If normatives are only mental, then there are no facts about them aside from the fact that a particular mind is thinking about them however that mind is thinking about them. — Terrapin Station

This forgets that thoughts are formal signs, often pointing to actual states of affairs. Here, what is signified is the potential fact that some physical state would not be, save for the initiation of a line of action by the responsible person. The norm's basis in reality is that the state of affairs so engendered would either advance or retard the self-realization of various people.

I am not comparing anyone to the Nazis. I am simply pointing to a well-known counterexample to the thesis that lack of responsibility implies anarchy.

No, it's not just beliefs - it's also due to dispositions and can be influenced by impulsiveness. These are also consistent with determination. Questionable? It's questionable either way. — Relativist

It seems to me that your view precludes metanoia/conversion experiences. I am thinking of one of the great proponents of free will, St. Augustine. Before his conversion, he lived a very hedonistic life -- one driven by disposition and impulse, I think you would say if you'd met him. Then he decided that was not the kind of person he wished to be, and entirely re-ordered his life -- breaking with his former disposition and impulsive, hedonistic behavior. His is not a solitary case. Thus, experience shows that the past need not determine the future.

The coherence of compatibilism shows that a determinist's ontological commitment is not falsified. — Relativist

Coherence is not the primary criterion of truth. Adequacy to reality is. We need to look beyond self-consistency to see whether a position agrees with experience -- whether it "saves the phenomena" as Aristotle said. Redefining free will to make it compatible with determinism is little more than a bait and switch tactic. What experience tells is that mutually exclusive lines of action are equally in our power. What analysis shows us (I am thinking of Hume) is that there is no reason to believe that successive events follow necessarily.

I suggest that you are defining responsibility from a libertarian's point of view, and observing that my account is inconsistent with it. The account I gave has the explanatory scope needed to show that moral accountability is still a coherent concept under compatibilism, even though it is not the identical concept to that of LFW. — Relativist

The fact that one can re-define "responsibility," "free will" or any other term is not in question. Of course you may. They problem is that the concepts expressed by the common (pre-redefinition) use of these terms are elicited by the shared experience of those having those concepts. The redefined terms do not have this basis in common experience/reality.

Yes, it did.

I am sorry, but I do not see loving animals while killing innocent people as "taking responsibility seriously."

Anarchy is defined as "a state of disorder due to absence or nonrecognition of authority." We may not like the authority wielded in Nazi Germany, but it is a hallmark of all forms of fascism.

Society without responsibility is anarchy — Jamesk

Is it? I think that's a separate issue. In Nazi Germany we had a highly structured society in which no one seemed to take responsibility. Famously, most were "just following orders."

Thank you for the kind words. I will look into Wiggins.

It seems to me that after you do all that can be done, the only thing left is to cope the best you can. As I said there is value in that because others are in similar situations, and are encouraged by your strength. I know a couple of cases in which incurable suffering, patiently borne, had a life-changing effect on caregivers.

As I asked in the beginning, what is the alternative?

Norms are intentional, for they are goals. So, they are not independent of mind in the sense of being physical states; however, they they exist in nature, as actual intentional states found in other natural persons, independently of us knowing or positing them.

It seems as though you have a scenario in which there is no choice but to cope as well as you can. There is value in being an example for others, even if there is no hope for yourself.

Then, in this case, is coping justified? — Wallows

I am unsure why or how it would be unjustified. What is the alternative and what do you see as the down side?

You are welcome.

Yeah, really. Because that's the way the world is. No matter where you look in the mind-independent world, you'll not find any normatives. — Terrapin Station

But, we do find them in society, which is objective and observable. So, I deny your claim. Perhaps it would help if you define what you mean by a "norm."

And if we change the wording from social animals to social mammals would that make it clearer for you? — Jamesk

It would certainly rule out social insects, but it would not explain why being social would require a responsibility dynamic in the sense we experience it. As I said, if we were not free, we might need re-programming, but that does not require a concept of responsibility. We see such reprogramming in the training of animals, which are not held responsible for the behaviors we are trying to modify.

Are brain waves emitted photons? — Noah Te Stroete

Brain waves are electrical voltage variations detected on the scalp. They result from the collective firing of neurons, which is an electrochemical process. As all electromagnetic field changes are associated with photons, so are brain waves, but their frequency is so low they have virtually no energy.

I wasn't using "or" in the sense of "here's another word for the same thing." I was using it in the sense of "cats or dogs"--two different things we could be talking about.

At any rate, conventions aren't arbitrary. — Terrapin Station

Fair enough. As for conventions being arbitrary, some are, like what an ABBABABA computer state means. Others may be a bit less so, but the fact that they require agreement means they are not predetermined, and so are arbitrary in that sense.

The problem is that there are no objective normatives. — Terrapin Station

Really? Why?

Human beings have a hierarchy of needs that must be met to become fully realized. Thus, norms (this system of needs) is built into our empirically discoverable nature.

And you’ve agreed that this physical universe needn’t exist or be real in any context other than its own. — Michael Ossipoff

I do not know what this means. The existence of the universe has no a priori necessity, so, it is contingent. A posteriori, it is necessary.

The universe is what we abstract logic and its relations from. Thus, it has priority over logic. In other words, if there were no universe, there would be no logical relations because logic would not exist.

Every fact about this physical world corresponds to part of an “If”. …to a proposition that is part of an abstract implication. — Michael Ossipoff

Yes, but our experience of the events comes first, then we abstract the relation, and finally find other instances of the same relation.

The question is one of the order of dependence. In that order, logic comes after the physical universe.

Re peanut eating: Agreed.

1. The natural reaction to hearing about the drunk driver killing the bicyclist is a reactive attitude that the driver is guilty. In most cases, a perpetrator has a feeling of guilt after recognizing a consequence of a bad choice — Relativist

That is not in dispute.

It is inconceivable that we would stop holding such people morally accountable, or stop feeling guilty, even if it were somehow proven that determinism is true. — Relativist

This is the very point in question. Personally, I hold no one responsible for actions in which they played no determining role. So, based on my contrary conception, factually, it is simply not inconceivable. As I recall, Clarence Darrow convinced one or more juries to acquit by convincing them that his clients were determined to act as they did. So, this claim is false.

Indeed, the fact that we have these attitudes contributes to our behavior, because we generally prefer to avoid guilt and social approbation, and enjoy pride and respect. — Relativist

No one is disputing that feelings of responsibility help guide our behavior. The question is are such feelings well-founded. The argument fails to show that they are not.

2. Could the drunk driver have done differently? Yes she could have, if she had held the strong belief that the risk of driving drunk was so great that it outweighed her impulse to do so. This could only have occurred had there been something different about the past (formation of that belief), but that's reasonable. If our choices aren't the result of our personal beliefs, dispositions, and impulses - what are they? Random? — Relativist

As it stands, 2 is not a compatibilist account of responsibility, but an argument for why a drunk driver should not be held responsible. One might decide to send her to jail to change their behavior, but that does not mean that she is responsible for what she did, only that we might, by this crude means, re-program her.

No one is denying the role of experience or of beliefs in the decision making process. Practically everyone knows, intellectually, that drunk driving involves grave risks. The question is not about acquired knowledge, but about how the agent weighs the incompatible factors that motivate driving drunk or not. There is no numerical trade-off between the relevant factors, so despite utilitarian objections, no algorithmic maximization can determine the decision. I think we can agree, further, that the decision is made in light of a subjective weighting process -- one that is neither algorithmic nor syllogistically conclusive.

Can't we also agree that how a person weighs such factors is not merely backward looking, not merely a matter of past experience and belief, but also forward looking -- a matter of what kind of person the agent wishes to be? And, if that is so, then the past is not fully determinative. We know, as a matter of experience, of cases of metanoia, of changes in past beliefs and life styles. While this does not disprove determination by the past, it makes it very questionable.

As for being "random," that depends on how you define the term. If you mean not predictable, not fully immanent in the prior state, free acts are random in that sense. But, if you take "random" to mean "mindless," no account of well-considered decisions can hold they are random in that sense. Personal beliefs, dispositions, and impulses all enter proairesis, but they alone cannot be determinative because they are intrinsically incommensurate. They are materials awaiting the impress of form. It is not what we consider, but the weight we give to what we are consider, that is determinative. And, we give that weight, not in view of the past alone, but in view of the kind of person we want to emerge in shaping our identity.

#1 and #2 are more or less independent, but in tandem they provide not only a coherent account of moral responsibility, they also explain why normal functioning people strive for generally moral behavior. We want to avoid guilt, fit in, and we want to avoid approbation by others. — Relativist

I don't think the arguments given do this. They begin by noting that we feel responsible, and show how this plays a role in our behavior -- none of which is in dispute. The question of why would we have a false belief in responsibility if we are not responsible is simply not addressed. Why couldn't we reprogram the drunk driver with prison or a scarlet "D" because reprogramming works (if it does), and not because of an irrelevant responsibility narrative?

Thank you for the compatibilist accounts.

1. The natural reaction to hearing about the drunk driver killing the bicyclist is a reactive attitude that the driver is guilty. In most cases, a perpetrator has a feeling of guilt after recognizing a consequence of a bad choice — Relativist

That is not in dispute.

It is inconceivable that we would stop holding such people morally accountable, or stop feeling guilty, even if it were somehow proven that determinism is true. — Relativist

This is the very point in question. Personally, I hold no one responsible for actions in which they played no determining role. So, based on my contrary conception, factually, it is simply not inconceivable. As I recall, Clarence Darrow convinced one or more juries to acquit by convincing them that his clients were determined to act as they did. So, this claim is false.

Indeed, the fact that we have these attitudes contributes to our behavior, because we generally prefer to avoid guilt and social approbation, and enjoy pride and respect. — Relativist

No one is disputing that feelings of responsibility help guide our behavior. The question is are such feelings well-founded. The argument fails to show that they are not.

2. Could the drunk driver have done differently? Yes she could have, if she had held the strong belief that the risk of driving drunk was so great that it outweighed her impulse to do so. This could only have occurred had there been something different about the past (formation of that belief), but that's reasonable. If our choices aren't the result of our personal beliefs, dispositions, and impulses - what are they? Random? — Relativist

As it stands, 2 is not a compatibilist account of responsibility, but an argument for why a drunk driver should not be held responsible. One might decide to send her to jail to change their behavior, but that does not mean that she is responsible for what she did, only that we might, by this crude means, re-program her.

No one is denying the role of experience or of beliefs in the decision making process. Practically everyone knows, intellectually, that drunk driving involves grave risks. The question is not about acquired knowledge, but about how the agent weighs the incompatible factors that motivate driving drunk or not. There is no numerical trade-off between the relevant factors, so despite utilitarian objections, no algorithmic maximization can determine the decision. I think we can agree, further, that the decision is made in light of a subjective weighting process -- one that is neither algorithmic nor syllogistically conclusive.

Can't we also agree that how a person weighs such factors is not merely backward looking, not merely a matter of past experience and belief, but also forward looking -- a matter of what kind of person the agent wishes to be? And, if that is so, then the past is not fully determinative. We know, as a matter of experience, of cases of metanoia, of changes in past beliefs and life styles. While this does not disprove determination by the past, it makes it very questionable.

As for being "random," that depends on how you define the term. If you mean not predictable, not fully immanent in the prior state, free acts are random in that sense. But, if you take "random" to mean "mindless," no account of well-considered decisions can hold they are random in that sense. Personal beliefs, dispositions, and impulses all enter proairesis, but they alone cannot be determinative because they are intrinsically incommensurate. They are materials awaiting the impress of form. It is not what we consider, but the weight we give to what we are consider, that is determinative. And, we give that weight, not in view of the past alone, but in view of the kind of person we want to emerge in shaping our identity.

#1 and #2 are more or less independent, but in tandem they provide not only a coherent account of moral responsibility, they also explain why normal functioning people strive for generally moral behavior. We want to avoid guilt, fit in, and we want to avoid approbation by others. — Relativist

I don't think the arguments given do this. They begin by noting that we feel responsible, and show how this plays a role in our behavior -- none of which is in dispute. The question of why would we have a false belief in responsibility if we are not responsible is simply not addressed. Why couldn't we reprogram the drunk driver with prison or a scarlet "D" because reprogramming works (if it does), and not because of an irrelevant responsibility narrative?

Have these experiments been replicated with the same results? It seems they would have to be replicated a few times with the same results to be cogent. — Noah Te Stroete

What I cited were meta-analyses of hundreds of experiments. Meta-analysis is a technique developed in physics to refine the accuracy of physical constants. It involves both reviewing experiments' methodology and the statistical aggregation of the results of many similar experiments. Given that the effects here are small, any single experiment can show no effect or or a negative effect due to random fluctuations. That is why it is important to aggregate the results of many experiments.

A possible source of error in meta-analyses is the so-called "file drawer effect." It happens when researchers looking for, say, a positive effect, find no effect or a negative effect and decide to file their work away rather than publish it. The meta-studies I cited considered possible file drawer studies and found that the number required to reduce the results to insignificance was unreasonably high -- many times the number published. So, it seems that the result is well confirmed.

Also, the placebo effect can be explained by brain states. Is placebo treatment sustainable? — Noah Te Stroete

I have no doubt that the brain plays a role in the placebo effect. Still, initiating cause of the effect is intentional, not physical. It is a belief on the part of the patient that the placebo will help -- and not some physical manipulation of the patient. As the effect works with different languages and cultures its explanatory invariant is a common intentionality, rather than an common physical instantiation.

I have not read any studies on sustainability. Anecdotally, one hears of patients being on placebos for years.

Humans are social animals
Humans have developed the concept of morality and responsibility
Therefore all social animals will develop the same concept.

All humans are social animals
If humans develop morality because they are social animals then
All social animals would do the same.

How do your premises lead to that conclusion? Your argument is neither sound nor valid. — Jamesk

These are not my arguments. If being a social animal explains responsibility, we have the following argument, valid by the modus ponens:

If an animal species is a social, then it has a responsibility dynamic.
Ants are social animals.
Ants have a responsibility dynamic.

I do not deny that being social animals enters into the dynamics of human responsibility. Clearly it does. I am saying that being a social animal is not sufficient to explain the human responsibility dynamic.

People, or the entire Earth, could disappear. That's not just imaginary in the sense of fantastical, it could easily happen for a number of different reasons. — Terrapin Station

Yes, it could happen. However supervenience is an asymmetrical relation, so if A supervenes on B, it need not be the case that B supervenes on A.

Supervenience is handy as a way of talking about a certain kind of dependence relation, without restricting the relation to situations where we're claiming either a substantial identity or a causal relationship. — Terrapin Station

I didn't say that supervenience was ill-defined. Just that it was a distraction, especially in the context of the mind body problem. I used astrology, which involves supervenience, but not causality, to illustrate my point. Let us focus on dependencies that give us insight into problems of interest rather then being distracted by supervenience.

Thank you.

I am not wring such a book now. I wrote a 400 page manuscript back in the late 80s and early 90s that was well-received in private distribution.

I am sorry that you saw this as a pissing contest. I see it as a dialog in which we each do the best to defend our positions.

Furthermore, no one in their right mind would claim that behavior supervenes on the planets. Where did you get that from? — Noah Te Stroete

By applying the standard definition I quoted from the SEP. My point is not what anyone would do,. but what the definition allows. That the definition allows such unrelated and irrelevant facts to be supervenient shows the irrelevance and distractive nature of the concept.

if you're using the term "responsibility" for that objective fact, you'd have to be careful to remove all normative/evaluative connotation from the term . . . which would be difficult to do outside of a specialized academic context, — Terrapin Station

No, I see the normative implications of responsibility as quite rational, because I see the agent as the radical origin of a new line of action that resulted in, or at least contributed to, the result for which the agent is responsible.

What I do not see is how responsibility can play any just role in a deterministic system of ethics.

I don't think this quite cuts it. If responsibility were an arbitrary convention, how can it play a dynamic role in our personal and social life? ... — Dfpolis

I'd be careful how you're using "arbitrary" there. Something being conventional or subjective doesn't imply that it's "arbitrary" in the sense of "random" or "per (fleeting) whim," Neither implies that the thing in question is irrational either. — Terrapin Station

First, conventional and subjective are completely different concepts. Things are subjective because they are properties of subjects as such, not because they are inadequately grounded in reality. In other words, the reality they're grounded in is at the subjective pole of the subject-object relation. Conversely, things exist by convention if they result from some explicit or implicit social covenant or agreement.

Second, the common understanding of covenants or agreements is that they are shared acts of will. If one denies the existence of effective acts of will, it is hard to see how anything could ultimately be the result of common consent. In a deterministic world, everything exists by necessity, with nothing ultimately depending on acts of will. It seems disingenuous, then, to say that responsibility does not require free will because it is explained by common consent, i.e. by acts of will. In sum, if you hold that that conventional consent isn't free, then responsibility exists by necessity.

Third, I certainly agree that the concept of responsibility is rational, but it is hard to see how a determinist can agree. What would it mean, socially, to hold Jane responsible for her acts? Would it justify punishment? Social disapproval? How would that be just if Jane were foreordained to do what she did? You might argue that it would deter others from acting in the same way by increasing the weight of negative consequences in their considerations, but would that really justify the consequences of blaming Jane?

As for how something that's only a convention, or only a way we think can play a dynamic role in our personal and social life, it's hard to believe that you're even asking that question, because why would you think that something that's just a way that we think or just a convention wouldn't be able to play a dynamic role in our personal and social life? — Terrapin Station

I don't think that, but I don't see how you could not. I'm confused about your model of decision making. I can understand the notion of physical determinism. In fact, I'm a determinist with respect to purely physical systems. If you believe that we are purely physical beings, fully describable in principle by physics, then being a determinist makes some sense. The problem is that when you appeal to rationality, as though intentional considerations make some difference in human actions, I am confused. Why should rationality make any difference in a world fully determined by its physics? It seems very odd that what we decide to do rationally should be the exact same thing that physics determines that we will do. This is even more peculiar given that the initial state determining the physical outcome is an existent, but largely unknown, distribution of field strengths, while the premises of our proairsis are unrelated intentional commitments (beliefs) that may or may be true.

So, does you model of decision making involves some Leibnitzian parallelism, a kind of monadology? Or do you think, as I do, that the intentional state that terminates or decision making process is ipso facto physically effective? If the latter, then on what do you base your determinism? Certainly most of our practical reasoning is not syllogistic, and so logically indeterminate. What actually determines our decisions is the weight we freely give to competing considerations.

Please forgive my absence and the consequent delay in responding. Mea culpa.

Responsibility is a social convention simply because people believe in free will, not because it is metaphysically true. — Noah Te Stroete

OK. Responsibility came up because I was asked what free will would explain. It seems to me that if there is no free will, then there would be no reason to believe there is, because no one would feel responsible. That brings us back to asking how the feeling of responsibility could evolve, given that it can serve no purpose if people are physically compelled to act as they do?

Also, if intentions can have no physical effect, how can we talk about them, for surely talking about them is a physical process that necessarily depends on operation of the intentions we discuss? But, if intentions did have no physical effect how could the intentional state of feeling responsible change what we do in the future?

Hive society animals have a completely different form than our own so I feel your comparison is unfair. You use hive insects as the example for all social animals and that is a mistake, at the very best we could be compared to other primates but not insects. — Jamesk

Of course we are much different than hive insects, but that does not undermine my point. The thesis was that responsibility is explained by us being social animals. If this were true, then a responsibility relation would be a feature of all social animal groups. That is not the case, so, the concept requires more than us being social animals to explain it.

Unless you think that morals are a natural feature of the world, which i do not, I also don't think comparing us to other species is helpful either, — Jamesk

I always find such statements puzzling. Aren't we, with all of our intellectual and social complexity, part of the natural world? Isn't intentionality as natural as physicality -- even if they are not reducible, one to the other? Of course we are very different than other species and ignoring our differences can invalidate conclusions, especially when thought is involved.

I think there is a natural basis for morality, but that it's elaboration is social, cultural and historical, if that is what you mean.

A supervenience relation there doesn't exclude either the notion that mental, aesthetic properties are physical or nonphysical. — Terrapin Station

Agreed. So what philosophic value does the supervenience relation have? How does it help us develop a consistent understanding of human experience?

No, you're not getting the idea. If there's a supervenience relation, one can't obtain without the other. Planets could still exist if we didn't. — Terrapin Station

Your "can't" is about physical, not logical or metaphysical, necessity. Your "could" has the force of an imagined state, not physical possibility. We know, for example, that the Moon plays a protective role with respect to asteroid collisions. On the other hand, we do not know that the earth could have formed outside of an environment that also led to the formation of the other planets. Our specific evolution depended on the solar system being as it is, with asteroid collisions occurring when and how they did, and with the laws of nature, physical constants, and initial state of the universe being as they are.

Your ability to imagine something physically unrealizable does not make the imagined state physically possible.

I do not believe that mental phenomena cause changes in the brain as you do. If mental phenomena were causally efficacious, then wouldn’t it be possible for telekinesis to occur? It is much more likely that mental phenomena supervenes on the physical brain. This is knowable a fortiori. It is consistent and coherent with neuroscience. Your claim is not. — Noah Te Stroete

Clearly, mental phenomena have physical effects. In the placebo effect, telling the patient that a drug is efficacious makes it more efficacious. This is a proven fact. In the UCLA study I mentioned earlier, cognitive therapy of OCD patients resulted in substantial rewiring of their brains as shown by before and after MRIs.

As for telekinesis, Dean Radin and Roger Nelson (1989) reviewed 832 experiments by 68 investigators in which subjects were asked to control random number generators, typically driven by radioactive decay. They subjected the results to meta-analysis, a method for combining data from many experiments. While control runs showed no significant effect, the mean effect of subjects trying to influence the outcome was 3.2 x 10^-4 with Stouffer’s z = 4.1. In other words, subjects controlled an average of 32 of every 100,000 random numbers, and this effect is 4.1 standard deviations from pure chance. The odds against this are about 24,000 to 1.

Radin and Diane C. Ferrari (1991) analyzed 148 studies of dice throwing by 52 investigators involving 2,592,817 throws, found an effect size (weighted by methodological quality ) of 0.00723 ± 0.00071 with z = 18.2 (1.94 x 10^73 to 1). Radin and Nelson (2003) updated their 1989 work by adding 84 studies missed earlier and 92 studies published from 1987 to mid-2000. This gave 515 experiments by 91 different principal investigators with a total of 1.4 billion random numbers. They calculated an average effect size of 0.007 with z = 16.1 (3.92 x 10^57 to 1).

Bösch, Steinkamp, and Boller (2006) did a meta-analysis of 380 studies in an article placing experiments in the context spoon bending and séances. They excluded two-thirds of the studies considered. Nonetheless, they found high methodological quality, and a small, but statistically significant effect. Unsatisfied, they attacked the data for lacking a predictive theory, and suggested that workers find a stronger effect. Such demands are not scientific. General relativity was confirmed by minuscule effects, e.g. a 43 arc second per century anomaly in perihelion of Mercury discovered in 1859, but unexplained until 1916. Further, no objective effect can be adjusted to meet skeptics’ demands.

In sum, for anyone committed to the scientific method, and willing to follow the data where it leads, there can be no doubt that mental states can modify physical states.

I have no doubt that most mental states supervene on physical states as well as on planetary positions. More importantly, I think that neural and glial processing play an essential role in human thought. Just because intentionality is not reducible to physicality does not mean that the two exist independently. The sphericity of a ball is not reducible to its material, but that does not mean that the sphericity and rubberiness are separate substances.

Descartes drew his line in the wrong place. The mind has an essential physical subsystem. This was recognized by Aristotle, Aquinas and most other pre-Cartesian thinkers. The problem is that we have no reason to believe that intentional operations are reducible to physical operations, and very good reason to think that they are not.

Nothing actually known to neuroscience contradicts anything I have said. If you think otherwise, please be specific.

If it's not subjective, then it obtains independently of what anyone thinks about it. What would be the evidence of that? — Terrapin Station

I am not saying that responsibility has no subjective element, but that it is not entirely subjective. Responsibility is a relation between a subject and a forseeable, objective state of affairs that would not be, had the subject not acted as he or she did.

This relation exists whether or not it is known to exist. Suppose I bully a person online and as a result that person decides to commit suicide. I may never know that happened, still, I'm partly responsible for it.

We are only morally responsible as a matter of convention. Metaphysically we are not responsible. — Noah Te Stroete

I don't think this quite cuts it. If responsibility were an arbitrary convention, how can it play a dynamic role in our personal and social life? Again, what would motivate anyone to give an arbitrary convention a central role in social interaction? Wouldn't such centrality be completely irrational and long-since recognized as such?

Furthermore, I’m not the one who espouses proairesis. You do. I believe memory, beliefs, mood, and need, etc., are necessary And sufficient causes of our decisions. You keep setting up Straw Men instead of addressing my premises. — Noah Te Stroete

Proairesis merely names the process leading to a decision. It literally beans "before choice." So, there is nothing to espouse with regard to its existence unless you believe that there is no thought leading to a decision, which would seem to ignore the relevant phenomenology.

What Aristotle noted about proariesis is that it is an iterative process. One begins with a goal to be effected, then finds means of effecting that goal, then finds means of effecting those means and so on. These observations are compatible with both deterministic and libertarian views of choice, and they certainly do not rule out a role for memory, beliefs, mood, need, etc.

I have no problem with the causes of a decision being both necessary and sufficient. That is a very different matter than the choice being necessitated. Necessarily, these factors are in involved, and the factors effecting a decision are sufficient to the actual decision does not mean that the decision is necessary. For example, necessarily I need skills sufficient to house building to build this house does not mean that having those necessary and sufficient skills compels me to build this house rather than that.

If you still feel we are at an impasse, then my best to you.

Supervenience claims do not merely say that it just so happens that there is no A-difference without a B-difference; they say that there cannot be one. — Terrapin Station

Yes, I see the modal "can." Our biological existence depends on living in the kind of universe that we do. If the laws of nature, the physical constants and the initial state of the universe were different (so that the planets were not as they are) we would not be here to act as we do. Thus, there is a necessary link between human behavioral changes and the planetary movements, but not a causal relation. That is why supervenience is a philosophical distraction, and a poor substitute for causality.

Of course one can read "can" more narrowly, as having something to do with causality, but the definition does not require it, and, in my opinion, the whole point of supervenience is to avoid discussing causality. Consider:

Supervenience is a central notion in analytic philosophy. It has been invoked in almost every corner of the field. For example, it has been claimed that aesthetic, moral, and mental properties supervene upon physical properties. — Supervenience by Brian McLaughlin & Karen Bennett in SEP

The implication would seem to be that since these non-physical properties supervene on physical properties, that there must be an (unknown) dynamic by which the non-physical are manifestations of the physical. As I have shown by my astrological example, logically there is no such implication. Of course, the philosophers pointing out this supervenience would say that no such implication was ever asserted, only supervenience. That is certainly true, but the question is what motivates a discussion of the supervenience of the non-physical on the physical if not the hope/desire/implication of a dynamic connection? Yet, without a dynamical connection all there really is, is a distraction, for almost everything supervenes on almost everything else.

if and only if exact similarity with respect to B-properties guarantees exact similarity with respect to A-properties. — Terrapin Station

Yes. Let's look at history again. Go back to 0437 GMT 1835. Whatever the historical state of the world then, it cannot be that state without the planets having the exact state they had. If we look at the actual changes that happened between then and 0438 GMT, those historical changes cannot have occurred without corresponding changes in orbital positions. Such is the nature of supervenience.

A good deal of philosophical work has gone into distinguishing these forms of supervenience, and into examining their pairwise logical relations. — Terrapin Station

It is certainly true that there are different kinds of modality, but the differences in kinds of modality do not depend on supervenience, but on the underlying dynamics of the case.

We may not technically responsible in the sense you are seeking, however our position in the group 'holds' us (and all of the groups members) responsible for their acts. So you are responsible without being responsible and that is fine because we are all the same in this respect. All of us are egalitarian victims of determinism so freedom doesn't really come into it. — Jamesk

This is why I brought up ants. They and bees have social roles and follow rules of contingent behavior, but because they have no choice of role or contingent behavior, they have no need for the concept of responsibility. It is only because we can choose new roles and violate the social expectations (an intentional concept) by the exercise of free will that the concept of moral responsibility arises. In other words, being social animals does not necessitate the dynamic of responsibility. So, being free agents explains the need for the concept of responsibility, while being fully determined social animals does not.

Thus, the two weaknesses of your position are: (1) you have provided no reason to believe that we are determined, and (2) you have provided no reason for the existence of the responsibility dynamic you admit exists.