The Displacement Fallacy: Resolution Theory as an Interface Layer for Agency, Responsibility, and Normativity

Entry point: Free Will Without Metaphysical Magic (++++ ≠ +++=) Many modern debates treat causal explanation as if it displaces responsibility: as neuroscience, psychology, incentives, trauma, and “systems” explain behaviour more fully, agency is assumed to shrink. This paper identifies that inference as the Displacement Fallacy. Resolution Theory blocks it by separating verdict-types. Explanation answers how a decision came about; attribution answers where deliberation closed into action—where evaluation resolved into commitment within an integrated agent or sponsoring chain. Explanation can become arbitrarily detailed without ever summing into authorship, because authorship is not a causal remainder but a closure verdict in a control architecture. Fixing this interface dissolves familiar confusions across free will, addiction and compulsion, institutional failure, and AI ethics: bypass remains rare, most impairment is distortion with mitigation, and “the system did it” stops functioning as a responsibility solvent. The result is a responsibility framework stable under determinism that scales from persons to institutions and artificial systems.