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For example, courts of law make judgments, without bringing in metaphysics, about whether an individual was acting of their own free will in specific circumstances. It is assumed in a court or law that someone could have done otherwise than they did—otherwise no crime would have been committed.



Compatibilism was championed by the ancient stoics[4] and medieval scholastics (such as St. Thomas Aquinas),[5] and by Enlightenment philosophers (like David Hume and Thomas Hobbes).[6] More specifically, the scholastics, including Thomas Aquinas, rejected what would now be called "compatiblism"—they held that humans could do otherwise than they do, otherwise the concept of "sin" is meaningless. As for the Jesuits, their concern was to reconcile the claim of God's foreknowledge of who would be saved with moral agency. The term itself was coined as late as the 20th century. 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.


Defining free will


In other words, although an agent may often be free to act according to a motive, the nature of that motive is determined. Also note that this definition of free will does not rely on the truth or falsity of Causal Determinism.[2] 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



Compatibilist's free will should not be understood as some kind of ability to have actually chosen differently in an identical situation. The compatibilist believes that a person can choose between many choices, but the choice is always influenced by external factors.[8] If the compatibilist says "I may visit tomorrow, or I may not", he is saying he does not know what he will choose—if he will choose to follow the subconscious urge to go or not.




Compatibilists are sometimes called "soft determinists" pejoratively (William James' term). James accused them of creating a "quagmire of evasion" by stealing the name of freedom to mask their underlying determinism.[9] Immanuel Kant called it a "wretched subterfuge" and "word jugglery."[10] 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.[11] 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.[10] Ted Honderich explains his view that the mistake of compatibilism is to assert that nothing changes as a consequence of determinism, when clearly we have lost the life-hope of origination.[12]

See also


  1. Coates, D. Justin; McKenna, Michael (February 25, 2015). "Compatibilism". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved May 10, 2016.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
  2. 2.0 2.1 Podgorski, Daniel (October 16, 2015). "Free Will Twice Defined: On the Linguistic Conflict of Compatibilism and Incompatibilism". The Gemsbok. Retrieved March 7, 2016.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
  3. Locke, John (1690). The Second Treatise of Civil Government.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
  7. Schopenhauer, Arthur (1945). "On the Freedom of the Will". The Philosophy of American History : The Historical Field Theory. Translated by Morris Zucker. p. 531.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
  12. Ted Honderich, The Consequences of Determinism, 1988, p.169