Determinism renders moral responsibility impossible

I interpret the resolution to be saying there's a contradiction between these two claims:1. Our actions are determined.2. We are morally responsible for our actions.If these two claims contradict one another, it follows that:3. If our actions are determined, then we cannot be morally responsible for them.And the contrapositive to that claim is that:4. If we are morally responsible for our actions, then our actions are not determined.Notice that this debate can proceed without ever addressing the question of whether we actually are, in fact, determined or whether we actually are, in fact, morally responsible for our actions. After all, we just want to know if the two claims are consistent, i.e. whether it's possible to be morally responsible for our actions if those actions are determined.Pro spent the majority of his opening statement defending hard determinism. But as we've seen, whether any kind of determinism is true or not is irrelevant to the debate. Suppose, hypothetically, that I was able to convince you that people have free will by Pro's definition. We would still be left wondering whether determinism would render moral responsiblity impossible. Whether we actually have free will or not tells us nothing about whether the resolution is true. So Pro's defense of determinism is irrelevent to this debate.But not everything Pro said was irrelevant. He did make a few claims that, if true, would be directly relevant to the debate. He said:"The foundation of moral responsibility is that if you are free to act and choose your action, you are responsible for that action. . ."and:". . .if we do not control our movements, how can we be responsible for them? Moral responsibility relies on our accountability for our own actions, but accountability simply does not appear to be present."Since "responsibility" and "accountability" are roughly equivalent words, Pro is simply asserting the resolution. He isn't even making an argument here. Since there is no argument, there's really nothing for me to respond to. I could, if I chose, go on to disprove his assertions, but since the burden of proof is on him, not me, it is unnecessary for me to do so. My only burden is to refute his arguments, but since he hasn't offered an argument yet, there's nothing for me to refute.Nevertheless, just to keep this debate interesting, I will attempt to demonstrate that we can be morally responsibie for our actions even if our actions are determined. But before I do that, I want to explain what Pro would need to accomlish in order to carry his burden of proof.Pro needs to show that statements 1 and 2 above are contradictory. As Alvin Plantinga pointed out in his book, God, Freedom, and Evil, there are three different ways that a set of propositions can be contradictory--explicitly, formally, and implicitly.[1]An explicit contradiction is when one claim is the negation of another claim. 1 and 2 are clearly not explicitly contradictory.A formal contradiction is when you have a set of propositions from which it is possible to deduce an explicit contradiction by the logical laws of inference. Take this set for instance:5. All men are mortal6. Socrates is a man.7. Socrates is not mortal.None of these statements explicitly contradict the others. However, one can deduce from 5 and 6 that:8. Socrates is mortal.And since 8 explicitly contradicts 7, the original set is formally contradictory.But there is no law of inference that allows you to deduce anything at all from 1 and 2 alone, so the original set is not formally contradictory either.Since 1 and 2 are neither exlicitly nor formally contradictory, the only way they could contradict at all is if they are implicitly contradictory. A set of propositions is implicitly contradictory if there is a necessarily true proposition that when added to the set renders the set formally contradictory. Now, if Pro wants to show that 1 and 2 are implicitly contradictory, he needs to tell us what that necessarily true proposition is. I could make some guesses if I wanted to, but then I'd run the risk of being accused of making a strawman argument since I'd inevitably throw out some possibilities that Pro would not endorse. So I'll leave it to Pro to supply the necessary proposition.I the meantime, let me go ahead and explain why I think moral responsibility is possible on determinism.What Pro described is called hard determinism. It's the view that our every action is determined by non-rational cause and effect according to the laws of nature. But his definition of determinism does not limit us to only material causes. His definition says that "every state that currently exists in the universe is the result of previous states." But those previous states need not refer merely to the activity of atoms, molecules, and subatomic particles. They could refer to mental states, such as desires, motives, inclinations, biases, preferences, etc. That makes a big difference, which I'll demonstrate presently.Pro and I would agree that if some physical state is such that it determines your action, then your action is not your fault. So, for example, if you have an involuntary reflex that causes your arm to swing up and strike your neighbor, you're not morally responsible for it. If some state has so much influence over your action that your action could not be otherwise renders your morally responsibility null and void, then any state that so much as influences your action in some degree that falls short of determining it must diminish your moral responsibility by the same factor. For example, let's say that on your best day, you can lift 300 lbs. Obviously, you can't be blamed for your inability to lift 301 lbs. But suppose you were asked to lift 299 lbs. While it may be possible for you to do so, you would be less blameable for your failure than you would be if you were asked to lift only 20 lbs. So, moral responsibilty is proportional to one's physical ability to do otherwise. The more difficult it is for somebody to do their duty, the less blameworthy they are, and if the difficulty is such that it is beyond their ability, then they are not morally responsible at all.But suppose we treated mental states, like desire and bias, in the same way that we treat physical difficulty. It would follow that the deeper your hatred for somebody, the less blameworthy you are for harming them. The deeper your love for somebody, the less praiseworthy you are for helping them. The deeper your desire to do good, the less praiseworthy you would be for doing good, and the deeper your desire to do harm, the less blameworthy you would be for doing harm. After all, if your desire to do good or harm was so strong that you couldn't help but give in to it, then you would be worthy of neither praise nor blame.But that is exactly opposite to our common notions about moral responsibility. We are morally responsible for actions to the degree that our actions are determined by our prior motives, desire, and inclinations. The reason is because we can only be responsible for our actions if we do them on purpose, and to perform an action on purpose is to act out of a prior disposition. If I'm doing exactly what I want, then that is the very defintion of being in control of my action. The more hand my own desire plays in bringing about my action, the more that action is my own and under my control and will. It follows that we are most responsible for our actions when our actions are completely determined by our prior mental states.The opposite extreme of our actions being determined by our prior mental states is that our prior mental states have no influence whatsoever on our actions. But if that were the case, then our actions would be indistinguishable from accidents. We are obviously not responsible for things we do on accident, so the only way we can be responsible for our actions is to the degree that our prior mental states influence them.Note:1. Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil, p. 12ff