normative

Responsible agents accept blame for luck-infused decisions

A signature feature of free responsible agency is that agents recognize they will be held responsible whether or not they were in complete control of their decision-making — and they cannot be in complete control, since chance, pseudo-randomness, and chaos infect every moment; when a toss-up decision works out you tend to retrospectively decorate it as something you determined, but you are really taking responsibility for a bit of lucky randomness, which does not disable you for free will.

normativepending

Speaker

Dan Dennett

Evidence Quote

you're just taking responsibility for a little bit of lucky random coin flip in your decision process that does not in fact not only does that not disable you for free will

Source

39 - Free Will RevisitedMaking Sense with Sam Harris
Created: 6/14/2026, 2:25:04 AM

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