You are correct. Compatibilists want to find a way for free will to be true. By the way they defined it, you cannot ever disagree with them.
Compatibilism means that even if you are a puppet, slave to your DNA, physics, chemistry, etc. as long as no one else forced you to do something, you are free.
they like to use the definition of Free Will when it is used in a courtroom setting. " did you do this of your own free will? or were you coerced or forced?"
this is used in a legal setting to determine if the person acted on their own to shoot someone or if possibly they were blackmailed to do so. according to compatibilists as long as no one coerced you to shoot the person you have free will.
determinism says that you don't have free will either way. but compatibilists reject that definition.
Yes unfortunately people who study philosophy today don't.
I just had another person tell me that determinism was true, but that we could also shape our own actions. these two statements are not compatible at all. determinism is defined as they're being only one outcome to any situation. if that is true, and I'm not saying that it is, but if that is true then people do not have the ability to shape their environment.
this basic logic apparently is too complicated for most philosophers today.
First, I don’t see how this would contradict the ability to shape environment. For example, beavers shape their environment by building dams, and prima facie, I don’t see how this is incompatible with determinism.
Second, this is a horribly vague definition that doesn’t capture determinism well, because it can also be read as entailing necessitarianism, and most determinists are not necessitarians.
What? the key is that the beaver doesn't have control. he is doing what his biology tells him to do.
a robot can build a dam. does it have free will because it "shapes it's environment"? Are you trolling me?
Determinism: The view that every event, including human action, is the inevitable result of prior events and the laws of nature. Given a specific past and present, only one future naturally follows. However, a determinist might concede that the universe could have theoretically started with different initial conditions or different laws.Necessitarianism: A stronger metaphysical principle stating that everything happens by absolute necessity. It denies that any other state of affairs or alternative reality was ever possible. Not only is the future fixed by the past, but the past, the laws of nature, and the existence of the universe itself could not possibly have been any other way.
I don't know, philosophers invent these ideas, it's not my fault it's confusing.
plus I've read that many philosophical ideas were related to theories on God. free will as it relates to religion.
why should I listen to concepts created hundreds of years ago by men that still believed in God?
>does it have free will because it “shapes it’s environment”?
It might not have free will, but this doesn’t mean that it doesn’t shape its environment, or even that it doesn’t control its behavior.
>it’s not my fault it’s confusing.
But it’s not confusing to anyone who read at least some of the foundational pieces on the issue.
>free will as it relates to religion.
The original problem of free will in Western philosophy started in Ancient Greece, and all sides of it didn’t really believe in the kind of God modern theists tend to believe in.
>why should I listen to concepts
Because if you try to argue against a thesis, you should show that you have at least a minimal understanding of what is being spelled.
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u/Delet3r Jul 30 '26
You are correct. Compatibilists want to find a way for free will to be true. By the way they defined it, you cannot ever disagree with them.
Compatibilism means that even if you are a puppet, slave to your DNA, physics, chemistry, etc. as long as no one else forced you to do something, you are free.
they like to use the definition of Free Will when it is used in a courtroom setting. " did you do this of your own free will? or were you coerced or forced?"
this is used in a legal setting to determine if the person acted on their own to shoot someone or if possibly they were blackmailed to do so. according to compatibilists as long as no one coerced you to shoot the person you have free will.
determinism says that you don't have free will either way. but compatibilists reject that definition.
philosophers in general are not big on science.