RELIGION AND MORALITY 3114 One is not responsible for anything that is entailed by what one has
no control over (from 2, 3).
5 You have no control over what is true in TUDdino.
6 You have no control over what the laws of logic are.
7 You have no control over what the laws of nature are.
8 You have no control over TUDdino and LL and LN (from 5–7).
9 You have no control over what TUDdino and LL and LN entails (from
4, 8).
10 You have no control over TUDcup (from 1, 9).
11 TUDcup entails You decide to have coffee at 3:00.
12 You have no control over whether you decide to have coffee at 3:00
(from 10, 11).
Note that you and your decision/action “stand in” here for everyone and
every one of everyone’s decisions/actions. So what follows is that if
determinism is true then no one is ever responsible for any decision/action.
Hence compatibilism, which claims otherwise, is false.^9 Central to
controversy over the success of this argument is whether premise 3 – One
has no control over anything that is entailed by what one has no control
over – is true. This claim is sometimes called the Control Principle.
Explanation and determinism
If determinism is true, then for any TUD true at time T1 it is not merely
the case that The TUD true at T1 plus the laws of logic plus the laws of
nature entail the TUD true at any later time but that the TUD true at time
T1 plus the laws of logic and the laws of nature also explain the truth of the
TUD true at time T2, and so on. Even if it is a necessary element in
explanation, entailment is not sufficient for explanation. The proposition
Either 1 and 3 are 7 or Oklahoma is a state, and 1 and 3 are not 7 entails
the proposition Oklahoma is a state, but Oklahoma’s statehood has not
been explained.
The notion of an explanation is notoriously difficult, but this much can
be said about it. Let us say that If X obtains then Y obtains is true and
expresses a law, then there is an X/Y lawlike connection; let us also say that
if there is a true non-lawlike proposition of the form If X obtains then an
agent with the power to bring about Y will do A then there is an X/Y
teleological connection. In order that X obtains explain Y obtains it must be
the case that X does indeed obtain, and the case that there is a true
proposition that expresses a lawlike or a teleological X/Y connection.
Determinism assumes that for every state B that obtains, there is another