ABSTRACT
This chapter takes up two issues: the support which determinism can draw from scientific discovery, and possible determinist accounts of morality. Libertarians have mostly assumed that appeals to the phenomenology of decision are sufficient. Their belief in freewill, they are convinced, is in no sense at the mercy of conceivable empirical discovery, or liable to future disproof. A surface reason for the popularity of determinism with scientists is perhaps as follows: Science works in the realm of theoretical explanation. In this sphere, in so far as we achieve quantification we make an advance, however much we should resist the attempt to do so prematurely. The libertarian takes such an ontological grounding to be the essential element in responsibility; so that, however often and properly we extend responsibility to acts which are at least broadly determined by a man's character, its whole basis is that he has had the power by indeterminate choice to become what he now is.
