Dilemma of determinism

In philosophy the dilemma of determinism historically was posed as a moral quandary, the quandary posed by a belief that 'fate' determines everything, leaving no room for humans to make decisions about their conduct, and if that is so, no room for them to be held responsible for their conduct. A modern version of the quandary does not rely upon 'fate' as determining events, but rather the 'laws of nature' in some form or another and, as before, the 'laws of nature' determine our actions and we have the moral quandary of assigning moral responsibility.

Sometimes the dilemma is cast in a somewhat different manner, suggesting that 'fate' or the 'laws of nature' are not the sole agency for change, but that as an alternative at least some events might simply be random. That does not settle the dilemma, as humans are not responsible for random events any more than those controlled by outside agency. It does complicate the dilemma somewhat by suggesting a dichotomy of explanation, 'fate' or 'randomness', that introduces the added issue of an alternative to 'fate'. Possibly that addition was intended to account for the probabilistic nature of some laws of physics, but if so, it is a poorly phrased way of doing so. A better approach would be to say that the 'laws of nature' determine the statistical probabilities for the occurrence of events, which leaves the dilemma for morality intact without postulating a silly false dichotomy. Perhaps a broader (and more humble) view of the matter is to quote Fischer:

There are additional aspects of the 'dilemma of determinism' related to the psychological and social consequences of a belief in the force of the dilemma, for example, the possible paralysis of all purposive thought.

Horns of a dilemma
A common description of the 'dilemma of determinism' is as a forced choice between two alternatives referred to as the 'horns' of a dilemma. This formulation has a long past, and is used in Russell's discussion of David Hume, where he refers to Hume's formulation in terms of a 'false dilemma'. The 'horns of a dilemma' description has modern adherents as well: Fischer also uses the 'horns of a dilemma' description, calling the two horns the 'deterministic' horn and the 'indeterministic' horn. The deterministic horn is the belief that "causal determinism implies that we never have the freedom to do other than we actually do". The indeterministic horn is the belief that "if causal indeterminism is true, then an agent's choices are--in a sense to be specified--purely a matter of luck." But what Fischer actually discusses is whether these two 'horns' preclude attribution of responsibility to an agent, regardless of one's choice between them. In other words, the interest in the 'horns' is not which horn to choose (which doesn't matter a whit), but the dilemma is that whichever horn is chosen it appears we must deny agent responsibility. Fischer goes on to suggest that the argument against allowance of agency has a similar structure regardless of which 'horn' is selected. There is no dilemma involved in choosing between them, but only in choosing either one, no matter which.

Moral responsibility
The older formulation in terms of 'fate' predates the Stoics and their major apologist Chrysippus. In a critique of Chrysippus, Plutarch proposed that responsibility implied humans had a possible influence over events, and the 'possible' necessarily must be able to occur, and cannot be 'possible' if fate denies its occurrence. The conclusion is that if 'fate' exists, then at least it is not invincible. The resolution of the dilemma by a division of events into the fated and the unfated persists to this day.

Such a division was approached in the 1780's by Immanuel Kant, who had high confidence in the authority of intuition, and suggested that moral matters were to be analyzed as lying outside the rules governing material objects. "There is a sharp difference between moral judgments and judgments of fact...Moral judgments ... must be a priori judgments." Evidently, the dilemma of determinism is avoided under these conditions, as our moral decision processes lie outside the reach of everyday causality. "Unfortunately, not many philosophers..would be prepared today to follow Kant's way out of the dilemma of determinism."

In an address titled The dilemma of determinism in 1884, William James suggested that "A common opinion prevails that the juice has ages ago been pressed out of the free‐will controversy". James formulated the implications of the 'dilemma of determinism' for moral responsibility like this:
 * 1. Either causal determinism is true, or it is false.
 * 2. If it is true, then I am compelled to act as I do, and am not morally responsible for my actions.
 * 3. If it is false, then how I act is random, and I am again not morally responsible for my acts.

Therefore,
 * 4. I am not morally responsible for my actions.

This syllogism is sometimes called the classical formulation of the free will problem, and sometimes the standard argument against free will.

James went on to argue that this syllogism argues against acceptance of the dilemma, because moral responsibility is a fact of life that cannot be abandoned. Just as did Plutarch, James posited that events fall into two groups: the causally determined and the rest.

In short, if forced in some instance to choose between determinism and morality, James would settle the dilemma by sacrificing the first.

Some modern thinkers have come to share Kant's view that moral judgments lie outside the reach of determinism, so the dilemma of determinism does not apply to them. Steven Pinker has made such a division: A similar division between the scientific or 'theoretical' explanation of the behavior of objects and the arena of human decision is proposed by Bok:

In effect, these explanations separate moral responsibility and the intuitive experience of free will from the domain of the 'laws of nature'. These philosophers are attacking a position that includes what is sometimes called the mind-brain identity hypothesis, the idea that states and processes of the mind are identical to states and processes of the brain. Such explanations are not universally accepted.

There are philosophers that attempt to leave human decision making within the realm of scientific explanation, but claim that moral responsibility does not actually require the ability to enforce our decisions, which remain determined by natural law. One such position was expressed by Zeno of Citium:

There exist many subtle and complicated arguments to reconcile responsibility while asserting the claims of science, and all are debated. They depend upon elaborate refinements in definitions and reinterpretations of subjective experience. Still others simply deny that humans have any capacity to make decisions at all, and the impression that we can is simply illusory.