A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive

Answers

• Q06AUTOMATON

  Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?

  Yes. causal determination does not remove responsibility. Human actions follow from character and circumstances, but 'necessity' is a misleading word; a person who can shape his own character and resist his habits is morally free.

  A person feels morally free who feels that his habits or his temptations are not his masters, but he theirs; who, even in yielding to them, knows that he could resist; that were he desirous of altogether throwing them off, there would not be required for that purpose a stronger desire than he knows himself to be capable of feeling. It is of course necessary, to render our consciousness of freedom complete, that we should have succeeded in making our character all we have hitherto attempted to make it; for if we have wished and not attained, we have, to that extent, not power over our own character; we are not free. Or at least, we must feel that our wish, if not strong enough to alter our character, is strong enough to conquer our character when the two are brought into conflict in any particular case of conduct. And hence it is said with truth, that none but a person of confirmed virtue is completely free. The application of so improper a term as Necessity to the doctrine of cause and effect in the matter of human character, seems to me one of the most signal instances in philosophy of the abuse of terms, and its practical consequences one of the most striking examples of the power of language over our associations.

  Book VI, ch. II, 'Of Liberty and Necessity' · Wikisource Book VI page and UT Austin transcription of ch. II found; search excerpt quotes Mill calling 'Necessity' an abuse of terms.