Product Code Database
Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are mutually compatible and that it is possible to believe in both without being logically inconsistent. As Steven Weinberg puts it: "I would say that free will is nothing but our conscious experience of deciding what to do, which I know I am experiencing as I write this review, and this experience is not invalidated by the reflection that physical laws made it inevitable that I would want to make these decisions." The opposing belief, that the thesis of determinism is logically incompatible with the classical thesis of free will, is known as "incompatibilism".
Compatibilists believe that freedom can be present or absent in situations for reasons that have nothing to do with metaphysics. In other words, that causal determinism does not exclude the truth of possible future outcomes.McKenna, Michael and Coates, D. Justin, "Compatibilism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Because free will is often seen as a necessary prerequisite for moral responsibility, compatibilism is commonly used to support compatibility between moral responsibility and determinism.
Similarly, political liberty is a non-metaphysical concept. Statements of political liberty, such as the United States Bill of Rights, assume moral liberty: the ability to choose to do otherwise than what one does. "Reid on moral liberty" . The Monist, Vol. 70, No. 4, "Thomas Reid and His Contemporaries" (October 1987), pp. 442–452. Published by Oxford University Press Stable. Accessed: 06-12-2019.
During the 20th century, compatibilists presented novel arguments that differed from the classical arguments of Hume, Hobbes, and John Stuart Mill. Importantly, Harry Frankfurt popularized what are now known as Frankfurt cases to argue against incompatibilism,Kane 2005, p. 83. and developed a positive account of compatibilist free will based on higher-order volitions.Kane 2005, p. 94. Other "new compatibilists" include Gary Watson, Susan R. Wolf, P. F. Strawson, and R. Jay Wallace.Kane 2005, pp. 98, 101, 107, 109. Contemporary compatibilists range from the philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett, particularly in his works Elbow Room (1984) and Freedom Evolves (2003), to the existentialist philosopher Frithjof Bergmann. Perhaps the most renowned contemporary defender of compatibilism is John Martin Fischer.
A 2020 survey found that 59% of English-publishing philosophers accept or lean towards compatibilism.
Critics of compatibilism often focus on the definitions of free will: incompatibilists may agree that the compatibilists are showing something to be compatible with determinism, but they think that this something ought not to be called "free will". Incompatibilists might accept the "freedom to act" as a necessary criterion for free will, but doubt that it is sufficient. The incompatibilists believe that free will refers to genuine (i.e., absolute, ultimate, physical) alternate possibilities for beliefs, desires, or actions, rather than merely counterfactual ones.
The direct predecessor to compatibilism was soft determinism (a term coined by William James, which he used pejoratively). Soft determinism is the view that we (ordinary humans) have free will and determinism is true. (Compatibilists, by contrast, take no stand on the truth-value of determinism.) James accused the soft determinists of creating a "quagmire of evasion" by stealing the name of freedom to mask their underlying determinism.James, William. 1884 "The Dilemma of Determinism", Unitarian Review, September 1884. Reprinted in The Will to Believe, Dover, 1956, p. 149. Immanuel Kant called it a "wretched subterfuge" and "word jugglery".Kant, Immanuel 1788 (1952). The Critique of Practical Reason, in Great Books of the Western World, vol. 42, Kant, University of Chicago, p. 332. Kant's argument turns on the view that, while all empirical phenomena must result from determining causes, human thought introduces something seemingly not found elsewhere in nature—the ability to conceive of the world in terms of how it ought to be, or how it might otherwise be. For Kant, subjective reasoning is necessarily distinct from how the world is empirically. Because of its capacity to distinguish is from ought, reasoning can "spontaneously" originate new events without being itself determined by what already exists.Kant, Immanuel 1781 (1949). The Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Max Mueller, p. 448. It is on this basis that Kant argues against a version of compatibilism in which, for instance, the actions of the criminal are comprehended as a blend of determining forces and free choice, which Kant regards as misusing the word free. Kant proposes that taking the compatibilist view involves denying the distinctly subjective capacity to re-think an intended course of action in terms of what ought to happen.
|
|
