"Compatibilism is the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism.” Is that a coherent thesis? I have often asked people who've ostensibly espoused compatibilism to explain it, but to no avail, and even philosophical works attempting to defend this thesis generally leave me with at least as many questions as I had to begin with.
The concept of determinism--
Determinism - Wikipedia
Causal Determinism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
--does not entail multiple possible futures, such as where tomorrow I could and might choose black socks to wear or I could and might choose to wear multicolored argyle socks. In a world under sway of determinism, all of my pondering and deliberation over what socks to wear is an inexplicable waste of energy--I will wear whatever “natural law” determines (presumably has already determined) I will wear. As the definitions make clear, determinism cannot be true if in the universe there occurs even a single event that has not been fully determined by prior conditions.
Yet the brief Wikipedia article on compatibilism says that “compatibilists often define an instance of 'free will' as one in which the agent had freedom to act according to their own motivation.” But where and how does that “freedom” raise its head in determinism's relentless machinery of causes and effects? Exactly how can one distinguish between an agent acting freely according to his/her own motivations and a thing that is acting not according to its motivations? Is there some physiological difference?
The SEP article provides a couple of definitions of free will, which, to my mind, can be understood as defining distinct abilities. In its initial paragraph, we are told, “As a theory-neutral point of departure . . . free will can be defined as the unique ability of persons to exercise control over their conduct in the manner necessary for moral responsibility.” Subsequently, in the section “Freedom According to Classical Compatibilism,” a definition is given similar to the one in Wikipedia: “Free will . . . is the unencumbered ability of an agent to do what she wants.” Given that which color of socks I wear has zero moral gravitas, the first definition would seem to be irrelevant to these sorts of decisions. (Much of the article's discussion pertains to the issue of moral responsibility, and defenses of compatibilism are often largely defenses of moral responsibility in a deterministic world. In the context of discussion of free will and determinism, I find the issue of moral responsibility an unnecessary complication. Every day we make innumerable decisions, beyond choosing which socks to wear, that have no moral consequence.)
In any case, the same questions loom over the second SEP definition as left unanswered by the Wikipedia definition: How does an agent have an unencumbered ability to do what she wants in a deterministic world? Where does that “unencumbered ability to do what she wants” exist and how does it exert its effects in a deterministic world? Is there any observable difference between an agent acting with “unencumbered ability to do what she wants” and a robot that has no desires of any sort performing the same act? If not, what rescues compatibilism from vacuity?
The Wikipedia article even asserts the seemingly self-contradictory statement “A compatibilist can believe that a person can choose between many choices, but the choice is always determined by external factors.” But if every decision a person makes is determined by “external factors,” where's the person's freedom?
Defining “free will” as merely an expression of what one wants or is motivated to do also fails to address two related (or not necessarily two distinct) facts: (1) People often do what they don't want to do--many young men who were drafted and went to fight in the Vietnam war did not actually want to go. Few people truly want to write that check every year to the IRS. To claim that people go to war and pay their income taxes because they prefer doing so rather than face the consequences of not doing so nevertheless doesn't imply that they are acting according to their primary wants or motivations--they are still doing something they don't want to do. (2) People often have divided or conflicting desires and motivations--e.g., the desire to lose weight and the desire to eat a large pizza. To assert that it is the strongest or biggest desire that eventually wins only kicks the can down the road. Who decides which is the strongest or biggest desire? The person with those conflicting desires. Regardless of what “external factors” might influence a person in such a decision, it is ultimately the person who weighs those factors, and thereby decides which path to take--except in a deterministic world (in which case, again it is inexplicable why there is this distracting and energy-sucking internal struggle between eating a 5,000-calorie pizza and being fit). Thus defining “free will” as doing what one wants doesn't make it any more congenial to determinism.
Interestingly and oddly, the SEP article makes a decisive comment upfront, in the section “Compatibilism's Competitors,” noting the obvious fact that the “compatibilists' main adversaries are incompatibilists . . .” Incompatibilists, of course, come in two different flavors: libertarians (who deny that determinism is true, and hold that at least some people have free will) and hard determinists (who claim that determinism is true and that no one is free to choose their actions). The article then informs us, “In recent times, hard determinism has fallen out of fashion, largely because our best sciences suggest that determinism is probably false.” Indeed, there is no rational reason to believe that determinism is true, which leaves compatibilism equally unnecessary and irrelevant as hard determinism. We don't need a jiggery-pokery thesis that tries to reconcile free will with determinism just like we don't need one that tries to reconcile dinosaur fossil evidence with a 6,000-year-old earth.
But if you can defend compatibilism as a coherent idea, and answer the questions above, here is your opportunity.
The concept of determinism--
Determinism is the philosophical position that for every event there exist conditions that could cause no other event.
Determinism - Wikipedia
Determinism: The world is governed by (or is under the sway of) determinism if and only if, given a specified way things are at a time t, the way things go thereafter is fixed as a matter of natural law.
Causal Determinism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
--does not entail multiple possible futures, such as where tomorrow I could and might choose black socks to wear or I could and might choose to wear multicolored argyle socks. In a world under sway of determinism, all of my pondering and deliberation over what socks to wear is an inexplicable waste of energy--I will wear whatever “natural law” determines (presumably has already determined) I will wear. As the definitions make clear, determinism cannot be true if in the universe there occurs even a single event that has not been fully determined by prior conditions.
Yet the brief Wikipedia article on compatibilism says that “compatibilists often define an instance of 'free will' as one in which the agent had freedom to act according to their own motivation.” But where and how does that “freedom” raise its head in determinism's relentless machinery of causes and effects? Exactly how can one distinguish between an agent acting freely according to his/her own motivations and a thing that is acting not according to its motivations? Is there some physiological difference?
The SEP article provides a couple of definitions of free will, which, to my mind, can be understood as defining distinct abilities. In its initial paragraph, we are told, “As a theory-neutral point of departure . . . free will can be defined as the unique ability of persons to exercise control over their conduct in the manner necessary for moral responsibility.” Subsequently, in the section “Freedom According to Classical Compatibilism,” a definition is given similar to the one in Wikipedia: “Free will . . . is the unencumbered ability of an agent to do what she wants.” Given that which color of socks I wear has zero moral gravitas, the first definition would seem to be irrelevant to these sorts of decisions. (Much of the article's discussion pertains to the issue of moral responsibility, and defenses of compatibilism are often largely defenses of moral responsibility in a deterministic world. In the context of discussion of free will and determinism, I find the issue of moral responsibility an unnecessary complication. Every day we make innumerable decisions, beyond choosing which socks to wear, that have no moral consequence.)
In any case, the same questions loom over the second SEP definition as left unanswered by the Wikipedia definition: How does an agent have an unencumbered ability to do what she wants in a deterministic world? Where does that “unencumbered ability to do what she wants” exist and how does it exert its effects in a deterministic world? Is there any observable difference between an agent acting with “unencumbered ability to do what she wants” and a robot that has no desires of any sort performing the same act? If not, what rescues compatibilism from vacuity?
The Wikipedia article even asserts the seemingly self-contradictory statement “A compatibilist can believe that a person can choose between many choices, but the choice is always determined by external factors.” But if every decision a person makes is determined by “external factors,” where's the person's freedom?
Defining “free will” as merely an expression of what one wants or is motivated to do also fails to address two related (or not necessarily two distinct) facts: (1) People often do what they don't want to do--many young men who were drafted and went to fight in the Vietnam war did not actually want to go. Few people truly want to write that check every year to the IRS. To claim that people go to war and pay their income taxes because they prefer doing so rather than face the consequences of not doing so nevertheless doesn't imply that they are acting according to their primary wants or motivations--they are still doing something they don't want to do. (2) People often have divided or conflicting desires and motivations--e.g., the desire to lose weight and the desire to eat a large pizza. To assert that it is the strongest or biggest desire that eventually wins only kicks the can down the road. Who decides which is the strongest or biggest desire? The person with those conflicting desires. Regardless of what “external factors” might influence a person in such a decision, it is ultimately the person who weighs those factors, and thereby decides which path to take--except in a deterministic world (in which case, again it is inexplicable why there is this distracting and energy-sucking internal struggle between eating a 5,000-calorie pizza and being fit). Thus defining “free will” as doing what one wants doesn't make it any more congenial to determinism.
Interestingly and oddly, the SEP article makes a decisive comment upfront, in the section “Compatibilism's Competitors,” noting the obvious fact that the “compatibilists' main adversaries are incompatibilists . . .” Incompatibilists, of course, come in two different flavors: libertarians (who deny that determinism is true, and hold that at least some people have free will) and hard determinists (who claim that determinism is true and that no one is free to choose their actions). The article then informs us, “In recent times, hard determinism has fallen out of fashion, largely because our best sciences suggest that determinism is probably false.” Indeed, there is no rational reason to believe that determinism is true, which leaves compatibilism equally unnecessary and irrelevant as hard determinism. We don't need a jiggery-pokery thesis that tries to reconcile free will with determinism just like we don't need one that tries to reconcile dinosaur fossil evidence with a 6,000-year-old earth.
But if you can defend compatibilism as a coherent idea, and answer the questions above, here is your opportunity.
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