‘As a philosopher I think the impossibility of radical free will, ultimate moral responsibility, can be proved with complete certainty. It’s just that I can’t really live with this fact from day to day. Can you, really?’

— Galen Strawson, ‘You Cannot Make Yourself the Way You Are’ from Things That Bother Me

‘In the end, whatever we do, we do it either as a result of random influences for which we are not responsible, or as a result of non-random influences for which we are not responsible, or as a result of influences for which we are proximally responsible but not ultimately responsible.’

— Galen Strawson, ‘The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility’

‘There is, however, another powerful tendency in ordinary thought to think that one can be truly morally responsible even if one’s character is ultimately wholly non-self-determined — simply because one is fully self-consciously aware of oneself as an agent facing choices.’

— Galen Strawson, ‘The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility’

‘However self-consciously aware we are, as we deliberate and reason, every act and operation of our mind happens as it does as a result of features for which we are ultimately in no way responsible. But the conviction that self-conscious awareness of one’s situation can be a sufficient foundation of strong free will is very powerful. It runs deeper than rational argument, and it survives untouched, in the everyday conduct of life, even after the validity of the Basic Argument has been admitted.’

— Galen Strawson, ‘The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility’