Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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. [1] 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 ...
For example, it is easy for the casual reader to overlook that some arguments for post-classical incompatibilism (a.k.a. incompossibilism) are not arguments for neo-classical incompatibilism on the grounds that the argument does not aim to support the latter's explanatory tenet (a.k.a. anti-classical incompatibilism).
Compatibilism itself may occupy any of the nine positions, that is, there is no logical contradiction between determinism and free will, and either or both may be true or false in principle. However, the most common meaning attached to compatibilism is that some form of determinism is true and yet we have some form of free will, position (3). [46]
Semicompatibilism is the view that causal determinism is compatible with moral responsibility, while making no assertions about the truth of determinism or free will. The term was coined by John Martin Fischer.
Frankfurt's examples are significant because they suggest an alternative way to defend the compatibility of moral responsibility and determinism, in particular by rejecting the first premise of the argument. According to this view, responsibility is compatible with determinism because responsibility does not require the freedom to do otherwise.
In his book defending compatibilism, Freedom Evolves, Daniel Dennett spends a chapter criticising Kane's theory. [53] Kane believes freedom is based on certain rare and exceptional events, which he calls self-forming actions or SFAs. Dennett notes that there is no guarantee such an event will occur in an individual's life.
An example for a failure to follow higher-order volitions is the drug addict who takes drugs even though they would like to quit taking drugs. According to Frankfurt, the drug addict has established free will when their higher-order volition to stop wanting drugs determines the precedence of their changing, action-determining desires either to ...
Hard determinists believe people are like highly complex clocks, in that they are molecular machines. Hard determinism (or metaphysical determinism) is a view on free will which holds that determinism is true, that it is incompatible with free will, and therefore that free will does not exist.