Auggy,
As I see it, it’s not about isolating “acts” and asking whether a particular behaviour would look the same if it were determined by wills or forces outside the one acting. Sure, a determined person would “act accordingly.” For me it’s about how our acts and behaviour are to be understood if their determination is attributed to a personal source other than us. If such determinism is the case, I don’t see how the personal distinction between us and God is properly made.
This is a crude analogy, I know, but consider the responsibility for an effect which is the result of a deterministic causal chain initiated by Joe and effectively brought about through secondary causation. For example, Joe pulls the trigger of a gun and the bullet kills another person when it enters their head. Why don’t we blame the bullet and stop there? Well, because we know the bullet is, given the causal chain, merely a material extension of the will and intention of Joe. So we blame Joe in spite of the distance between him and the deceased by virtue of secondary causation. There’s no effective/functional distinction between Joe and the trigger, or the trigger and the gun-powder, or the power and the bullet that brings about the other guy’s death. Joe brought about his death. Joe did that. Where Joe initiates a causal chain which is deterministic from beginning to end, responsibility for events along the chain are attributed to Joe. You might say the causal chain is an extension (functionally speaking) of Joe himself.
I’m not sharing the analogy to convince you. I’m just sharing it to help you understand my point of view. Can you appreciate the difficulty that libertarians have with how we’re to distribute out personal responsibility along a causal chain deterministically understood?
Tom
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