So how about actually answering the question re what making sense amounts to for you in a case like this? — Terrapin Station

Well, it doesn't make sense to me. Saying stuff that makes sense rather than stuff that doesn't is generally considered a desideratum in philosophical discussion. Talk about phenomenology isn't an exception to this. And there is rather more to conceptual elucidation than arbitrary stipulation.

What does making sense of it amount to for you in a case like this? Surely not having the same opinon, right? How would any arbitrary opinion about either a moral issue (if you're parsing it this way) or a conceptual stipulation be a matter of making sense to you, at least in lieu of it being in respect to something else the person says? — Terrapin Station

I did not make it a specifically moral issue. "Responsible'' has a non-moral agent-causal (or substance-causal) attribution sense: The lightning strike was responsible for the forest fire; the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration is responsible for global warming, etc. In any case, passing off your alleged phenomenological datum that you are feeling responsible for your sneezes as the expression of an arbitrary moral opinion or seemingly pointless conceptual stipulation is even more bizarre.

What you need help understanding is that there are no facts re whether something is a (strict) liability or not. — Terrapin Station

Let me grant that there is no fact of the matter. Very well then. My suggestion was unhelpful. The concept of strict liabilities seems to be of no use for making sense of your strange claim that you are feeling 'responsible' -- in the exact same sense of the word -- for all your bodily motions regardless of their causes. Well, I just can't help you then. Sorry about that.

The problem with that approach is that it seems to completely ignore the ontological issues re causality (in the physics sense). — Terrapin Station

I just presented a standard argument for incompatibilism (and also a standard argument for compatibilism). It's not a fully developed account of incompatibilist free will, for sure. Once some libertarian philosopher has convincingly argued that free will can't be consistent with determinism (if she has) then, of course, it is incumbent on her to explain how the practical abilities possessed by rational agents can be explained in a way that takes advantage of the leeway afforded by the indeterministic "gaps" in the underlying chains of physical causation. And that's precisely what libertarian philosophers, like Robert Kane, or Christian List (in a very different way), attempt to do. For sure, this raises ontological issues regarding causation, and not only at the level of physical processes. This is certainly not being ignored by libertarian philosophers.

The link you mentioned has this interesting idea ""the act is not culpable unless the mind is guilty". I am not sure how it impacts the free will / determinism argument. — FreeEmotion

When one holds an agent responsible for her actions it's because for her to have chosen to act in this way (or recklessly let something happen) reflects well of badly on her character. The argument in favor of indeterminism(sic) (I meant to say 'incompatibilism') tends to focus on the fact that if an agent's character is determined by earlier events that aren't under her control, then there wasn't really any possibility for her to have done anything else. She is being moved around by her own character and never ultimately responsible for it. (This is a simplification of the standard argument for incompatibilism).

The standard argument for compatibilism, on the other hand, is that it doesn't really make sense to portray the character of an agent as something that is somehow external to her rather than its being a constitutive part of her. When she gives expression to her own character though acting, as we say, in character, then she simply is in control, and thereby free. She's doing what she wished to do, given that she is thus inclined. This is also, of course, a gross simplification of the standard argument(s) for compatibilism.

I think there are elements of truth in both of those arguments. The difficulty, of course, is to resolve the tensions between them and not just pick one and dismiss the other one without due consideration.

I think the voluntary/involuntary acts (the phenomenal feeling of them) are at the crux of the argument. That's where the controversy of the Libet experiment extends from since it suggests all acts are really involuntary and the feeling between the two is some form of illusion (plausibly put there by evolution). Although how we can express knowledge of the "illusion" is beyond me. There somehow seems room for metaphysical (non deterministic) free will in there somewhere. The compatibilists ignore this and focus more on the social aspect which is probably where the frustration comes from. — JupiterJess

It seems to me that one of the mistakes in the early interpretation of the infamous Libet experiment was a lack of attention to the way in which intentional actions always are intentional under some descriptions and not under other descriptions. It's not just that some consequences of what you do are unintended, but even some aspects that you are perfectly aware (and in full control) of, regarding what you do, aren't deliberately chosen either, and need not be, for your action to count as intentional.

For instance, if you walk in the cereal aisle at the supermarket intending to pick a box of corn flakes, and proceed to pick one, then the fact that you picked one specific box rather than the identical box right next to it isn't involuntary but it isn't intentional either. Your intention, effectively realized in your action, just was to pick *one* box of corn flakes and not necessarily that one in particular. Your responsibility (or freedom) in picking this specific box as opposed to another identical box nearby isn't at issue because there just isn't any reason to chose one over another.

So, similarly, in Libet's experiment, the subjects were tasked with pressing a button at some time chosen at random. Under this description the actions are perfectly intentional and under the full control and responsibility of the agents. They freely consented to abide by those instructions and to push a button at a randomly chosen time. They also were tasked with indicating the exact time when they "intended" (or is it "decided"?) to press the bottom using a visual indicator to help in assessing this precise instant. But there is no such moment of decision. The decision was just to press the button whenever they felt like it. So, of course, there was an "readiness-potential" registered in the motor cortex some time before the button was pressed because there is a necessary time delay before initiation of action and bodily movement due to the finite speed of neural impulses.

However, the requirement for the participants to attend to the "time of decision" didn't really make sense since the only relevant time that they are in control of is the time when their controlled bodily movements occur in the world, and this is the time of the button press. There isn't a specific "moment of decision" prior to that anymore than there is a "moment of decision" to pick this or that specific cereal box when you just pick one at random. The only choice that the agent freely makes is to pick one or another (just anyone) cereal box. And likewise, in the Libet case, one just presses the button whenever one feels like it, for no particular reason. Just because her brain gets "ready", in a sense, before she feels sure that "now" is the time when she has "chosen" to do it doesn't entail that it's really her brain that has made the decision for her. The good functioning of her brain merely has enabled her to do what she had freely consented to do, and this was just to press the button at any time.

Probably the best way to understand human behavior is to observe and study it. — Rich

That's for sure, but observations and studies always are performed on a restricted range of cases and against an already existing background understanding. We look at things through a specific conceptual lens with a definite focus. Philosophical inquiry is distinctive in the way in which it attempts to critically assess this conceptual background and look beyond the predefined boundaries set by the natural and social sciences. Case law and legal theory often is forced to push against its own boundaries because it has no choice but to deal seriously with subjects (the defendants) who had been let loose in the field of social life and weren't restricted in the range of their behaviors like subjects in psychological studies typically are, for instance. This is one reason why case law is instructive from a philosophical point of view.

I believe, based upon observations, that most people feel this way about responsibility, though there is a very wide variance among the population. Even with criminal acts of misconduct there is a very wide bandwidth of interpretation such as the varying degrees of manslaughter and murder. So, we to a large extent accept that there degree or feeling of responsibility by ourselves and others has many conditionals associated with it and very subjective. — Rich

Yes, indeed, and in the context of criminal law some of those degrees of responsibility are codified as levels of mens rea. Anthony Kenny wrote a delightful little book -- Freewill and Responsibility, Routledge, 1978 (recently reissued) -- in which he draws lessons from carefully scrutinized cases and legal judgments, and the various criteria that attach to specific levels of mens rea, to clarify the connections between, indeed, free will and responsibility.

Do I feel responsible for a sneeze? If it is from a cold, maybe I could have done something to prevent it. From an allergy? Maybe I shouldn't have gone into the area filled ragweed? — Rich

Yes, that would be a perfectly reasonable explanation why you could be held (or hold yourself, and indeed feel) responsible for sneezing on some occasions. In that case, your responsibility derives from earlier voluntary acts or decisions (or blamable omissions) that had the foreseeable consequence that you would later get sick. Your sneezing then is a manifestation of that. It's not merely because your own body is involved in the involuntary occurrence that you feel responsible for it (as Terrapin Station contends). It's rather because of the relevant involvement of your earlier decisions, as you correctly point out, that you may now incur a responsibility for your presently involuntary sneezes.

You don't seem to be getting, or you don't agree with yet you're not presenting any arguments about it, thatthere are no facts re whether something is a (strict) liability or not. — Terrapin Station

That doesn't help me make sense of your claim that you are feeling responsible for your involuntary bodily motions, whatever their causes might be, just because it's your own body. The concept of strict liabilities was a suggestion meant to help *you* pinpoint the source of your own intuition regarding sneezes. If it doesn't help, then help yourself. I can't do all your thinking for you.

Yes. It's my body, after all. it's not someone else's. — Terrapin Station

That's a non sequitur if ever there was one. Maybe there would be a charitable way to interpret this in the strict liability sense of responsibility, but we've been there already and it's just not plausible that, even restricted to cases where the body is involved, every involuntary motion is some sort of a strict liability for the owner of the body. I also had asked you if, on your view, the cause of the movement being endogenous was a requirement (as opposed to someone else grabbing your arm and lifting it up, say) but you had declined to clarify, as usual.

If you had used another sort of involuntary bodily movement as an example, I would have said the same thing about that instead. — Terrapin Station

Seriously? If some part of your body moves, whatever the cause, you always feel responsible for it?

So, first, let's see if we can agree on something. Did I say that there's something special about sneezing versus other involuntary body movements? — Terrapin Station

How could I possibly know? I've *asked* you repeatedly if there is, in your view, something special about it. Did you not notice the question marks? That's the only way to assess whether this putative phenomenological fact about your experience of sneezing constitutes, or does not constitute, a relevant counterexample to my general claim regarding involuntary bodily movements in general. But you've always feigned not to understand the question.

I'm asking you what you're basing your claim on that I said there was something special about sneezing. And the answer is? — Terrapin Station

I explained already, several times, but you keep ignoring the point. Either there is something special, in your view, and then I'm simply asking you what it is such that you feel responsible for sneezing but not for other involuntary bodily movements. Or there isn't anything special and then it's even more puzzling why you'd feel responsible for involuntary bodily movements in general.

Based on what? — Terrapin Station

You wan't me to justify my agreeing with you that I myself had brought it up? You are just playing silly games.

I didn't say there was anything special about sneezing. I just used that example because it's the one you had brought up. — Terrapin Station

Of course you did. I then brought up the point about strict liabilities because that was the most charitable way I could think of for interpreting your otherwise bizarre claim that you are feeling responsible for sneezing. You took that putative raw phenomenological fact about your own experience to be some sort of a refutation of the post where I had mentioned sneezing as a trivial example. But if you can't wrap your mind around the idea of there being a difference in point of personal responsibility between intended or unintended consequences of actions (or purely reflexive bodily motions), then I can't help you escape from the corner you painted yourself into. You can stay there if you want.

Okay, and are you claiming that distinction just as a personal idiosyncrasy, or as a statistical commonality with respect to usage, or are you saying that it's a fact independent of usage somehow? — Terrapin Station

No. I don't think my recognition of the quite trivial distinction between our attitudes towards involuntary bodily movements or unintended consequences of actions, on the one hand, and towards voluntary actions that achieve intended results, on the other hand, is a personal idiosyncrasy. It's rather more of a truism that this distinction is relevant to ascription of responsibility, including self-ascription as part of the phenomenology of action.

How many more questions will I need to answer before you will answer the simple questions I asked you several times and that you keep ducking? What's so special about sneezing -- as distinguished from other similarly involuntary actions -- that makes you feel responsible for doing it? Or do you likewise feel responsible for anything that causes your body to move regardless of your own volition?

I agree. Against this, I like Williamson's notion of 'knowledge first' - knowledge as foundational and in a separate zone from belief. But I've read Williamson, and even been to a little seminar run by him, and he's the nicest bloke - but every tiny possibility has to be explored by him too, footnote after footnote, and then there's the argument by Sproggins (2014) although Hackface (2015) would disagree...all that! I am a bit of a nit-picker by nature, I think that's why I enjoy the analytic approach mostly, but sometimes you've just got to see the bigger picture or you'll get awfully lost. — mcdoodle

Off topic:

I had greatly enjoyed Williamson's Knowledge and its Limits, OUP (2000). Though rather daunting in places, it doesn't suffer as much from the excessive narrowing down in focus that afflicts some later papers by him. Surely, the book format helps. But I am mostly indebted to John McDowell for the 'knowledge first' approach, expounded in a variety of papers including, most relevantly, Criteria, Defeasibility and Knowledge (usefully read in conjunction with John W. Cook, 'Human Beings', in Peter Winch ed., Studies in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein, Routledge & Kegan Paul, (1969), that McDowell is indebted to for the idea of indefeasible criteria). The best elucidation of the big picture afforded by McDowell's own account of the 'knowledge first' approach that I encountered is the second chapter -- 'Belief and the Second Person' -- in Sebastian Rödl, Self-Consciousness, HUP (2007). Lastly, I've bought recently Andrea Kern, Sources of Knowledge: On the Concept of a Rational Capacity for Knowledge, HUP (2017). I haven't read most of it yet, but it looks fantastic!

Which could just as well be meant legally. I'm just clarifying what you're asking about.

What is a strict versus non-strict liability in a non-legal sense? — Terrapin Station

The criterion for 'strictness' of liability is simple enough and just the same in the legal context as it is for my suggested extension to ordinary contexts. In both contexts, for cases of strict liability, Mens rea and good or ill will are irrelevant since the outcome (or involuntary bodily movement) was not consciously intended. It wasn't even a result of recklessness and it doesn't reflect on one's rational abilities or moral character and in any way. It's just like sneezing. It has nothing to do with the will.

Yes, I'm sympathetic to that camp, so it looks more like science subsuming elements of philosophy that were previously not available to science, rather than over reach. If for the sake of argument, I took the opposite position, I'm not sure I'd describe it as pedantry. For instance, I think that particle physicists, the notion that a physicist comes up with an interpretation of QM is overreach, as I think interpretation is exactly a philosophers job. I don't think of those physicists as being pedantic. — Reformed Nihilist

But the case I had in mind was not scientists essaying to do philosophy, which they are perfectly entitled to do, well or badly, of course (and some are actually pretty good; e.g. J. J. Gibson, Amartya Sen and George Ellis). Rather, I was talking about naturalizing paradigms within analytic philosophy. In that case, it is the methods of empirical sciences that encroach, not the scientists themselves.

Coming to think of it, most attempts to naturalize stuff (e.g. 'naturalize the mind', 'naturalize epistemology', etc.) in analytic philosophy may be best characterized as cases of scientific paradigms being over-extended and encroaching into properly philosophical areas of inquiry. Of course, proponents of the extension will view the resistance from people who object to their scientism as reactionary.

Could you give me a "for instance"? — Reformed Nihilist

Of course each example will reflect my own views since adherents of those programmes aren't going to agree to my offensive pigeon-holing of them. But it seems to me that, for instance, the post-Gettier attempts to analyse knowledge as belief + truth + (internal) justification + 'some complicated missing element' is some sort of a degenerative research programme in contemporary epistemology. A case of over-extension might be the subsumption of mental states and events, as well as actions, under a Humean metaphysics of event-causation rather than a metaphysics of substances and powers. But in that case I am unsure the over-extended paradigm has so much as a proper domain of application. I might try to think of a better example...

Having said that, I think there's value in general inquiry, and philosophy is often not guided by practical concerns, so I'm not sure that the normal ways of framing discussion work well in all areas of philosophy. — Reformed Nihilist

Yes, I agree that domains of inquiry in philosophy are quite different from scientific paradigms. There are paradigms in philosophy but there isn't much of a counterpart to 'normal science' and the different fields are much less separable, and of course much less 'practical', than the various 'special sciences' are. But there are clear analogues to degeneracy and to over-extension, and a common quest for understanding.

Two of his papers, in particular, reinforce some of the points that you were making. Regarding the role of salience in 'sound' informal reasoning: A Sensible Subjectivim. And regarding "the presentation of the issue and the applicability of the inference schema": Deliberation and Practical Reason. Both papers are reprinted in his Needs, Value, Truth, OUP, 1998.

Never read him, but he sounds like a pretty smart guy. — Srap Tasmaner

That's a clever deduction.

I can hear echoes of David Wiggins -- my second favorite contemporary philosopher -- in what you've just said. Is it an accident?

I have some thoughts on the matter, but I'd like to see what others have to say on the subject. — Reformed Nihilist

I look forward to hear what your ideas are.

My view is that pedantry, or the tendency to engage in it, is an intellectual vice that doesn't (usually) reflect badly on the intellectual character of the 'pedantic' individual as much as it does reflect on deficiencies of the theoretical paradigm that she occupies. To consider only the example of scientific paradigms, for sake of illustration: if the apparent hair-splitting is actually done in the context of the search for better foundations and/or solving persistent puzzles over the course of an episode of 'normal science' (in Kuhn's sense) then it's not a vice at all so long as the research programme remains productive (and the paradigm is valid). In that case we say that the researchers are being thorough and conscientious. If, on the other hand, the paradigm is pathological (as is the case with pseudosciences) or is in the process of being over-extended beyond its proper domain of application, then the arguments adduced for defending it in the face of anomalous results or reasonable theoretical objections will rightfully be deemed pedantic by outsiders who can clearly view the limitations of this paradigm.

We may thus rightfully view the pedantry of the practitioners of a degenerating research programme as a vice; but it is a circumstantial vice, as it were, that they manifest only so long as they remain captives of the deficient paradigm, and it only is a vice, also, if indeed the paradigm *is* deficient or is being over-extended.

First, let me clarify if you're talking about legal liabilities per se. — Terrapin Station

I suggested that the concept could straightforwardly be extended to non-legal contexts and provided the examples of accidentally bumping into someone or sneezing in the concert hall.

I think we'd probably agree that when Bill Clinton protested "It depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is, he was being pedantic. We could, however, also note that figuring out what the meaning of "is" is, is basically shorthand for the whole enterprise of metaphysics. — Reformed Nihilist

Which is precisely why some have alleged that Western Metaphysics is inherently phallogocentric ;-)

No it isn't. There are either different senses of responsibility being used, or it's the same sense and there are simply different penalties. — Terrapin Station

...and a different phenomenology, obviously. But the point is moot if you aren't conceiving of your own alleged sentiment of responsibility when you are sneezing as something akin as a strict liability. Are you? If not, are you also feeling responsible for your arm rising if someone else suddenly grabs it and raises it? If not, what's the difference? Is endogenous production of bodily movements sufficient, in your view, for your feeling responsible for them?

I wouldn't say that those are using the idea of responsibility differently, though. They apply different legal upshots to responsibility based on whether something was voluntary or not, but it doesn't seem to me that they're employing different senses of responsibility. — Terrapin Station

Whether you are conceiving of them as different ways to apply of the very same concept, or different senses of 'responsibility', is rather beyond the point. We were discussing the phenomenology of action. There is no special phenomenology that attaches to the unintended production of an effect that you are responsible for due to a context of strict liability. You may not even be aware that this effect is being (or will be) produced until long after the fact.

I wouldn't say there are different senses of responsibility that I'm using in this regard.

What different sorts of senses of responsibility are you using? — Terrapin Station

I already provided the example of strict liabilities, a legal concept that can rather straightforwardly be extended to cases of ordinary life, e.g. when we accidentally bump into someone and incur a felt obligation to apologize. Likewise if we would sneeze during a quiet moment at a public recital. Another sense attaches to the voluntary production of intended results when we act intentionally. I would have guessed that it's not quite in that sense that you mean that you feel responsible for sneezing.

You made the claim that people do not feel responsible, on a personal level, for events such as sneezing.

I said that that's not the case for everyone. I said that I feel responsible, on a personal level, for events such as sneezing.

That doesn't require an argument. It's simply a fact that I feel responsible for sneezing when I sneeze, and many other people I know would say the same thing.

So then you wanted to change it to whether responsibility for voluntary actions is the same as responsibility for involuntary events. Obviously it's not in a very trivial way: namely that voluntary actions are not the same thing as involuntary events. Of course, this has nothing to do with the claim you'd initially made, which was simply that people do not feel responsible, on a personal level, for events such as sneezing. — Terrapin Station

No. I didn't "want to change" my initial claim with another claim. You have not been paying attention. From the very start my point was to contrast the phenomenology of actions with the phenomenology of involuntary behaviors or of unintended bodily motions: things that merely happen to us. Here is what I had said again:

"We feel like there is a difference between the actions that we performed because we voluntarily chose to do them, and the events happening to us (and to our bodies) which we aren't responsible, on a personal level, for having brought them about (e.g. so called involuntary 'actions' such as sneezing, say)."

Also, I didn't ask you to justify your feeling that you are responsible for your sneezes. I asked you in what sense are you feeling responsible for them. That would help me to assess if the phenomenon of sneezing constitutes a counterexample for the general thesis that I meant to illustrate, or if, rather, they just aren't a good example and I ought rather to pick another one. It is difficult to imagine that the former rather than the latter might be the case unless you really mean to suggest that people feel responsible for all their consciously occurring bodily movements and reflexes regardless of their involuntariness.

And do you care if your observation is wrong? — Terrapin Station

I would care if you would supply an argument rather than just a bold claim that seems to rest on a conflation. If you won't care to explain in what sense you are holding yourself responsible for your own sneezes, then it is difficult for me to evaluate the philosophical import of this alleged counterexample to a prima facie quite uncontroversial observation.

So no concern with issuing claims about how people think about something when it's clear that some people don't think about it that way? — Terrapin Station

I hadn't anticipated that you would object to my observation that people hold themselves (and each other) responsible for their voluntary actions in a way that they don't for their involuntary behaviors. You suggest that I am unjustifiably projecting my own personal sentiments since you yourself feel responsible for your own sneezes. It may make sense for you to say this if you are conflating responsibility for intended actions with strict liabilities for their unintended consequences. Strict liabilities are a thing, for sure, but they don't normally figure in the phenomenology of action (let alone in the phenomenology of involuntary behaviors) until after their unintended consequences (if any) have occurred.

I don't see how that's not projection on your part. I feel as responsible for my sneezing, say, as I do for choosing to respond to you again in this thread. — Terrapin Station

Maybe if you would put a little more thought in your replies, and a little less anger, it wouldn't feel like you were sneezing. But if you would rather elect not to sneeze in my direction anymore, I have no objection to that either.

BBC discussion covers a lot of ground:

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00z5y9z — FreeEmotion

Thanks for that again! You always find interesting stuff. A discussion involving Helen Beebee, Simon Blackburn and Galen Strawson ought to be interesting. The three of them are very smart and articulate even though Strawson's hard deterministic view seems rather deeply misguided to me.

Beebee wrote an engaging introduction to the topic: Free Will: An Introduction, Palgrave Macmillan (2013). The very short conclusion of her book might be worth quoting in full:

"If you’ve managed to get this far, you now really know quite a lot about the contemporary debate about free will. More importantly, I hope you are now armed with the resources to decide – provisionally, of course! – what you think. Is free will compatible with determinism, and, if not, which kind of incompatibilist view is right? More importantly – or so I think – is it plausible to think that we actual human beings routinely act freely? And, if not, what consequences does that have for our responses to, and relationships with, other people, and for our conception of ourselves? My own (again, provisional) general view is, I think, clear enough; but, of course, you most certainly should not take my word for anything. One of the great joys of philosophy is that you don’t have to take anybody’s word for anything . Of course, that also poses a major challenge: When so much is up for dispute, it’s hard to know where to start. Overall, however, I think it’s more of a blessing than a curse. I hope you agree." -- Helen Beebee

On my view there's nothing particularly interesting about moral responsibility with respect to the free will issue, because there are no facts about moral responsibility. I find the free will issue interesting simply because of the ontological question--whether freedom is even possible, and then it's interesting with respect to just how will phenomena would be connected to ontological freedom. — Terrapin Station

It seems to me that even if one is an eliminativist, anti-realist or error-theorist regarding personal responsibility for one's own actions, it still figures as an inherent part, not just of our self-conception as rational agents, but also, quite prominently, in the phenomenology of practical deliberation, conscious choice and voluntary action. We feel like there is a difference between the actions that we performed because we voluntarily chose to do them, and the events happening to us (and to our bodies) which we aren't responsible, on a personal level, for having brought them about (e.g. so called involuntary 'actions' such as sneezing, say). One issue for the libertarian is to explain how this phenomenal distinction between deliberate choices or intentional actions, on the one hand, and things that merely happen to us, on the other hand, is to be explained such that intentional actions aren't merely occurring non-deterministically but rather constitute exercises of the agent's own abilities to chose to do them and thereafter remain in control of them. Such an account still has to contend with the problems of control, luck and intelligibility regardless of one's metaphysical stance regarding specifically moral responsibility, or so it seems to me.

This is a peculiar consideration, really, because if we don't have free will then whether or not I hold you responsible/punish you is also determined and not something I freely choose to do. — Michael

It's true that if determinism is true, and agents have no alternative possibilities (abilities) for doing otherwise than what they actually do (or judge), then Kant's formula appears to lead to a contradiction (or rather, to an imperative that can't be consistently obeyed in conjunction with the knowledge that determinism is true) when applied to the act of holding people responsible. So, there are three solutions to this. (1) Deny Kant's formula (and thus also PAP). (2) Deny determinism. And (3) provide a sensible conception of rational abilities (and thus of "can") such that PAP is consistent with determinism. (Kant seems to have endorsed (2) in the Critique of Practical Reason, saying that freedom is a postulate of practical reason; although the Third Antinomy in the Critique of Pure Reason might be read as a proposal for (3) accomplished through distinguishing the empirical character of causality from the intelligible character of causality.)

What is driving

At (6) they get a contradiction and from that we can prove every statement (can't we?)
But they keep proving for 5 more steps for no apparent reason. — Meta

There is a good reason actually. It's because (6) is a contradiction that the premise of the argument must be discharged: that is, negated. That's how reductio proofs work. Step (7) just is the negation of the premise that logically led to the contradiction (assuming the validity of all the deductive principles that had been used in the previous steps).

(On edit: this was of course a comment regarding the proof as presented in the SEP article linked in Meta's post.)