Will and Responsibility

On the model being presented here, Experience is cumulative, so that one is always the accumulation of what one has done. Furthermore, specific actions are always constituted by a variable combination of personal creativity and the weight of circumstances. So, not merely is this model inhospitable to any easy quantification of 'responsibility', that concept is extrinsic to it, and, ultimately, is arbitrary, as well. Its synonymy with 'answerable' expresses the impersonality of the source of the notion of 'responsible', as well as its usual equivalence to 'blameable'. In turn, the prevalent notion of 'blameworthiness' suppresses three arbitrary premises--the Atomism of actions, the absolutism of 'Evil', and the inattributability of 'Evil' to an omnipotent Deity. That is, the notion presupposes the clear determinability of some human as the unique sufficient cause of an event that is unequivocally harmful to someone. How the implicit exoneration of an omnipotent Deity from evil-doing conditions the standard 'free will vs. determinism' debate has already been discussed--it necessitates the blameworthiness of humans for any ill or misfortune. So, to deny that 'responsibility' is extrinsic to personal Experience is not to reject the potential value and legitimacy of some jurisprudential measures. It is, rather, to challenge the a priori equivalence of 'will' and 'responsibility' that many influential systems raise to a metaphysical principle.