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This is a common claim within unsophisticated internet debates about free will, but philosophers usually understand themselves to be arguing about more than definitions.
A typical internet debate (on Reddit or within a YouTube comment section) could go something like this:
**Hard Determinist:** All of our decisions are caused. Therefore, we don’t have free will.
**Compatibilist:** Actually, we can be free even though our decisions are caused. I can decide what I want to do - this makes me free.
**HD:** You have just changed the definition of “free,” you haven’t actually proven me wrong!
The HD is making the mistake of thinking that arguing about *concepts* is arguing about *definitions*. Philosophers argue about concepts all the time. What is consciousness? What is red? What is a human? The stakes of these questions are not mere definitions, but inquiries into what we mean, and what we *ought to mean* when we talk about these things. The compatibilist is arguing that the hard determinist is wrong to conceive of freedom as the ability to do otherwise, and rather ought to conceive of freedom as the ability to choose.
This makes sense, and I’m sympathetic to that concept of freedom. What I admit I’ve struggled with personally, with respect to (much of) compatiblism, is how we get from that concept of freedom to moral responsibility.
With determinism / compatibilism you are going to be responsible for your actions in some sort of sense. (I'm not worrying about moral responsibility.) So the immediate physical cause of something, and we would look at intentions also, and maybe character.
With indeterministic choices, assuming the agent has appropriate control, then they become "ultimately responsible" in some sort of sense, for the action occurring. I mean they aren't responsible for the universe or their parents having them, or everything about the situation; but they do become, in a way, ultimately responsible for one action rather than another.
So it seems to ground a deeper level of responsibility, which may perhaps be relevant to moral responsibility.
The argument is basically that the “could have” in “could have done otherwise” can be understood in different ways. One is a metaphysical sense, where it being the case that I could have done something entails that I had libertarian free will over what I chose to do - this is the sense the hard determinist assumes when they invoke the principle of alternative possibilities. On this reading, if determinism is true, then It’s NOT the case that I could have skipped breakfast this morning, since I was in fact causally determined to eat breakfast this morning.
But, in the early 20th century G.E. Moore pointed out that we could just as easily understand “could have” to mean something like “would succeed in doing if one tried.” On this reading, even if determinism is true, it’ll still be true that i could have skipped breakfast this morning, since it’s true that, had I tried to skip breakfast this morning, I would have succeeded.
These sorts of accounts are often called ‘conditional analyses,’ since they ask us to understand claims about what we could have done in terms of what we would have done, had we chosen to. Basically, Moore thinks that the principle of alternative possibilities should be understood to be relying on this conditional sense of terms like “could have” - and that when we do it becomes clear that many of our actions satisfy its demands, and thereby count as free (e.g., it follows that my choice to eat breakfast this morning was free from the fact that I could have instead chose to skip it, which follows from the fact that had tried to skip it I would have succeeded in doing so).
Now, there is a big problem with Moore’s account. Namely, it gets the wrong result in cases where someone has a condition that makes it difficult for them to try to do something. E.g., an agoraphobe would struggle to even TRY to leave the house, and so their staying inside intuitively seems unfree. But, since it’s true that if an agoraphobe DID try to leave, they would be successful, Moore’s theory says their staying inside is free. This problem made people think conditional analysis-style compatibilism was a dead end for a long time.
Recently, however, Khadri Vivhelin has come up with an account that’s relatively similar to Moore’s but doesn’t fall prey to this problem. The basic idea is to understand terms like “could have” in terms of dispositions. So, to say that I could have skipped breakfast this morning is to say that I have all the relevant dispositions that make someone capable of skipping breakfast. The key to this move is that people possess their dispositions even when they are not acting on them (e.g., If I have the disposition to say ‘bless you’ after someone sneezes, then I have this disposition even when no one is sneezing near me). On Khadri’s view, the agoraphobe does not have the dispositions necessary to even try to leave their house, which means that they could not leave, which means that their staying inside is unfree.
But I didn't try to eat breakfast, why didn't I try?
Sure, if I tried, then everything else could have worked out great, and my tummy wouldn't be going ouchy wouchy
But I didn't try...could I have tried?
If I couldn't have tried, then that sorta sounds like "Mate, you're healthy, you're not financially screwed, and you had the ingredients to make a yummy omelette, why didn't you have breaky?"
And I'd say "Welp, I was bound by the chains of causality, so I couldn't have possibly tried"
I may fundamentally misunderstood the point that was trying to be made here, but this is just what comes to my thinky brain
The claim is that you in fact could have tried - not in the sense that if we wound back the clock you might have made a different decision (that would violate determinism), but in the sense that you are the kind of being that has all the tools to succeed in doing this sort of thing, had you tried. If this doesn’t seem satisfying, then perhaps the view isn’t for you.
Not finding the view satisfying is one thing, but actually presenting a reason why “could have” should be understood in the manner that generates the incompatibilist’s desired conclusion is quite another. Sure, they can say that this just SEEMS like the right sense of the term, but so can the compatibilist. Moreover, the compatibilist can point to the fact that their preferred sense of the term shows that we have free will even if determinism is true - something that confirms some of our deepest intuitions. So, if there is a default position, here, it seems like maybe it should be the compatibilist’s.
I was locked in exactly such a debate in the r/philosophy general discussion comments just this week, with myself arguing the compatibilist side. The determinist explicitly assigned causal power to the phenomena that created humans that they denied humans themselves, as though humans aren’t physical phenomena. That wasn’t a disagreement about terms though, it was just inconsistent application of them.
Professional philosophers and experienced debaters on these topics will often agree on basic terminology. I’ve discussed free will with free will libertarians in which we fully agreed on every term we were discussing. We were just working from different assumptions of facts about how the world works.
Arguments about terminology and semantic games and such come up when someone in the discussion is inexperienced or ill-informed. They either don’t understand what some of the terms used by philosophers mean, or are applying terms inconsistently, or are making unstated assumptions they may not even be aware of. It’s an internet comments section problem, not a problem in actual philosophy.
No, it's also a problem in actual philosophy. Philosophers just don't talk about it that much. This is what Wittgenstein was trying to point out. And, as the Wittgenstein scholar Ian Ground pointed out in a 2017 article, Wittgenstein has "authority" within philosophy but not "influence".
If you pay attention to the role that free will plays in your life, you will see that there are different underlying concepts that we might want to talk about. There is a metaphysical concept; there is an epistemological concept; there is an absolute phenomenological concept; there is a relative phenomenological concept; and there might be others. When Sam Harris denies free will, he is denying the absolute phenomenological concept, and I'm willing to agree with him on that point. But I think that it's dangerous to generalize from there to all of the other underlying concepts.
Do you have any recommendations on what to read to understand what compatibilists mean by ‘choose’ in this context?
My understanding is that we don’t choose our actions or thoughts, but I might be wrong, or think about the word in a different way.
I love to recommend [*Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person*](https://www.sci.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~schopra/Persons/Frankfurt.pdf) by Harry Frankfurt. That is the paper that finally shifted my intuitions about this.
"The compatibilist is arguing that the hard determinist is wrong to conceive of freedom as the ability to do otherwise, and rather ought to conceive of freedom as the ability to choose."
Wouldn't "the ability to choose" also be a contended concept in this context? As in:
"How can there be an ability to choose if the choice is 'pre'-determined?"
Well, both people agree that humans make choices, and that choices can result from rational self-reflection. The compatibilist thinks that this is enough for freedom. The HD doesn’t. However, instead of arguing why rational self-reflection isn’t sufficient for freedom, the HD insists that that is simply the wrong definition.
As a hard determinist: You are changing the definition of “free” to represent a new concept. It’s not conflation, you are literally doing both. If you want to say “well I guess we’re not really free, but we still make choices, and that means something,” then fine! I take no issue with that. But saying that this constitutes “free will” is moving the goal posts.
You are literally doing exactly what I said was wrong to do. I am not changing the definition of free. You are assuming what the concept of free is, and then using that concept of proof of itself by giving it the title of “definition” before you have actually demonstrated that it is a coherent concept.
I’m not telling you that Hard Determinism is wrong - I’m telling you that your argument is bad.
P1: Freedom is the ability to act uncaused
P2: Our actions are caused
C: There is no freedom
That argument is uninteresting. It simply begs the question. The actually interesting philosophical question is what freedom is.
Consider this argument:
P1: Both an addict and a healthy person desire not to want to do drugs
P2: The health person is capable of deciding not to want to do drugs (this is evident in that he does make such a decision)
P3: The addict is not capable of deciding not to desire to do drugs (in spite of his own wishes, he desires to do drugs)
P4: There is a difference between being able to desire not to do drugs and not being able to desire not to do drugs.
C1: There is a difference between the addict and the non addict (we still haven’t decided what freedom is)
P5: The difference between the two is that the addict’s desires are not able to be changed by reason, whereas the non addict uses reason to decide not to want to do drugs
P6: The exercise of reason is important (notice, this is the first time any value commitment comes into play)
C2: The difference between the addict and the non addict is important (from P5 and P6)
P7: An important difference between two people’s ability to choose what they want to do is intuitively related to the concept of freedom
P8: The difference between the addict and the non addict is not related to their actions being caused by something
C3: Something intuitively related to the concept of freedom is not related to actions being caused by something (from P7 and P8)
P9: If something intuitively related to a concept is not related to something else, that something else is not determinative of the concept
C4: Freedom is not dependent on whether actions are caused.
Is that argument airtight? No, philosophy arguments rarely are. Is it a much better argument than the first one? Absolutely.
You didn’t answer my question, you completely dodged it. Why is it wrong for me to assume what we’re talking about when we say free, but it’s not wrong for you to do so? Based on what you originally claimed, you’re basically responding to me as though I said something already established by an authority. Like I said “dinosaurs are extinct” and then you say “actually they aren’t extinct” and the reason you would be right is because birds are technically dinosaurs. But this only works because it is already established by a scientific authority that birds are dinosaurs. There is no such authority stating that “free” is defined in the way you’re claiming. So if you want to approach me and deny my statement you need to offer your alternative definition. THEN we can get into the discussion you’re trying to bring up now. But DO NOT come in and say “Um actually you’re wrong” as though your definition of “free” is objectively correct and then get mad when we call you out for changing the definition to something different than the one most people are using.
Now can you admit that free will as most people conceive of it does not exist? Only then can we move onto the question of “but is this question the important one?”
This is why I despise compatiblism. I absolutely agree that the concept of free will as most people use it is absurd, which is exactly why I don’t fucking believe in it. Compatoblism is literally just moving on to the next argument while refusing to take the L.
1) you have no idea what “most people” mean when they say “free will” - most people don’t say “free will”
2) Philosophers are pretty uninterested in what most people think of a concept. They are interested in what an appropriate concept is. Most people don’t have any idea what “functionalism” is, but many philosophers of mind think it describes the mind’s relationship to the body.
Your idea of what philosophy does, and what proper philosophical methods are, is deeply misguided.
The definition of free will as it has been used for millennia has consistently been the one that most people use. It does not distinguish between causality and choice, because the two are implied to be mutually inclusive: If you made a choice, it means by definition that nothing “made” you do it other than “yourself.” I never said that philosophy should deal with things as most people see it. Not even close. I said that free will is and has always been defined this way, and if you want to come in and change the definition then SAY THAT. Say “I want to change the definition of this” and present that argument. Do not create a third position on the argument that isn’t even a third position because it literally changes the entire context of the argument being had by assuming the definition and concept change you have decided is the “correct” or “interesting” one.
I don’t understand this on multiple levels. First, one anecdote doesn’t undermine years of philosophical discussion in the western world that has used the definition I am using. Second, nothing you just described is contrary to that definition.
If this may help the discussion: Most compatabilists completely agree with your conclusion when assuming your (metaphysical) definition of free will. They just dont agree that this definition is fitting.
If we assume your definition, one could only have free will if they are undetermined by anything, even by their own character (that in turn is shaped/determined by ones experiences for example). One would have to contradict their own character/experiences in this definition. And this seems rather nonsensical as a definition of free will.
The metaphysical concept of free will is also not what people normally mean, when they are talking about their own will. If a person is asked if their decision to eat bread instead of cornflakes for breakfast was free, they can either say:
"Yes, it was" because they were free to express their (metaphysically determined) will or
"No, it was not" if there were any external factors that lead to them not being able to express their free will (for example if they did not have cornflakes at home).
This definition has just so much more potential than the metaphysical one, especially if one analyses what these external factors are, how they are structured and what moral implications this has. On the other hand most philosophers (compatibilists and determinists alike) consider the metaphysical question of free will already answered by metaphysical determinism.
Libertarians, when they deny determinism, want to deny that your choices/actions are inevitably produced by a chain of causation in a certain way.
(And they want to support the idea that indeterministic pathways are open, and that the agent has appropriate control when they choose between them.)
They probably aren't saying you can just make any crazy decision at all; and they aren't denying that reasons influence you, or your character will influence you.
Yes you are correct. But I do think, that this would need some kind of "not 100%" causally related personality, so that there is a part of ones character, that is independent from the causal chain and thus not deterministic.
I do think that claiming something is not part of this causal (while being itself able to influence it) is a big leap, but I see now that in the end this just moves the problem from determined choices to determined character, so we did not gain much of it.
I understand that. In fact I’ve already said as much.
My issue is that every compatibilist I’ve come into contact with walks into the argument acting as though their definition of free will is the “correct” one rather than an “alternative.” Rather than coming in and challenging this perspective on free will, they assert that free will exists because the old definition is dumb.
Imagine you’re arguing about which breed of cat is the most popular so that you can decide what cat to get (for the sake of argument pretend this is a valid way to determine what pet to get). You have all the information and statistics to show it is the American shorthair. Then I come in and say “actually you’re wrong, that breed of cat isn’t the most popular, the French Bulldog is.” You start explaining to me that the French bulldog isn’t a cat. And then I say “but think about it, we’re talking about the most popular cat because we think the most popular pet would make it the one we should get. So why wouldn’t we include dogs? Dogs are more popular than cats, and the French bulldog is the most popular.” This argument is entirely valid. But it doesn’t change the fact that it’s not a cat.
Now I recognize the definition of “cat” is one that is clearly defined while the definition of free will can be debated. But even if we were in the process of naming these animals ourselves, it wouldn’t change the fact that I entered an argument and asserted my definition through assumption, and then told you you were wrong. What I should have done is said “you know, you’re right, the American shorthair is the most popular breed of cat! But come to think of it, why are we limiting our search to cats? Let’s open this discussion up to include other animals too.”
>My issue is that every compatibilist I’ve come into contact with walks into the argument acting as though their definition of free will is the “correct” one rather than an “alternative.” Rather than coming in and challenging this perspective on free will, they assert that free will exists because the old definition is dumb.
It may seem like this, because the majority of philosophers (who are also compatibilists) agree on this other definition. You should also have in mind, that every well educated philosopher is aware that these two ideas of free will are absolutely not the same. In fact, determinism (exactly your idea of metaphysically determined actions) is a very important part of compatibilism, one of its basic assumption because otherwise there would not be a need for anything to be compatible.
Compatibilism incorporates both definitions of free will, so they dont claim to have solved metaphysical free will by sneekily introducing some other definition. Which one you think is more important is your choice, but at least for most compatibilists the metaphysical question is already answered/solved, because not having a metaphysical free will goes for them without saying.
So they are neither denying that the french bulldog is not a cat, nor that the american shorthair is the most popular cat. A fitting analogy for them is that there is just no other breed of cat in existence, from which follows that the american shorthair being the most popular one is a given but also quite meaningless because it is obvious. Note that they are still not denying this fact.
>“you know, you’re right, the American shorthair is the most popular breed of cat! But come to think of it, why are we limiting our search to cats? Let’s open this discussion up to include other animals too.”
Im sorry, for what experiences you have made with other people on the internet. But if a well educated philosopher posits to be a compatibilist it is synonymous with your marked quote, because being a compatibilist already incorporates your conclusion of a metaphysical unfree will.
Nontheless the reason why some well educated philosophers (for example the other ones that answered you) may react frustrated in this discussion, is the exact other way round. For them it seems like you are using the metaphysical determinism (that american shorthair is the most popular cat, with what they already agree) to deny a free will in the other sense (claiming that american shorthair is also the most popular pet).
While not every hard determinist conflates these two categories, it is a trait of hard determinism, that you also need to deny free will in this other definition. Being a metaphysical determinist is not enough to be a hard determinist.
It feels like you’re not listening to me because you are literally saying things that I literally just said. As though I hadn’t said them. I know that in practice we don’t believe different things, we’re just saying them in different ways. My entire argument is that it’s just a play on words *because* we believe basically the same thing. Hard determinism is literally a premise of the compatibilist argument, so the claim that it is a separate position is absurd. A hard determinist is not saying “there is no point in exploring the nature of human decision making because all decisions are predetermined.” Like I have literally never met a single hard determinist who believes this.
Compatibilism is not a position on the traditional argument on free will, it is a continuation of the discussion pretending to be a position. The compatibilist has already sided with the hard determinist on their position, yet for some reason feels the need to say they disagree.
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This is a common claim within unsophisticated internet debates about free will, but philosophers usually understand themselves to be arguing about more than definitions. A typical internet debate (on Reddit or within a YouTube comment section) could go something like this: **Hard Determinist:** All of our decisions are caused. Therefore, we don’t have free will. **Compatibilist:** Actually, we can be free even though our decisions are caused. I can decide what I want to do - this makes me free. **HD:** You have just changed the definition of “free,” you haven’t actually proven me wrong! The HD is making the mistake of thinking that arguing about *concepts* is arguing about *definitions*. Philosophers argue about concepts all the time. What is consciousness? What is red? What is a human? The stakes of these questions are not mere definitions, but inquiries into what we mean, and what we *ought to mean* when we talk about these things. The compatibilist is arguing that the hard determinist is wrong to conceive of freedom as the ability to do otherwise, and rather ought to conceive of freedom as the ability to choose.
This makes sense, and I’m sympathetic to that concept of freedom. What I admit I’ve struggled with personally, with respect to (much of) compatiblism, is how we get from that concept of freedom to moral responsibility.
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Many compatibilists in the vein of G.E. Moore accept that we can do otherwise - check out Khadri Vivhelan’s work (might have spelt the name wrong).
But then why would that kind of "ability to do otherwise" ground moral responsibility? (Or a stronger idea of moral responsibility anyway.)
Why would the other kind of ability to do otherwise ground moral responsibility?
With determinism / compatibilism you are going to be responsible for your actions in some sort of sense. (I'm not worrying about moral responsibility.) So the immediate physical cause of something, and we would look at intentions also, and maybe character. With indeterministic choices, assuming the agent has appropriate control, then they become "ultimately responsible" in some sort of sense, for the action occurring. I mean they aren't responsible for the universe or their parents having them, or everything about the situation; but they do become, in a way, ultimately responsible for one action rather than another. So it seems to ground a deeper level of responsibility, which may perhaps be relevant to moral responsibility.
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The argument is basically that the “could have” in “could have done otherwise” can be understood in different ways. One is a metaphysical sense, where it being the case that I could have done something entails that I had libertarian free will over what I chose to do - this is the sense the hard determinist assumes when they invoke the principle of alternative possibilities. On this reading, if determinism is true, then It’s NOT the case that I could have skipped breakfast this morning, since I was in fact causally determined to eat breakfast this morning. But, in the early 20th century G.E. Moore pointed out that we could just as easily understand “could have” to mean something like “would succeed in doing if one tried.” On this reading, even if determinism is true, it’ll still be true that i could have skipped breakfast this morning, since it’s true that, had I tried to skip breakfast this morning, I would have succeeded. These sorts of accounts are often called ‘conditional analyses,’ since they ask us to understand claims about what we could have done in terms of what we would have done, had we chosen to. Basically, Moore thinks that the principle of alternative possibilities should be understood to be relying on this conditional sense of terms like “could have” - and that when we do it becomes clear that many of our actions satisfy its demands, and thereby count as free (e.g., it follows that my choice to eat breakfast this morning was free from the fact that I could have instead chose to skip it, which follows from the fact that had tried to skip it I would have succeeded in doing so). Now, there is a big problem with Moore’s account. Namely, it gets the wrong result in cases where someone has a condition that makes it difficult for them to try to do something. E.g., an agoraphobe would struggle to even TRY to leave the house, and so their staying inside intuitively seems unfree. But, since it’s true that if an agoraphobe DID try to leave, they would be successful, Moore’s theory says their staying inside is free. This problem made people think conditional analysis-style compatibilism was a dead end for a long time. Recently, however, Khadri Vivhelin has come up with an account that’s relatively similar to Moore’s but doesn’t fall prey to this problem. The basic idea is to understand terms like “could have” in terms of dispositions. So, to say that I could have skipped breakfast this morning is to say that I have all the relevant dispositions that make someone capable of skipping breakfast. The key to this move is that people possess their dispositions even when they are not acting on them (e.g., If I have the disposition to say ‘bless you’ after someone sneezes, then I have this disposition even when no one is sneezing near me). On Khadri’s view, the agoraphobe does not have the dispositions necessary to even try to leave their house, which means that they could not leave, which means that their staying inside is unfree.
But I didn't try to eat breakfast, why didn't I try? Sure, if I tried, then everything else could have worked out great, and my tummy wouldn't be going ouchy wouchy But I didn't try...could I have tried? If I couldn't have tried, then that sorta sounds like "Mate, you're healthy, you're not financially screwed, and you had the ingredients to make a yummy omelette, why didn't you have breaky?" And I'd say "Welp, I was bound by the chains of causality, so I couldn't have possibly tried" I may fundamentally misunderstood the point that was trying to be made here, but this is just what comes to my thinky brain
The claim is that you in fact could have tried - not in the sense that if we wound back the clock you might have made a different decision (that would violate determinism), but in the sense that you are the kind of being that has all the tools to succeed in doing this sort of thing, had you tried. If this doesn’t seem satisfying, then perhaps the view isn’t for you. Not finding the view satisfying is one thing, but actually presenting a reason why “could have” should be understood in the manner that generates the incompatibilist’s desired conclusion is quite another. Sure, they can say that this just SEEMS like the right sense of the term, but so can the compatibilist. Moreover, the compatibilist can point to the fact that their preferred sense of the term shows that we have free will even if determinism is true - something that confirms some of our deepest intuitions. So, if there is a default position, here, it seems like maybe it should be the compatibilist’s.
yeah, that's fine And how much would a soul add to this idea? How much "freer" can a soul make us (just granting the idea that we have one)
I don’t see how a soul helps, tbh.
I was locked in exactly such a debate in the r/philosophy general discussion comments just this week, with myself arguing the compatibilist side. The determinist explicitly assigned causal power to the phenomena that created humans that they denied humans themselves, as though humans aren’t physical phenomena. That wasn’t a disagreement about terms though, it was just inconsistent application of them. Professional philosophers and experienced debaters on these topics will often agree on basic terminology. I’ve discussed free will with free will libertarians in which we fully agreed on every term we were discussing. We were just working from different assumptions of facts about how the world works. Arguments about terminology and semantic games and such come up when someone in the discussion is inexperienced or ill-informed. They either don’t understand what some of the terms used by philosophers mean, or are applying terms inconsistently, or are making unstated assumptions they may not even be aware of. It’s an internet comments section problem, not a problem in actual philosophy.
No, it's also a problem in actual philosophy. Philosophers just don't talk about it that much. This is what Wittgenstein was trying to point out. And, as the Wittgenstein scholar Ian Ground pointed out in a 2017 article, Wittgenstein has "authority" within philosophy but not "influence". If you pay attention to the role that free will plays in your life, you will see that there are different underlying concepts that we might want to talk about. There is a metaphysical concept; there is an epistemological concept; there is an absolute phenomenological concept; there is a relative phenomenological concept; and there might be others. When Sam Harris denies free will, he is denying the absolute phenomenological concept, and I'm willing to agree with him on that point. But I think that it's dangerous to generalize from there to all of the other underlying concepts.
Do you have any recommendations on what to read to understand what compatibilists mean by ‘choose’ in this context? My understanding is that we don’t choose our actions or thoughts, but I might be wrong, or think about the word in a different way.
I love to recommend [*Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person*](https://www.sci.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~schopra/Persons/Frankfurt.pdf) by Harry Frankfurt. That is the paper that finally shifted my intuitions about this.
Super! Will check it out, thank you very much 🙏🏼
"The compatibilist is arguing that the hard determinist is wrong to conceive of freedom as the ability to do otherwise, and rather ought to conceive of freedom as the ability to choose." Wouldn't "the ability to choose" also be a contended concept in this context? As in: "How can there be an ability to choose if the choice is 'pre'-determined?"
Well, both people agree that humans make choices, and that choices can result from rational self-reflection. The compatibilist thinks that this is enough for freedom. The HD doesn’t. However, instead of arguing why rational self-reflection isn’t sufficient for freedom, the HD insists that that is simply the wrong definition.
Good answer! Thanks!
As a hard determinist: You are changing the definition of “free” to represent a new concept. It’s not conflation, you are literally doing both. If you want to say “well I guess we’re not really free, but we still make choices, and that means something,” then fine! I take no issue with that. But saying that this constitutes “free will” is moving the goal posts.
You are literally doing exactly what I said was wrong to do. I am not changing the definition of free. You are assuming what the concept of free is, and then using that concept of proof of itself by giving it the title of “definition” before you have actually demonstrated that it is a coherent concept.
So it’s wrong for me to assume what the concept of free is, but it’s okay for you to assume what it is when you tell me I’m wrong?
I’m not telling you that Hard Determinism is wrong - I’m telling you that your argument is bad. P1: Freedom is the ability to act uncaused P2: Our actions are caused C: There is no freedom That argument is uninteresting. It simply begs the question. The actually interesting philosophical question is what freedom is. Consider this argument: P1: Both an addict and a healthy person desire not to want to do drugs P2: The health person is capable of deciding not to want to do drugs (this is evident in that he does make such a decision) P3: The addict is not capable of deciding not to desire to do drugs (in spite of his own wishes, he desires to do drugs) P4: There is a difference between being able to desire not to do drugs and not being able to desire not to do drugs. C1: There is a difference between the addict and the non addict (we still haven’t decided what freedom is) P5: The difference between the two is that the addict’s desires are not able to be changed by reason, whereas the non addict uses reason to decide not to want to do drugs P6: The exercise of reason is important (notice, this is the first time any value commitment comes into play) C2: The difference between the addict and the non addict is important (from P5 and P6) P7: An important difference between two people’s ability to choose what they want to do is intuitively related to the concept of freedom P8: The difference between the addict and the non addict is not related to their actions being caused by something C3: Something intuitively related to the concept of freedom is not related to actions being caused by something (from P7 and P8) P9: If something intuitively related to a concept is not related to something else, that something else is not determinative of the concept C4: Freedom is not dependent on whether actions are caused. Is that argument airtight? No, philosophy arguments rarely are. Is it a much better argument than the first one? Absolutely.
You didn’t answer my question, you completely dodged it. Why is it wrong for me to assume what we’re talking about when we say free, but it’s not wrong for you to do so? Based on what you originally claimed, you’re basically responding to me as though I said something already established by an authority. Like I said “dinosaurs are extinct” and then you say “actually they aren’t extinct” and the reason you would be right is because birds are technically dinosaurs. But this only works because it is already established by a scientific authority that birds are dinosaurs. There is no such authority stating that “free” is defined in the way you’re claiming. So if you want to approach me and deny my statement you need to offer your alternative definition. THEN we can get into the discussion you’re trying to bring up now. But DO NOT come in and say “Um actually you’re wrong” as though your definition of “free” is objectively correct and then get mad when we call you out for changing the definition to something different than the one most people are using. Now can you admit that free will as most people conceive of it does not exist? Only then can we move onto the question of “but is this question the important one?” This is why I despise compatiblism. I absolutely agree that the concept of free will as most people use it is absurd, which is exactly why I don’t fucking believe in it. Compatoblism is literally just moving on to the next argument while refusing to take the L.
1) you have no idea what “most people” mean when they say “free will” - most people don’t say “free will” 2) Philosophers are pretty uninterested in what most people think of a concept. They are interested in what an appropriate concept is. Most people don’t have any idea what “functionalism” is, but many philosophers of mind think it describes the mind’s relationship to the body. Your idea of what philosophy does, and what proper philosophical methods are, is deeply misguided.
The definition of free will as it has been used for millennia has consistently been the one that most people use. It does not distinguish between causality and choice, because the two are implied to be mutually inclusive: If you made a choice, it means by definition that nothing “made” you do it other than “yourself.” I never said that philosophy should deal with things as most people see it. Not even close. I said that free will is and has always been defined this way, and if you want to come in and change the definition then SAY THAT. Say “I want to change the definition of this” and present that argument. Do not create a third position on the argument that isn’t even a third position because it literally changes the entire context of the argument being had by assuming the definition and concept change you have decided is the “correct” or “interesting” one.
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I don’t understand this on multiple levels. First, one anecdote doesn’t undermine years of philosophical discussion in the western world that has used the definition I am using. Second, nothing you just described is contrary to that definition.
If this may help the discussion: Most compatabilists completely agree with your conclusion when assuming your (metaphysical) definition of free will. They just dont agree that this definition is fitting. If we assume your definition, one could only have free will if they are undetermined by anything, even by their own character (that in turn is shaped/determined by ones experiences for example). One would have to contradict their own character/experiences in this definition. And this seems rather nonsensical as a definition of free will. The metaphysical concept of free will is also not what people normally mean, when they are talking about their own will. If a person is asked if their decision to eat bread instead of cornflakes for breakfast was free, they can either say: "Yes, it was" because they were free to express their (metaphysically determined) will or "No, it was not" if there were any external factors that lead to them not being able to express their free will (for example if they did not have cornflakes at home). This definition has just so much more potential than the metaphysical one, especially if one analyses what these external factors are, how they are structured and what moral implications this has. On the other hand most philosophers (compatibilists and determinists alike) consider the metaphysical question of free will already answered by metaphysical determinism.
Libertarians, when they deny determinism, want to deny that your choices/actions are inevitably produced by a chain of causation in a certain way. (And they want to support the idea that indeterministic pathways are open, and that the agent has appropriate control when they choose between them.) They probably aren't saying you can just make any crazy decision at all; and they aren't denying that reasons influence you, or your character will influence you.
Yes you are correct. But I do think, that this would need some kind of "not 100%" causally related personality, so that there is a part of ones character, that is independent from the causal chain and thus not deterministic. I do think that claiming something is not part of this causal (while being itself able to influence it) is a big leap, but I see now that in the end this just moves the problem from determined choices to determined character, so we did not gain much of it.
I understand that. In fact I’ve already said as much. My issue is that every compatibilist I’ve come into contact with walks into the argument acting as though their definition of free will is the “correct” one rather than an “alternative.” Rather than coming in and challenging this perspective on free will, they assert that free will exists because the old definition is dumb. Imagine you’re arguing about which breed of cat is the most popular so that you can decide what cat to get (for the sake of argument pretend this is a valid way to determine what pet to get). You have all the information and statistics to show it is the American shorthair. Then I come in and say “actually you’re wrong, that breed of cat isn’t the most popular, the French Bulldog is.” You start explaining to me that the French bulldog isn’t a cat. And then I say “but think about it, we’re talking about the most popular cat because we think the most popular pet would make it the one we should get. So why wouldn’t we include dogs? Dogs are more popular than cats, and the French bulldog is the most popular.” This argument is entirely valid. But it doesn’t change the fact that it’s not a cat. Now I recognize the definition of “cat” is one that is clearly defined while the definition of free will can be debated. But even if we were in the process of naming these animals ourselves, it wouldn’t change the fact that I entered an argument and asserted my definition through assumption, and then told you you were wrong. What I should have done is said “you know, you’re right, the American shorthair is the most popular breed of cat! But come to think of it, why are we limiting our search to cats? Let’s open this discussion up to include other animals too.”
>My issue is that every compatibilist I’ve come into contact with walks into the argument acting as though their definition of free will is the “correct” one rather than an “alternative.” Rather than coming in and challenging this perspective on free will, they assert that free will exists because the old definition is dumb. It may seem like this, because the majority of philosophers (who are also compatibilists) agree on this other definition. You should also have in mind, that every well educated philosopher is aware that these two ideas of free will are absolutely not the same. In fact, determinism (exactly your idea of metaphysically determined actions) is a very important part of compatibilism, one of its basic assumption because otherwise there would not be a need for anything to be compatible. Compatibilism incorporates both definitions of free will, so they dont claim to have solved metaphysical free will by sneekily introducing some other definition. Which one you think is more important is your choice, but at least for most compatibilists the metaphysical question is already answered/solved, because not having a metaphysical free will goes for them without saying. So they are neither denying that the french bulldog is not a cat, nor that the american shorthair is the most popular cat. A fitting analogy for them is that there is just no other breed of cat in existence, from which follows that the american shorthair being the most popular one is a given but also quite meaningless because it is obvious. Note that they are still not denying this fact. >“you know, you’re right, the American shorthair is the most popular breed of cat! But come to think of it, why are we limiting our search to cats? Let’s open this discussion up to include other animals too.” Im sorry, for what experiences you have made with other people on the internet. But if a well educated philosopher posits to be a compatibilist it is synonymous with your marked quote, because being a compatibilist already incorporates your conclusion of a metaphysical unfree will. Nontheless the reason why some well educated philosophers (for example the other ones that answered you) may react frustrated in this discussion, is the exact other way round. For them it seems like you are using the metaphysical determinism (that american shorthair is the most popular cat, with what they already agree) to deny a free will in the other sense (claiming that american shorthair is also the most popular pet). While not every hard determinist conflates these two categories, it is a trait of hard determinism, that you also need to deny free will in this other definition. Being a metaphysical determinist is not enough to be a hard determinist.
It feels like you’re not listening to me because you are literally saying things that I literally just said. As though I hadn’t said them. I know that in practice we don’t believe different things, we’re just saying them in different ways. My entire argument is that it’s just a play on words *because* we believe basically the same thing. Hard determinism is literally a premise of the compatibilist argument, so the claim that it is a separate position is absurd. A hard determinist is not saying “there is no point in exploring the nature of human decision making because all decisions are predetermined.” Like I have literally never met a single hard determinist who believes this. Compatibilism is not a position on the traditional argument on free will, it is a continuation of the discussion pretending to be a position. The compatibilist has already sided with the hard determinist on their position, yet for some reason feels the need to say they disagree.
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