FREE WILL AND THE CASE FOR COMPATIBILISM

This chapter makes a case for the compatibility of determinism and free will (where free will is understood as the kind of freedom or control relevant to moral responsibility). It consists of two parts. The first part discusses the general motivations for compatibilism. These include: The argument that compatibilism fits with a naturalistic picture of human agents, one according to which everything that happens (including everything we do) has a naturalistic explanation; the intuitive difference between causal explanations and excuses; and the argument that indeterminism doesn’t boost (but, if anything, hinders) our control. The second part of the chapter sketches two different ways of being a compatibilist. The first (“leeway compatibilism”) consists in understanding free will in terms of alternative possibilities, and in arguing that determinism doesn’t rule out alternative possibilities (despite possible appearances to the contrary). The second way of being a compatibilist (“source compatibilism”) consists in rejecting the claim that free will requires alternative possibilities, and in understanding free will just in terms of actual causes or actual explanations that are compatible with the truth of determinism. The chapter ends with a discussion of the advantages that the second type of compatibilism has over the first type.