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. Because free will is seen as a necessary prerequisite for moral responsibility, compatibilism is often 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.
History
Compatibilism was mentioned and championed by the ancient Stoics and some medieval scholastics. More specifically, scholastics like Thomas Aquinas and later Thomists (such as Domingo Báñez) are often interpreted as holding that human action can be free, even though an agent in some strong sense could not do otherwise than what they did. Whereas Aquinas is often interpreted to maintain rational compatibilism (i.e., an action can be determined by rational cognition and yet free), later Thomists, such as Báñez, develop a sophisticated theory of theological determinism, according to which actions of free agents, despite being free, are, on a higher level, determined by infallible divine decrees manifested in the form of "physical premotion" (praemotio physica), a deterministic intervention of God into the will of a free agent required to reduce the will from potency to act. A strong incompatibilist view of freedom was, on the other hand, developed in the Franciscan tradition, especially by Duns Scotus, and later upheld and further developed by Jesuits, especially Luis de Molina and Francisco Suárez. In the early modern era, compatibilism was maintained by Enlightenment philosophers (such as David Hume and Thomas Hobbes).
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 counterexamples to argue against incompatibilism, and developed a positive account of compatibilist free will based on higher-order volitions. Other "new compatibilists" include Gary Watson, Susan R. Wolf, P. F. Strawson, and R. Jay Wallace. 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.
Defining free will
Compatibilists often define an instance of "free will" as one in which the agent had the freedom to act according to their own motivation. That is, the agent was not coerced or restrained. Arthur Schopenhauer famously said: "Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills." In other words, although an agent may often be free to act according to a motive, the nature of that motive is determined. This definition of free will does not rely on the truth or falsity of causal determinism. This view also makes free will close to autonomy, the ability to live according to one's own rules, as opposed to being submitted to external domination.
Alternatives as imaginary
Some compatibilists hold both causal determinism (all effects have causes) and logical determinism (the future is already determined) to be true. Thus statements about the future (e.g., "it will rain tomorrow") are either true or false when spoken today. This compatibilist free will should not be understood as the ability to choose differently in an identical situation. A compatibilist may believe that a person can decide between several choices, but the choice is always determined by external factors. If the compatibilist says "I may visit tomorrow, or I may not", he is saying that he does not know what he will choose—whether he will choose to follow the subconscious urge to go or not.
Non-naturalism
Alternatives to strictly naturalist physics, such as mind–body dualism positing a mind or soul existing apart from one's body while perceiving, thinking, choosing freely, and as a result acting independently on the body, include both traditional religious metaphysics and less common newer compatibilist concepts. Also consistent with both autonomy and Darwinism, they allow for free personal agency based on practical reasons within the laws of physics. While less popular among 21st-century philosophers, non-naturalist compatibilism is present in most if not almost all religions.
Criticism
A prominent criticism of compatibilism is Peter van Inwagen's consequence argument.
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.Immanuel Kant called it a "wretched subterfuge" and "word jugglery". 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. 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.
See also
- Libertarianism (metaphysics)
- Semicompatibilism
References
- Coates, D. Justin; McKenna, Michael (February 25, 2015). "Compatibilism". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Archived from the original on June 3, 2024. Retrieved May 10, 2016.
- Weinberg, Steven (2011-02-10). "The Universes We Still Don't Know". The New York Review of Books. Vol. 58, no. 2. ISSN 0028-7504. Retrieved 2024-06-10.
- Podgorski, Daniel (October 16, 2015). "Free Will Twice Defined: On the Linguistic Conflict of Compatibilism and Incompatibilism". The Gemsbok. Archived from the original on March 8, 2016. Retrieved March 7, 2016.
- McKenna, Michael and Coates, D. Justin, "Compatibilism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).
- Locke, John (1690). The Second Treatise of Civil Government.
- "Reid on moral liberty" Archived 2021-06-03 at the Wayback Machine. 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.
- Ricardo Salles, "Compatibilism: Stoic and modern." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 83.1 (2001): 1–23.
- Michael McKenna: "Compatibilism". //The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy//. Edward N. Zalta (ed.). 2009.
- Kane, Robert (2005). A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will. Oxford University Press. p. 93. ISBN 978-0-19-514970-8.
- Kane 2005, p. 83.
- Kane 2005, p. 94.
- Kane 2005, pp. 98, 101, 107, 109.
- Frithjof Bergmann (1977). On Being Free. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctvpj760s. ISBN 978-0-268-15889-7. JSTOR j.ctvpj760s.
- Bourget, David; Chalmers, David J. (2023). "Philosophers on Philosophy: The 2020 PhilPapers Survey" (PDF). Philosophers' Imprint. 23 (1). University of Michigan Library. doi:10.3998/phimp.2109. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2024-02-08. Retrieved 2024-02-08.
- Schopenhauer, Arthur (1945). "On the Freedom of the Will". The Philosophy of American History: The Historical Field Theory. Translated by Morris Zucker. p. 531.
- Harry G. Frankfurt (1969). "Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility", Journal of Philosophy 66 (3):829–839.
- Ridge, Michael (3 February 2014). "Moral Non-Naturalism". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Archived from the original on 24 February 2024. Retrieved 3 June 2019.
- Lemos, John (2002). "Evolution and Free Will: A Defense of Darwinian Non–naturalism". Metaphilosophy. 33 (4): 468–482. doi:10.1111/1467-9973.00240. ISSN 1467-9973.
- Nida-Rümelin, Julian (1 January 2019). "The Reasons Account of Free Will: A Libertarian-Compatibilist Hybrid". Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie. 105 (1): 3–10. doi:10.25162/arsp-2019-0001. S2CID 155641763.
- Stump, Eleonore (1996). "Libertarian Freedom and the Principle of Alternative Possibilities". In Howard-Snyder, Daniel; Jordan, Jeff (eds.). Faith, Freedom, and Rationality. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. pp. 73–88.
- Danko D. Georgiev (2021). "Quantum propensities in the brain cortex and free will". Biosystems. 208: 104474. arXiv:2107.06572. Bibcode:2021BiSys.20804474G. doi:10.1016/j.biosystems.2021.104474. PMID 34242745. S2CID 235785726.
Free will is the capacity of conscious agents to choose a future course of action among several available physical alternatives.
- James, William. 1884 "The Dilemma of Determinism", Unitarian Review, September 1884. Reprinted in The Will to Believe, Dover, 1956, p. 149.
- 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, Immanuel 1781 (1949). The Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Max Mueller, p. 448.
External links
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Compatibilism
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 Because free will is seen as a necessary prerequisite for moral responsibility compatibilism is often 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 HistoryCompatibilism was mentioned and championed by the ancient Stoics and some medieval scholastics More specifically scholastics like Thomas Aquinas and later Thomists such as Domingo Banez are often interpreted as holding that human action can be free even though an agent in some strong sense could not do otherwise than what they did Whereas Aquinas is often interpreted to maintain rational compatibilism i e an action can be determined by rational cognition and yet free later Thomists such as Banez develop a sophisticated theory of theological determinism according to which actions of free agents despite being free are on a higher level determined by infallible divine decrees manifested in the form of physical premotion praemotio physica a deterministic intervention of God into the will of a free agent required to reduce the will from potency to act A strong incompatibilist view of freedom was on the other hand developed in the Franciscan tradition especially by Duns Scotus and later upheld and further developed by Jesuits especially Luis de Molina and Francisco Suarez In the early modern era compatibilism was maintained by Enlightenment philosophers such as David Hume and Thomas Hobbes 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 counterexamples to argue against incompatibilism and developed a positive account of compatibilist free will based on higher order volitions Other new compatibilists include Gary Watson Susan R Wolf P F Strawson and R Jay Wallace 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 Defining free willArthur Schopenhauer Compatibilists often define an instance of free will as one in which the agent had the freedom to act according to their own motivation That is the agent was not coerced or restrained Arthur Schopenhauer famously said Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills In other words although an agent may often be free to act according to a motive the nature of that motive is determined This definition of free will does not rely on the truth or falsity of causal determinism This view also makes free will close to autonomy the ability to live according to one s own rules as opposed to being submitted to external domination Alternatives as imaginary Schrodinger s door Saying there may be a person behind that door merely expresses ignorance about the one determined reality Some compatibilists hold both causal determinism all effects have causes and logical determinism the future is already determined to be true Thus statements about the future e g it will rain tomorrow are either true or false when spoken today This compatibilist free will should not be understood as the ability to choose differently in an identical situation A compatibilist may believe that a person can decide between several choices but the choice is always determined by external factors If the compatibilist says I may visit tomorrow or I may not he is saying that he does not know what he will choose whether he will choose to follow the subconscious urge to go or not Non naturalism Alternatives to strictly naturalist physics such as mind body dualism positing a mind or soul existing apart from one s body while perceiving thinking choosing freely and as a result acting independently on the body include both traditional religious metaphysics and less common newer compatibilist concepts Also consistent with both autonomy and Darwinism they allow for free personal agency based on practical reasons within the laws of physics While less popular among 21st century philosophers non naturalist compatibilism is present in most if not almost all religions CriticismCompatibilism has much in common with hard determinism including moral systems and a belief in determinism itself A prominent criticism of compatibilism is Peter van Inwagen s consequence argument 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 Immanuel Kant called it a wretched subterfuge and word jugglery 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 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 See alsoLibertarianism metaphysics SemicompatibilismReferencesCoates D Justin McKenna Michael February 25 2015 Compatibilism Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Archived from the original on June 3 2024 Retrieved May 10 2016 Weinberg Steven 2011 02 10 The Universes We Still Don t Know The New York Review of Books Vol 58 no 2 ISSN 0028 7504 Retrieved 2024 06 10 Podgorski Daniel October 16 2015 Free Will Twice Defined On the Linguistic Conflict of Compatibilism and Incompatibilism The Gemsbok Archived from the original on March 8 2016 Retrieved March 7 2016 McKenna Michael and Coates D Justin Compatibilism The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Winter 2019 Edition Edward N Zalta ed Locke John 1690 The Second Treatise of Civil Government Reid on moral liberty Archived 2021 06 03 at the Wayback Machine 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 Ricardo Salles Compatibilism Stoic and modern Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie 83 1 2001 1 23 Michael McKenna Compatibilism The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Edward N Zalta ed 2009 Kane Robert 2005 A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will Oxford University Press p 93 ISBN 978 0 19 514970 8 Kane 2005 p 83 Kane 2005 p 94 Kane 2005 pp 98 101 107 109 Frithjof Bergmann 1977 On Being Free Notre Dame Indiana University of Notre Dame Press doi 10 2307 j ctvpj760s ISBN 978 0 268 15889 7 JSTOR j ctvpj760s Bourget David Chalmers David J 2023 Philosophers on Philosophy The 2020 PhilPapers Survey PDF Philosophers Imprint 23 1 University of Michigan Library doi 10 3998 phimp 2109 Archived PDF from the original on 2024 02 08 Retrieved 2024 02 08 Schopenhauer Arthur 1945 On the Freedom of the Will The Philosophy of American History The Historical Field Theory Translated by Morris Zucker p 531 Harry G Frankfurt 1969 Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility Journal of Philosophy 66 3 829 839 Ridge Michael 3 February 2014 Moral Non Naturalism The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Metaphysics Research Lab Stanford University Archived from the original on 24 February 2024 Retrieved 3 June 2019 Lemos John 2002 Evolution and Free Will A Defense of Darwinian Non naturalism Metaphilosophy 33 4 468 482 doi 10 1111 1467 9973 00240 ISSN 1467 9973 Nida Rumelin Julian 1 January 2019 The Reasons Account of Free Will A Libertarian Compatibilist Hybrid Archiv fur Rechts und Sozialphilosophie 105 1 3 10 doi 10 25162 arsp 2019 0001 S2CID 155641763 Stump Eleonore 1996 Libertarian Freedom and the Principle of Alternative Possibilities In Howard Snyder Daniel Jordan Jeff eds Faith Freedom and Rationality Lanham MD Rowman and Littlefield pp 73 88 Danko D Georgiev 2021 Quantum propensities in the brain cortex and free will Biosystems 208 104474 arXiv 2107 06572 Bibcode 2021BiSys 20804474G doi 10 1016 j biosystems 2021 104474 PMID 34242745 S2CID 235785726 Free will is the capacity of conscious agents to choose a future course of action among several available physical alternatives James William 1884 The Dilemma of Determinism Unitarian Review September 1884 Reprinted in The Will to Believe Dover 1956 p 149 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 Immanuel 1781 1949 The Critique of Pure Reason trans Max Mueller p 448 External linksStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Compatibilism
