The following is a modified excerpt from an essay I wrote about code law and moral responsibility. It is dense, but worth a read imho. I will begin with some definitions and by delineating the relevant aspects of very specific laws (code law) from less specific laws.

Free choice: the idea that one could have both chosen otherwise and that one’s choice is unaffected by external causation.

Determinism: the formulation that the present state of the universe is the effect of its previous state and the cause of the state that follows it.

Moral culpability/responsibility: the measure of the degree to which an agent, such as a person, can be held morally or legally responsible for action or inaction.

Strong moral culpability/responsibility: the more robust moral culpability/responsibility implied by free choice.

Now to ground the arguments made herein with a discussion of laws: less specific laws are open to interpretation when they are broken; their application is a function of both choice and circumstance, and, therefore, are not merely broken as a result of one’s actions; they are relative. Very specific laws, in the mold of free choice, are broken only as a function of one's choices and thus actions. Thus, in such a case, there is no causation outside the self-contained causal chain beginning with the choice.

Since code law, if predicated upon free choice, leaves no room for external causation, there is a contradiction; there are without a doubt partially or wholly unfree choices that result in very specific laws being broken. Thus, in terms of moral culpability, the application of very specific laws must either necessarily preclude genuinely free choice or take into account relevant external causes for non-arbitrary, non-random choices. If it precludes freedom of choice then no one is morally culpable according to the following argument:

(1) An agent is only responsible for an action if they could have chosen to act otherwise and are autonomous.

(2) An agent cannot choose to act otherwise and is not autonomous.

(3) Therefore, an agent is not responsible for a choice and the resultant action.

A possible escape hatch is to assert that all that is needed in order to hold agents accountable for their actions is the ability to choose and act freely in accordance with their wills, which might imply a degree of autonomy and freeness of choice, but, even then, to have done differently in such a way as to retain strong moral culpability - one's will is subject to external causation, and thus vulnerable to considerations of determinism - one must prove determinism false according to the MPAP (modified principle of alternate possibilities) which dictates that:

(1) An agent is strongly responsible for an act of will only if said agent’s will is not subject to external causation.

(2) An agent’s will is not subject to external causation only if determinism is false.

(3) Therefore, an agent is strongly responsible for an action only if determinism is false.

Therefore, there is no easily-found escape hatch; this leaves us with nothing but the obviously true claim that people act in accordance with their wills, which is compatible with determinism. Thus, very specific laws, in the context of the reality of unfree choices, make little sense if determinism isn’t false; no one is morally culpable without a new analysis of choice and action. This could be remedied by making the conditions for very specific laws to be broken a function of approximate, relevant external causes - or by making them a little less specific.

It is now necessary to evaluate a conditional analysis of what it means to have the ability to do otherwise in order to explore another potential solution. One simple conditional analysis (yanked from the SEP) is:

An agent S has the ability to do otherwise if and only if, were S to choose to do otherwise, S would do otherwise.

This analysis, which is an isolated analysis of free action, is compatible with determinism, thereby bypassing the MPAP; it only concerns the ability to do otherwise without addressing whether or not one’s choices or actions are the result of external causes.

If we redefine what it is to act freely to mean that one satisfies the simple conditional analysis, then the choice is still paramount, but it is not an uncaused cause in the context of making a choice to break a law. Furthermore, within the parameters of choice, it yields a responsibility that is meaningful (although not in an ideal way): one can act freely in accordance with one's will even if determinism is true, and, thus, people can be held responsible for their choices and resultant actions - given the locus is shifted to the choice and not the causes of the choice.

Accordingly, this analysis says nothing about whether our choices are free. This may seem to be an advantage, being as if the choice was uncaused (and it would have to be for it to be totally free), it wouldn’t be compatible with the fact that some choices appear to be the result of external causes. But how can we justify shifting the locus to the choice?

There is no indicator that one person’s choice is more free than another’s with the simple conditional analysis; it only dictates that people can act freely, and says nothing about the freeness of their choices, as noted earlier. Thus, even with the simple conditional analysis, there is no way to preserve strong moral culpability without arbitrarily deciding which causes for choices to break very specific laws are relevant.

I would love to get some input on how to resolve this contradiction.