In what sense are we responsible for our actions?

An interesting aspect of the free will controversy has to do with the kind of moral responsibility that is at stake. Is it the kind of moral responsibility that can justify retribution, or maybe even eternal retribution? Or is it something else, such as knowing who to motivate through reward or punishment. I first encountered the free will problem in the context of debates of Calvinism. Calvinists and their opponents agree concerning the sense in which we are responsible for our actions--if someone goes to hell because of sin, they deserve to go to hell because of sin. So, in that context, you have to ask whether being predestined by God to, say, commit murder renders you still responsible, sub specie aeternitatis, for committing that murder. And it seemed to me that if determinism were true, and circumstances, (such as a divine eternal decree) rendered it impossible for me to do otherwise from commit a murder, I am not responsible for that murder, but that whoever issued that eternal decree, as the ultimate source of my action, would be.

Consider the fact that "the devil made me do it" is considered an almost comic example of a lame excuse. The reason we are usually given for this is the idea that the devil tempts us, but we have the free will to resist the devil, in which case the devil will flee. This seems to assume that we have libertarian free will. No one made you do anything.

Later, when I wrote my master's thesis on free will, I realized that many compatibilists were secularists, and who were not ascribing responsibility to agents in the same sense that Christians were. They were asking questions, perhaps, of the utility of punishment in ascribing moral responsibility. And here, I thought, their "compatibilist" position was at least consistent. They weren't saying that people were responsible for their actions in some "last judgment" sense, they were saying that we need to know who to motivate and how when we punish, and that the question of ultimate moral responsibility need not be asked.

However, weakening the sense of moral responsibility can have some potentially dangerous consequences that Lewis notes in his famous essay on the humanitarian theory of punishment. What happens if we say that what someone deserves doesn't matter, and what we must do is simply do what will protect society, deter crime, or rehabilitate the criminal. Will this give us the license to reform criminals any way we see fit, regardless of their freedom and dignity? Do we have the right to brainwash people into not committing crimes? Do we have the right to "fix" people we might think will commit crimes for the benefit of society? Does the abandonment of free will lead to fundamental changes in who we think we are?

This is related to the essay "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment."