decisions. Yes, a lot of decisions are made for us when we are babies and we have to accept them, but that does not mean that inside that is what we really want, we just find ourselves in a position in which we are obligated to do it in order to survive, because survival is any baby’s principal drive. For instance, when a mother decides that she wants to give her baby only bottle milk, some babies will refuse to feed from the bottle until the mother sees herself obligated to feed the babies with the breast. However, some babies will give up and feed from the bottle because they feel their survival is being threatened. In both scenarios the babies are executing their free will, in different ways of course. They might not have the knowledge that older children and adults acquire as time passes by, but they make the decisions they make based on what they know and what they decide they want to take in from the external factors that may influence them. Thus, if little babies are able to make decisions this means that babies