Scenario one:

A man who has Tourette's is holding a knife while cutting something in the kitchen. He has been taking medication that helps with his uncontrollable spasms, but the doctors have warned him that the medication is not fool-proof.

His wife is also in the kitchen, helping him prepare dinner. As the man walks over to the sink to wash off the knife, the arm holding the knife begins to flail wildly, resulting in the man accidently stabbing his wife. She bleeds to death, and dies.

Scenario two:

A man who has been raised to react violently to contests of his manhood, and also happens to have a genetic predisposition to having a short fuse- is also chopping something for dinner, in the kitchen, with his wife.

The wife decides that now would be as good a time as any to tell her husband that she has been cheating on him with his best friend. Infuriated, the man loses his temper and stabs his wife, who also bleeds to death.

My question to you is simple: do you think both men are inequally responsible for their actions? Explain your reasoning.

My answer is as follows:

They aren't equally responsible. In scenario one, the man did not make a choice of his own volition- that is, of his own free will. His stabbing his wife was out of his control.

His Tourette's impeded on his ability to freely act in that moment. It's not just that his Tourette's influenced him to have a greater probability of choosing to act in a particular way; it's that his Tourette's compromised his free will. What I mean by this is that his Tourette's syndrome made him perform an act that wasn't of his own volition. It was not the man's unimpeded choice to kill his wife. He did not freely act of his own motivation. He loved her, but the sickness compromised his will, overrode it, and resulted in his wife being stabbed.

In scenario two, the man DID make a choice of his own volition- that is, of his own free will. Nothing was impeding his ability to freely act according to his own motivation, including his genetic predisposition to being hot-headed, and his environmental upbringing that played a part in increasing the probability of his violently reacting to contests of his manhood; what we CAN say is that the man did have a greater probability of choosing to [re]act in one particular way over another; but this doesn't mean he didn't freely will his action.

Again, at no point did this man not act according to his own motivation. He was angry, and he wanted (it wa

I was reading Alenka Zupancic's "Ethics of the real: Kant, Lacan" in which she writes that Kant is adamant upon his stand that each and every action of ours is determined through causality but still the subject remains free since it is upon the subject to freely choose his categorical imperative, since there is no Cause of the causal chains other than subject itself, i.e. in Lacanian terms, there is no Other of the Other but the subject of freedom, since though the subject is the effect of the other but because the other is inconsistent the cause of the subject doesn't exist in the other, and the subject of freedom is the effect of the absence of this cause, i.e. a lack in the other.

Do other philosophers agree with her interpretation of Kant as a compatibilist?

I'll just describe my understanding of these issues so that I'm sure I haven't misunderstood anything: causal determinism says that given some state of the universe in the past and the laws of nature, subsequent events in the future are fixed. All of my actions, decisions, choices, etc. are caused by antecedent events, stretching all the way back to events before I was born - events that I had no control over. Therefore, every action I do and every decision I make was ultimately caused by events that lie outside of my control (before my birth).

Compatibilists say that an agent's actions are free, that agents are morally responsible, despite those actions being caused by antecedent conditions. I take it that most compatibilist accounts of free will hold something along the lines of "an action is free if it is in accordance with one's desires, in the absence of external constraint", etc.

But the obvious issue is that these desires themselves are caused by antecedent conditions, and so these are also outside of an agent's control. The antecedent conditions can be analogized to an evil scientist who's putting putting these desires into my mind, and them on the basis of these desires I carry out various actions. If actions are free if they accord with desires, then it follows that in the evil scientist case, the agent was free. But this account of freedom flies in the face of every intuition anyone's ever had.

The conclusion wouldn't follow if there was a relevant disanalogy between the evil scientist case and the antecedent conditions case. However, I'm not sure if such a disanalogy exists.

(I've defined free actions as those that accord with an agent's desires, but this is just an example; the argument can easily be extended to different conceptions of free actions, of the form "an action is free if it accords with x", because under determinism, x will be caused by antecedent events.)

Is there any room for human free will in Leibniz's monadology?

Most compatibilist arguments seem to mainly be addressing PAP and the Consequence Argument but I have yet to see a valid argument against the notion that you have to be the source of your actions and this notion being incompatible with determinism. How would a compatibilist argue against this?

At ~30:00 in the new AMA, someone asks Sam how he distinguishes "free will" from "voluntary action."

He begins with the quote above, and then goes on to note that though you are not the ultimate cause of your actions, there are meaningful differences to be drawn between things you as a conscious subject set out to do, and those which happen by accident/oversight/etc. He further discusses two robots, and notes that one which acts with a purpose and a plan is qualitatively different than one which acts randomly/with no intent.

Here's the thing: every time someone raises the question of compatibilism in this sub, at least one person says that all compatibilists are doing is playing word games with 'free will,' usually accompanied by a fair bit of cursing and invective. So, I have 2 questions:

1. Can we all admit that Sam is stuck playing the same game with the semantic content of 'voluntary' that compatibilists are doing with 'free will?' All he's done is move the semantic debate from one term to the next; we're quite literally arguing about degrees of synonymy between two very closely related words .

2. Do Sam's views actually differ in any meaningful way with compatibilists from 1960 or so forward (e.g. Frankfurtian or Strawsonian compatibilists)? The robot example sounded like it could have come verbatim from Dennett discussing why moral responsibility attaches to conscious decision makers like us, even though we are at base level nothing more than biological machinery.

According to a popular survey, people are "intuitive compatibilists". Meaning, when presented the discourse on Libertarianism/Compatibilism/Incompatibilism, they choose compatibilism. Lets assume this to be true (which it probably is). I think the correct interpretation of this result is not that most people are intuitive compatibilists, but rather that most people are intuitive freewill ratifiers.

Since freewill is given such high value in our culture, most people are extremely unlikely to conclude "welp, freewill doesn't exist" after being confronted with a paragraph on a survey. So, they will pick the most reasonable sounding choice among the choices that say "freewill exists". Since libertarianism is blatantly incoherent, most people have no choice but to go for compatibilism.

Obviously this is merely a speculation about a possible shortcoming of a survey and any real data would have to tease apart the difference but I think it is an interesting thing to discuss (how willing are most people to ever in million years select an option that says "no freewill")

It is often noted here that people don't control what thoughts they have or what they believe. This isn't quite true, our cognition is partially under voluntary control. However, a lot of that control is through workarounds rather than direct control.

Hypothetically, we could have more control and be more able to be who we want to be. For example, being able to dial down a craving as easily as we loosen our grip.

If freewill is a sliding scale, where do we fall on it? Do we barely have it or are we close to the practical limit?

SEP Compatibilism 2.2:

>If determinism is true, and if at any given time, an unimpeded agent is completely determined to have the wants that she does have, and if those wants causally determine her actions, then, even though she does do what she wants to do, she cannot ever do otherwise. She satisfies the classical compatibilist conditions for free will. But free will requires the ability to do otherwise, and determinism is incompatible with this. Hence, the classical compatibilist account of free will is inadequate.

As I understand this, if determinism is true, the wants and desires of the person before action would be determined by the unchangeable past up to that point and laws of nature that cannot be broken. For a person to do otherwise, the past up to that point has to be different or laws of nature could be broken (the classical compatibilist account)

>But given that a determined agent is determined at the time of action to have the wants that she does have, how is it helpful to state what she would have done had she had different wants than the wants that she did have? Assuming the truth of determinism, at the time at which she acted, she could have had no other wants than the wants that her causal history determined her to have.
>
>In response, the classical compatibilist holds that the conditional analysis brings into relief a rich picture of freedom. In assessing an agent’s action, the analysis accurately distinguishes those actions she would have performed if she wanted, from those actions she could not have performed even if she wanted. This, the classical compatibilist held, effectively distinguishes those alternative courses of action that were within the scope of the agent’s abilities at the time of action, from those courses of action that were not. This just is the distinction between what an agent was free to do and what she was not free to do. This is not at all a superficial freedom; it demarcates what persons have within their control from what falls outside that purview.

I don't understand the bolded paragraph (the classical compatibilist reply). I don't understand what is ability according to the classical compatibilist and incompatibilist.

Introduction

In David Hume's "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding", he deals with the free will "versus" causal necessity issue in Section VIII, "Of Liberty and Necessity". Hume writes very clearly and in a way that most people can understand. The text is available online here: https://davidhume.org/texts/e/8 . My quotes are taken from "Hume, David. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (with an Introduction by L. A. Selby-Bigge) . Digireads Publishing. Kindle Edition".

I hope to present a brief summary of "Of Liberty and Necessity" here for your review.

Hume begins by pointing out that long-standing disputes in philosophy are often due to a failure to clearly define our terms. He suggests that when "a controversy has been long kept on foot, and remains still undecided, we may presume that there is some ambiguity in the expression, and that the disputants affix different ideas to the terms employed in the controversy."

Beyond the simple problem of common definitions, Hume points out that "this dispute has been so much canvassed on all hands, and has led philosophers into such a labyrinth of obscure sophistry, that it is no wonder, if a sensible reader indulge his ease so far as to turn a deaf ear".

He plans to simplify the issue and suggests that in the end it will be clear that everyone already agrees upon both the notions of necessity and of liberty.

Necessity

Hume begins first with necessity. He points out that if events happened randomly, with no connection from one to the next, then we would never realize the notions of causation and necessity. "Our idea, therefore, of necessity and causation arises entirely from the uniformity observable in the operations of nature, where similar objects are constantly conjoined together, and the mind is determined by custom to infer the one from the appearance of the other", says Hume.

But necessity is not limited to physical events, but also applies to "the voluntary actions of men, and in the operations of mind". Hume suggests that human nature is predictable in that "The same motives always produce the same actions. The same events follow from the same causes. Ambition, avarice, self-love, vanity, friendship, generosity, public spirit: these passions, mixed in various degrees, and distributed through society, have been, from the beginning of the world, and still are, the source of all the actions and enterprises, which have ever been observed among mank

https://www.reddit.com/r/PhilosophyMemes/comments/m7q9bh/the_first_philosopher/

As I'm learning about epistemology and the attempt to formulate criteria for knowledge, I see there is this distinction between particularism and methodism. As far as I understand it, particularists say that we should first discern cases from non-cases of knowledge, and then we can formulate the criteria for knowledge based on what is common to those particular instances of knowledge. On the other hand, methodists say that we should first discern the criteria of knowledge through reflection (e.g., "only indubitable and self-evident facts are known"), and then we apply those criteria to purported instances of knowledge to determine whether they are in fact knowledge. The question seems to be: Do we use instances of knowledge to arrive at the correct criteria (Particularism), or do we use criteria to arrive at whether some particular case is an instance of knowledge (Methodism)?

This got me thinking: is the approach of compatibilists (regarding free will and determinism) like particularists' and incompatibilists like methodists'? That is, do compatibilists arrive at their criteria for free action by first gathering up apparent instances of free action and constructing their criteria from them, whereas incompatibilists arrive at their criteria for free action by reflecting on the concept/nature of freedom and concluding incompatibilist criteria (e.g., "a person's free action cannot be causally determined by factors outside of their control"), which they then apply to evaluate individual cases (and uniformly rule out actions in deterministic worlds)?

In other words, do incompatibilists start out by committing themselves to some attractive (incompatibilist) criteria and then follow those criteria to see what they say about individual cases, whereas compatibilists try to build their criteria based on what's common among individual cases of what we would normally consider a free action?

Is there a common methodological difference between compatibilists and incompatibilists?

My reasoning was as follows:

If our thoughts and actions are entirely subject to cause and effect, then the feeling of freedom we have in our choices is an illusion. That feeling is what people generally refer to as free will. Thus, free will is an illusion.

At what step in the above reasoning do compatibilists disagree? My understanding is that it has to do with the definition of free will. So my next question is: how is this definition justified? It seems to me not to capture how most laypeople think of free will.

One of the standard responses to atheistic arguments from evil is that God created free beings, and free will is intrinsically valuable: try to imagine all the evil caused by humans since the beginning of history. According these guys, the absence of all this evil is absolutely less valuable than the existence of free will. Religious apologists rhetorically exaggerate this by saying God doesn't want "robots" or "puppets" (to make the compatibilist and determinist positions as unappealing as possible -- Welcome to religious apologetics!).

Now, it seems to me this response is not intellectually satisfactory because the atheist/skeptic can reasonably ask: "Sure, free will is valuable, but why couldn't God remove malignant temptations from people's minds? That is to say, we only freely choose/decide to cause harm because we have the psychological temptation to do so. If such temptations did not exist, then there would be no motivation to choose/decide to cause evil. And if there is no motivation to cause evil, then we wouldn't choose to cause evil. We could still choose to cause evil, but surely you would agree that this would be exceedingly rare."

This is clearly metaphysically possible from the Christian point of view: It is agreed by most Christians that God doesn't choose to cause evil because He has no irrational inclinations -- and yet He is absolutely free. So, one might ask why this can't be the case for humans in some possible world. Indeed, Christians do believe this will become a reality one day: there will be no ungodly/evil temptations in Heaven, and yet humans will still possess free will.

I wonder what you think about this thought.

[Edit: I'm presupposing two things here: (1) That temptations/desires are not equivalent to decisions/will. I take that this is self-evident to anyone who understands the meaning of these words. It is self-evident that you may have the desire/temptation to eat pizza, but you can decide/will not to eat it. So, it is clear that a desire is distinct from a decision/will.

(2) That we have contra-causal free will. In this context, this basically means that the agent has the power to act despite of the desire/temptation not to act. He can overcome this temptation/desire, so to speak. His decision to act is not determined by the temptation/desire to act. Except for Calvinists, Christians accept the contra-causal view of free will. So, I don't have to argue for it.]

Just read chapter 2 of OPAR. Peikoff claims that determinism is incompatible with Objectivism because Rand teaches that humans have volition and free will. But isn't this a problem only for hard determinists? Isn't compatibilist determinism largely compatible with Objectivism?

Introduction

Greetings!

I have noticed that whenever free-will comes up, most people here will either deny it completely (Hard Determinist) or accept it but deny determinism (Libertarianism). This usually falls along the atheist / theist divide, with atheists being Hard Determinists and theists being Libertarians. The "middle" position, Compatibilism, is unpopular. Many will even declare it absurd or incomprehensible,, which I think is a bit unfair. I think this comes from a lack of understanding of what exactly the position encompasses, and does and does not assert . My hope in this post is to at the very least convince people that compatibilism isn't absurd, even if I can't convince them to adopt it

Definitions

By determinism, we mean the claim that 1) the universe follows unchanging, deterministic laws, and 2) all future states of the universe are completely determined by the initial state together with these laws. Both Hard Deterministis and Compatiibilists accept determinism, which is backed by all our current scientific theories. What they differ in is their acceptance of free will

NB. As a quick qualification, determinism is actually a bit of a misnomer. It might be that our universe also has stochastic processes, if certain interpretations of quantum mechanics turn out to be correct. However, I think we can agree that random quantum fluctuations or wave function collapse do not grant us free will. They are stochastic noise. So in the remainder of this discussion I will ignore these small effects and treat the universe as fully deterministic

Now, there are actually two common definitions of free-will:

1. Free will is the ability to act according to one's wants, unencumbered, and absent external control. I will call this version free-act
2. Free will is the ability to, at a certain moment in time, have multiple alternative possible futures available from which we can choose. It is the "freedom to do otherwise". I'll call this free-choice

The former is obviously a weaker thesis than the latter. I will argue for them both in turn, with focus on the second.

Argument for Free-act

Free-act is not incompatible with determinist. It may well be that our wants are predetermined. But we still have the ability to carry out those wants. For example, if I am thirsty, I have the ability to get a glass of water. If I am tired, I can sleep. If I want to be kind or be mean, I can do that too. In some sense, we can only do what we w

If I were to describe the modern, Western conception of mental illness, I'd first point at the idea that mental illness is an imbalance of neurotransmitters. For most modern Westerners, who aren't particularly philosophical but have some allegiance to the concept of free will, this means to them that the actions of someone that are mentally ill are not freely willed.

To a (materialist) determinist, that wouldn't make any sense. They'd say, "Sure, the behaviors of someone mentally ill are (to some large degree) caused by an imbalance of neurotransmitters-- but so are the behaviors of someone who isn't mentally ill."

But I can't say that I understand compatibilism concepts very well, and I'd be curious as to what (educated, thoughtful) compatibilists would say about this situation. Would they argue that there is some meaningful fashion in which people that are mentally ill lack free will? Would they agree with material determinists that the distinction is invented? Would they reach some other conclusion?

Any thoughts are appreciated.

I don't want to step on anybody's toes here, but the amount of non-dad jokes here in this subreddit really annoys me. First of all, dad jokes CAN be NSFW, it clearly says so in the sub rules. Secondly, it doesn't automatically make it a dad joke if it's from a conversation between you and your child. Most importantly, the jokes that your CHILDREN tell YOU are not dad jokes. The point of a dad joke is that it's so cheesy only a dad who's trying to be funny would make such a joke. That's it. They are stupid plays on words, lame puns and so on. There has to be a clever pun or wordplay for it to be considered a dad joke.

Again, to all the fellow dads, I apologise if I'm sounding too harsh. But I just needed to get it off my chest.

Do your worst!

Compatibilists agree that "contra causal free will" is a myth.

Why then all these seemingly respectable scientists and philosophers proceed to engage in the mental gymnastics with redefinition of what the term "free will" means?

Most of the arguments for this new kind of free will is something like

>"We have this strong intuition that we make choices, so let's just slightly adjust the definition, save the concept; and btw let's not talk about this too much lest unwashed masses go ape"

why?

I get that it's difficult to imagine how we structure society without the concept of moral blame/responsibility. I'm not saying we should rip the band-aid off and throw away entire legal system. Reforms should happen slowly.

But I don't see how it serves any worthwhile purpose to play word games, and bury the lede entirely.

I am trying to find a compatibilist theory that aligns with my values and saves some of them from determinism, which seems to preclude moral responsibility. If anyone knows where I can find a list of the different types of compatibilist theories, that would also be greatly appreciated.

I'm surprised it hasn't decade.

I'm trying to find films that portrays nihilism as something neutrally good. Showing you how you can use such a mindset to your advantage by allowing you to reflect on life from a compatibilistic stance.

Basically, what I'm looking for is a film that is downbeat yet redeeming.

For context I'm a Refuse Driver (Garbage man) & today I was on food waste. After I'd tipped I was checking the wagon for any defects when I spotted a lone pea balanced on the lifts.

I said "hey look, an escaPEA"

No one near me but it didn't half make me laugh for a good hour or so!

Edit: I can't believe how much this has blown up. Thank you everyone I've had a blast reading through the replies 😂

It really does, I swear!