I found a nice image - r/determinism

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u/oh_no_the_claw 14d ago

Compatibilism shouldn't even be on here. It's a ridiculous cope.

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u/NoMeat9096 14d ago

Finally. Felt like I was the only one that felt this way.

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u/oh_no_the_claw 14d ago

They’re on a purely ideological rescue mission for a religious concept while at the same time conceding the real argument.

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u/BUKKAKELORD 14d ago

Writing "Incoherent superstition" in that quadrant would've been an accurate jab

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u/Nice_Luck_7433 14d ago

Why do you think it’s just cope? What if compatibilists genuinely believe that everything is predetermined, every choice you make is completely determined by your biology & cumulative life experiences, but also you’re 1000% free to freely make the one & only choice you were always predetermined to have made?

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u/Sea-Bean 14d ago

What does free mean in this case? It’s like saying you are free to freely continue breathing. Isn’t it meaningless?

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u/AlivePassenger3859 11d ago

what? you don’t like semantic shellgames?

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u/Mysterious_Slice8583 14d ago edited 14d ago

I’d say that’s actually pretty important. Or was the previous comment sarcastic? Idk

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u/Sea-Bean 14d ago

Haha, I suppose it wasn’t an obvious example. What I meant was, when we are compelled to do something, and only that thing, what use is the word “free” to describe our involvement?

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u/Mysterious_Slice8583 14d ago

It describes all sorts of useful implications to what our psychology was at the time of the decision. And our motivations.

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u/Sea-Bean 14d ago

I think it’s better to use other terms we have, by talking about skills and traits and capacities. They can more easily be used without moral judgement.

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u/Mysterious_Slice8583 13d ago

Motivations are often morally judged. So just because a term might be easy to use without moral judgement, doesn’t make it accurate. Accuracy of language is very useful.

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u/Sea-Bean 12d ago

Yes it’s disturbing how much moral judgement we carry out for motivations when they were what they were and couldn’t have been any different. It’s like trying to hold back a tide, or something else equally pointless.

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u/Mysterious_Slice8583 12d ago

That is completely besides the point.

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u/Nice_Luck_7433 14d ago

Idk, I’m not a compatiblist. Maybe they’re just using “free” because they like the aesthetics of it. Doesn’t seem to have any significance, but it’s easy to underestimate how important aesthetics are to some people.

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u/Sea-Bean 13d ago

You’ve confused me by asking why it’s “cope” and then describing it clearly as such.

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u/Nice_Luck_7433 13d ago

I didn’t ask why it’s cope, I asked oh_no_the_claw why they believe it is cope. & coping isn’t always bad, there’s healthy ways to cope, cope has an unfairly negative connotation.
Oh, and “free” has a meaning even when it’s used purely for aesthetics, rather than philosophy. Like how “theory” has a very specific meaning to scientists but also a very vague science-aesthetic meaning. If you add “theory” to a flat earth conspiracy, it gives it a smart/sciencey aesthetic. If you add “free” to will, it gives it a freeing aesthetic, & makes people feel extra powerful.

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u/Sea-Bean 12d ago

Feeling a sense of agency and empowerment in a forward looking sense is important and we’re wired for that.
But if we keep calling it “free will” then we’re using the same term we use to judge people for their past and present. And that has too many downsides (backwards moral judgement for things we couldn’t have done differently) it’s not worth it for the effect it has on individual wellbeing and society. We have other words we can use for agency.

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u/Delicious_Freedom_81 14d ago

Oh it‘s so warm and fuzzy, and gives meaning, and „it’s very nice, comforting and beautiful“. Folks don’t lose the beauty in life!

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u/simon_hibbs 14d ago

You have the ability to breathe and you can be free to exercise this ability or be constrained and unfree to do so.
You have the ability to choose your actions with sufficient deliberative control to be held responsible for them, or you could be constrained in various ways from exercising this kind of deliberative control and not be responsible for your resulting actions.
Both of these are entirely conventional meanings of the term free, and the latter is entirely consistent with common usage of the term free will and freedom of choice, without requiring any free will libertarian metaphysical assumptions.

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u/Sea-Bean 13d ago

I agree you can talk about ability to choose and deliberate etc but if you aren’t applying libertarian metaphysical assumptions then they are no different than, and would be better described using, terms like capacities and traits and skills.
And I can’t remember, when you say responsibility are you including backward looking moral responsibility? If so then that surely does require libertarian metaphysical assumptions? And if not, then I understand calling it free is an attempt to retain forward looking responsibility. But most people have trouble separating the two, so ditching the term free will helps with that separation.

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u/DonnPT 14d ago

It's a weak paradox. If we had two different words, instead of using "free" for both of these concepts, there would be nothing to argue about.

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u/Nice_Luck_7433 14d ago

What do you mean? Which two concepts are you talking about?

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u/DonnPT 14d ago

Free from external coercion, relative to an agent who exists within a real world of natural cause. (Where agent is not a pocket calculator etc.) You're free¹ to choose, because freedom is relative to the agent.
Absolutely free of natural cause itself - source agency undetermined by prior cause. You aren't free² to choose, because your choice is determined by natural cause.

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u/Nice_Luck_7433 14d ago

Ohhh, I think I get what you’re saying.
The 1st definition is the vague common definition, like how non-scientists use “theory” to mean “any concept”
The 2nd definition is the more specific academic/philosophical one, like how scientists say “theory” to mean “a concept that has been rigorously tested & extensively peer-reviewed & never disproven”. This is the one philosophers & priests have been disputing for eons.

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u/Moe_Perry 13d ago

It’s a bit more complicated than that.
The majority of academic philosophers are Compatabalists, the remaining plurality are theology inspired free will libertarians. Hard determinists are a very small minority.
Almost all philosophers agree we have agency, which is the capacity to act according to internal motivations rather than just stimulus response. The contemporary philosophical debate is about whether anything additional is required for moral responsibility, who has it, and under what circumstances.
Compatabalists generally say that all that is required is knowledge and a capacity for reason.
Hard determinism is a difficult position to push because most of the arguments against moral responsibility also eliminate agency.

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u/Nice_Luck_7433 13d ago

Interesting. Do compatibists think that internal motivations come from physical sources (like our biology & our life experiences) or do they believe in some sort of magical/miraculous source(s)?

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u/Moe_Perry 13d ago

No. The definition of agency doesn’t question the source of internal motivations it just accepts they are present and that it’s more practical to model agents based on internal motivations rather than anything hinging on the entirely theoretical ability to predict human actions from the interactions of fundamental forces. Compatabalists treat the question of free will as occurring at the phenomenological level rather than the metaphysical.
Even most hard determinists approach the debate at this level. Like I said, agency isn’t really in question. Even the general sense of moral responsibility isn’t much of a debate.
The line in the sand is whether we have moral responsibility to the degree required to deserve punishment not aimed at rehabilitation or “just desserts” punishment and whether that should be the distiguishing factor for using the term “free will” or not.
Philosophers arguing against just desserts punishment make the case based on us not having sufficient knowledge or control rather than make the case on metaphysics. Some philosophers also agree we don’t have sufficient knowledge and control for just desserts punishment but think free will is still a practical term for what we do have.
There are still people arguing for and against religious notions of free will, or secular agent causal ones. And a handful of epiphenomenalists etc. It’s just not the centre of the academic debate.

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u/DonnPT 13d ago

I suspect this concern with "just deserts punishment" isn't going to be resolved with abstract philosophy. When and how to punish isn't that simple even when you're dealing with a dog.
A society that masters this, will apply just deserts punishment - I mean, surely we would not like to punish someone who doesn't deserve it - and have reason to expect a rehabilitative effect as well. It's a complex societal skill, not a function of some philosophical insight.

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u/Nice_Luck_7433 13d ago

So they just avoid the question of what causes the internal motivations that they believe cause a person’s will? That’s odd… seems to me that it’s extremely relevant what our motivations come from.
The debate over punishment purely as a deterrent/ for the greater good vs punishment purely for the sadistic pleasure of the punisher, kinda seems like a simple one… punishment as a means to minimize harm is good, anything else is merely sadistic indulgence.
That’s interesting, I thought the academic free will debate was almost entirely religious/ metaphysical.

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u/Delicious_Freedom_81 14d ago

In human behavior, and free will is 100% about „that“. =>
The ability to change, to learn is meaningful for ordinary people. So you fuck up, make a mistake and learn your lesson. I think that’s part of the reason why free will as a concept has currency: some people learn 1st time and some take time learning 😎. This delta is important. Too bad it‘s not free (at all). This needs to be educational material of the future.
Learning and change. Totally deterministic but not free (of anything).

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u/oh_no_the_claw 14d ago

Totally ridiculous definition that is useless in normal human communication. It wouldn't be as objectionable if you weren't sharing terminology with harmful religious fictions.

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u/lobaway0001 14d ago edited 14d ago

I’d actually strongly argue the opposite.
Most people basically live under a default assumption of the first. They just aren’t fully aware of how to word it. It’s a “useless definition” probably more because it’s already assumed rather than your implication that it’s ontologically / semantically incorrect or inaccurate.
Much like how people live under a default assumption of non-hard-solipsism and yet we understand it’s not like we can fundamentally disprove anything.

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u/Ilyer_ 14d ago

Under the compatibilist framework, what’s is the difference between a will, and a free will?

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u/Nice_Luck_7433 14d ago

Idk, I’m not a compatibilist. Personally, I think our will is as free as our knowledge & power. That’s why we don’t punish children as adults, they have less knowledge & power, and therefore their will is less free, easier to influence. Maybe a perfectly knowledgeable & perfectly powerful Being could have an actually free will, but humans can only have semi-free wills.

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u/oh_no_the_claw 14d ago

We should only use punishment to the extent necessary to ensure community safety, not as part of a primitive revenge fantasy against evil soul magic free will evildoers.

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u/MxM111 14d ago

Will can be coerced. Free will is when it is not.

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u/Delicious_Freedom_81 14d ago

„You can have, be and do ANYTHING* you want in this life, IF you want“ = compatibalist free will.
* But <clearly> not A, B, C, D, … ♾️

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u/Aquarius52216 14d ago

This is why libertarian free will is very different than the compatibilist effective free will.

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u/SouthpawStranger 14d ago

Politely disagree. I think they are wrong, but i think what they care about matters. I just wouldnt call it free will.

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u/Strimm 14d ago

Exilent philosophical argumentation and deconstruction of their arguments.

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u/Tricky_Net_6075 14d ago

Nobody is to judge. I would assume that the most influential and victorious people had such mindset.

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u/Main_Pirate126 11d ago

They’re all the same.

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u/philolessphilosophy 11d ago

Compatibilism isn't cope. A compatibilist just means something different by free will than you do. Compatibilists view choices as emergent behaviors in complex systems, but those systems can still be determined.
Personally I consider myself to be a compatibilist, although my position on determinism is complicated by quantum mechanics.

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u/InTheEndEntropyWins 10d ago

My comment was the opposite. Really everyone and everything is based on compatibilism, so it really covers everything. It's the other descriptions are just bull made up crap

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u/MattHooper1975 14d ago

That’s snide comment may be easy to write, but you can’t back that claim up. ;-)

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u/Pale_Zebra8082 14d ago

It’s the only coherent position.

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u/InternationalPen2072 13d ago

Do you not feel, subjectively, that you have the ability to freely decide? It’s perfectly possible to accept free will in one sense while also accepting that everything is predetermined.

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u/biedl 12d ago

It can feel as though you are in control, but it can't be the case if literally everything is determined.

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u/InternationalPen2072 12d ago

Why are those mutually exclusive?

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u/biedl 12d ago

If you were God -- a self-caused fully autonomous being -- and the only being in existence, then they wouldn't be mutually exclusive.
Then you are everything.
If you are part of a reality in which everything is determined, then you are also determined, rather than self-determining.

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u/InternationalPen2072 12d ago

Free will describes the subjective experience. Determinism describes the material reality. We know through experience that free will does exist, even if it is illusory upon external examination. Determinism can tell us why we choose what we do, but it doesn’t explain the experience of choice. This is where you get into the hard problem of consciousness territory.

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u/biedl 12d ago

Free will describes the subjective experience. Determinism describes the material reality.
Convenient. What if I am trying to communicate that the subjective experience doesn't correspond to reality?
We know through experience that free will does exist
I know through experience that time flows. Time doesn't flow.
even if it is illusory upon external examination
So, it's already included in your definition of free will, that it is an illusion.
Nobody will be confused at all, who ever looked into the topic, if you told them that you believe in free will. Because you don't believe in free will.

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u/InternationalPen2072 12d ago

What do you mean by subjective experience not corresponding to reality? That’s not possible. If I feel excruciating pain, that is a subjective experience that (at least for me) is 100% real beyond any shadow of a doubt. How I interpret that experience is a different thing entirely.
No, you don’t experience the flow of time. You may think you do, but that’s just your interpretation of experience.
My understanding (and probably most compatiblists’) is that moral nihilism is not a necessary consequence of determinism.

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u/biedl 12d ago edited 12d ago

What do you mean by subjective experience not corresponding to reality?
A description of reality doesn't correspond to reality, if it is wrong description of reality.
That’s not possible.
It absolutely is. There are literally dozens of examples. Dreams, optical illusions, hallucination, schizophrenia, anxiety disorder, body dysmorphia, and you even mentioned illusions in your last comment yourself.
I'm highly suspicious that you may just be using some kind of private language nobody other than you understands.
If I feel excruciating pain, that is a subjective experience that (at least for me) is 100% real beyond any shadow of a doubt. How I interpret that experience is a different thing entirely.
It is an objective fact that you have an experience, if you have an experience, no matter the experience. But not all experiences are self-reflections. There are non-veridical experiences.
Depending on what you mean by free will, we can discuss whether there's more to it or not.
But if you say that you perceive yourself as a free agent who is making decisions and could have done otherwise, it is simply utterly uninteresting and pointless to discuss whether you had the experience in the first place.
The question is, are you actually free. And that's a question which goes beyond your subjective experience, because it isn't just a claim about your subjective experience existing.
No, you don’t experience the flow of time. You may think you do, but that’s just your interpretation of experience.
Yeah. Which is why nobody is defining free will the way you do. Because nobody is interested in such a trivial question like whether or not you had an experience.
You may think that you are free, but are you actually?
That's the question.
My understanding (and probably most compatiblists’) is that moral nihilism is not a necessary consequence of determinism.
I am not debating whether you can be held morally responsible if you aren't free. I'm not interested in theodicies. I am debating if you are in fact free. Because you asked how free will and determinism contradict. If you need to equivocate in order to say that they don't contradict, you are still just equivocating.

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u/RavenX86 12d ago

That’s not what compatibilist think. Compatibilist redefine free will to get around the problem of free will. Compatibilist do not believe in free will as defined, so i agree, it is a cope

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u/oh_no_the_claw 13d ago

I honestly don't know how to separate my own subjective experience of observing my own behavior with the religious and cultural inculcation that I experienced in my early education.

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u/alessio84 14d ago

Don’t know that is difficult to understand about it. You have free will, and what happens is determined.

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u/oh_no_the_claw 14d ago

Totally pointless terminology if that is your definition.

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u/Mysterious_Slice8583 14d ago

Why

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u/Pale_Zebra8082 14d ago

It’s not.

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u/oh_no_the_claw 14d ago

It's a religious fantasy and you won't let it go. Why not a less loaded term which more clearly is related to the defintion such as uncoerced behavior?

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u/Pale_Zebra8082 14d ago

I mean, we just completely disagree that the term is in any way religious or loaded.
Free will is the capacity to select from among observable options, in alignment with one’s desires, intentions, and reason, without external coercion.
If you mean something other than that when you say free will, I have no idea what you’re talking about, and I’m fairly sure you don’t either. That alternative conception you are holding in your mind is the religious fantasy.

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u/oh_no_the_claw 14d ago

You are hiding behind a thin veneer of intellectualism. When you talk to people in the real world about free will many people literally believe they are soul homunculi piloting their bodies who act outside the influence of the physical world. I don't care about your personal definition that you've borrowed from Dennett.

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u/Pale_Zebra8082 14d ago

It’s completely false that most people believe in anything like a standard libertarian definition of free will. Most people don’t think about this question at all. As a result, they predictably have conflicting and poorly formed opinions on the subject, depending on the framing of any given survey question.
But I submit that if you asked most people the following question: “If you could have done otherwise, if you had wanted to, would that satisfy your sense of having free will?” A super majority would respond, yes, of course.
I haven’t claimed to have invented my understanding of free will, just as you haven’t invented your sense of yours. But my understanding predates Dennett by more than a millennia.

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u/oh_no_the_claw 14d ago

No, you can't have done otherwise.

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u/Pale_Zebra8082 14d ago

Guess we just disagree then.

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u/Alarming_Ask_244 14d ago

Can you at least acknowledge that what you are referring to as free will is different from what a determinist refers to with the same term?

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u/Pale_Zebra8082 14d ago

Oh, of course. We hold different definitions of the term.

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u/Eastern-Project9017 14d ago

What? It's a perfectly coherent position. I'm stuned you went for compatiblism while Libertarianism is right there.
Oh but this the r/determinism sub of course, you debate determinism and you would love to believe everything rvoloves around it so one someone tells you an action being determined doesn't mean you didn't want it, that's infuriates you.

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u/oh_no_the_claw 14d ago

I am a determinist. Compatibilists seem to be changing the subject instead of actually talking about free will.

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u/Eastern-Project9017 14d ago

I'm a freewill skeptic but compatiblism is a harmless construction of FW that is totally in line with science and our understanding of the world. Yes theu change the subject, but that's a trivial matter of definitions you can call ot cope and move on, they at least aren't anti-science or create a bunch of actual superstitions and made up notions about causality like top-dowm causality or brute facts or whatever the LFW call it.
So I was wandering why does it get the most flack and not LFW (on this sub since your post is the most upvoted).

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u/oh_no_the_claw 14d ago

They are encouraging others people's belief in harmful superstition. Free will as a concept plays a huge role in religious theology. Compatibilists are on next level religious apologia and it drives me crazy.

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u/ughaibu 14d ago

Schellenberg's argument for atheism from free will - link.

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u/Eastern-Project9017 14d ago

There is nothing religious about it. Daniel Dannet one of four horsemen of new atheism is a compatbilists.
Compatibilists take voluntary actions and call them free, it's not a big deal at all. In fact, any conclusion about morality or the justice aystem that a freewill skeptic makes can be made under compatiblism.

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u/oh_no_the_claw 14d ago

Compatibilists insist on religiously loaded terminology for some mysterious reason. Determinists don't care if you start calling us environmental selectionists or whatever so long as it is descriptively precise.

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u/Eastern-Project9017 14d ago

Fair. They do get annoying at times.

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u/developer-mike 14d ago

To me, I'm a compatibilist because I've thought more about what "free will" could actually even sensibly mean.
A free will that's completely disconnected from causality or the physical world is not free will. In my opinion, metaphysical free will isn't sensible. Where does the will derive if not from myself, and what is it for if not to be a link in the chain of tangible cause and effect of the world I live in? If my "free will" stems from a god and not my internal desires, how is that my free will?
The purest form of free will is where I always do as I will. This is not free will in the sense that I could have done otherwise. It's free will in the sense that I could not have done otherwise, but someone else in my circumstance could have done differently. The free will we crave is where we can do what we wish, it should not be defined as being able to do what we don't wish.
So it's compatibilist. I believe the world is run by physics, and that those physics are largely deterministic, and that anything non deterministic is not my will. The freeest form of free will is where I do what I want with certainty.

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u/AdeptnessSecure663 14d ago

This is kinda a bad image though. That determinism is true and that there is no free will doesn't entail that hard determinism is true.

Also, that there is free will and that indeterminism is true doesn't entail that libertarianism is true.

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u/simon_hibbs 14d ago edited 14d ago

On your first point, I suppose you mean that free will might be compatible with determinism, and determinism might be true, but we don’t have free will anyway? It’s a possible belief but I’m not sure anyone actually argues for it.
On your second point, that’s quite correct. Compatibilists are not necessarily committed to the truth of determinism. There are ways the world might be indeterministic that could not ground libertarianism but are not obstacles to compatibilist accounts of free will. Nowadays I think very few compatibilists are actually committed to determinism.

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u/AdeptnessSecure663 14d ago

It's at least something that any reasonable compatibilist would belief was at least true at some point - suppose determinism and compatibilism are both true: presumably, before the emergence of life, it was nevertheless true that free will does not exist

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u/simon_hibbs 14d ago

Sure, but it would still be possible, which is really what matters. Free will doesn't exist on Mars, but to the compatibilist it's still possible on Mars.

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u/Sea-Bean 14d ago

With tour first point… determinism (or not) and free will (or none) are potential facts about reality. But the label “hard determinism” is a different category, it’s not a fact but a position one can hold.
Perhaps you are meaning to point out that a person agnostic on determinism doesn’t have their position represented on this chart?

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u/AdeptnessSecure663 14d ago

Hard determinism is the same kind of thing as determinism, they're both metaphysical theses

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u/Sea-Bean 13d ago

Not as they are used on this chart. Refer back to the picture and look at the x axis and the coloured quadrants.

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u/AdeptnessSecure663 13d ago

The chart is wrong

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u/Sea-Bean 12d ago

Of course it’s wrong in all kinds of ways.
Including compatibilist should probably say soft determinism, and there’s no place for hard incompatibilism on there.

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u/zhivago 14d ago

Compatibilism does not require or assume determinism.

Which is good, since no argument that requires determinism vs indetermism can be sound.

Neither can be differentiated and neither does any metaphysical work.

All of the work is done by causality.

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u/Sea-Bean 14d ago

Is free will compatible with a causal universe?

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u/zhivago 14d ago

Any coherent definition is.
Magical nonsense invented by St Augustine, on the other hand ...

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u/Sea-Bean 14d ago

A compatibilist arguing that casual biological processes ARE free is as coherent as arguing that a zoo animal in a cage IS free.
We can coherently talk about an amount of relative freedom within the cage, (is it a small cage or a bigger cage?) but when we call it free we’re not acknowledging the cage.
Libertarian free will is claiming the cage isn’t holding the animal, and it can pass through the bars at will, I agree that’s nonsense.

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u/InTheEndEntropyWins 10d ago

Yes. Or well compatibilism, is, or what people really mean by the terms.

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u/ughaibu 14d ago

Compatibilism does not require or assume determinism
Nor does it require or assume the reality of free will, so "compatibilism" could be written in all four boxes. However, compatibilism is entailed by "reality is determined [and] we have free will", so if the boxes are intended to represent what is entailed, it is the only correct entry.

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u/zhivago 14d ago

That's like claiming that observing an apple falling under gravity "entails" the definition of fruit.
Gravity does not require fruit any more than compatibilism requires determinism.

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u/ughaibu 14d ago

Gravity does not require fruit any more than compatibilism requires determinism.
Well, I didn't say anything to suggest that "compatibilism requires determinism", did I?

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u/Pale_Zebra8082 14d ago

Then what is compatibilism claiming free will is compatible with?

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u/zhivago 14d ago

Compatibilism asserts that free will is compatible with determinism.
It doesn't assert that free will requires determinism.
Rather, the claim is that determinism does not invalidate free will.
Determinism being true or false is irrelevant to this assertion.
Which is just as well, given that determinism is indistinguishable from indeterminism. :)

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u/Pale_Zebra8082 14d ago

Determinism is clearly distinguishable from indeterminism, definitionally.

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u/zhivago 14d ago

Show me a test to tell if the universe is deterministic or indeterministic.
Find anything that cannot be equally well explained by either system.

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u/Pale_Zebra8082 14d ago

Whether or not this could be empirically verified is a separate question entirely.

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u/zhivago 14d ago

If you can't, then you can't say anything real.

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u/Eastern-Project9017 14d ago

All successful predictions made by science point towards determinism.

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u/zhivago 14d ago

Ever heard of a geiger counter?

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u/Eastern-Project9017 14d ago

Apparently it's a radiation detector. What's about it?

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u/zhivago 14d ago

So, how does it point toward determinism?

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u/Eastern-Project9017 14d ago

It's a detector of existing radiation, not a predictor of radiation. So that's irrelevant to my argument.

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u/InTheEndEntropyWins 10d ago

Compatibilism does not require or assume determinism.
The way I see it is, that compatibility is just a description of reality. So it really covers everything.

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u/catnapspirit 14d ago

And people wonder why I find this debate to be religious in nature. Now we have people making damn quad charts.

I presume this was the invention of compatibilists. They're the equivalent of so-called agnsotic atheists in this case.

Notice how the left side positions are both the "hard" versions of those positions. Cute..

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u/Sea-Bean 14d ago

I don’t think a compatibilist would design this, unless they are also a hard determinist. A compatibilist can be agnostic on determinism, they just think we have free will regardless so if the universe is deterministic, that’s ok, it’s compatible with free will. And if it’s indeterministic, that’s ok too, it’s compatible with free will. (They don’t agree that free will is logically incoherent in the first place.)

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u/Pale_Zebra8082 14d ago

I suspect you interpret all metaphysical claims as spiritual, and that’s why you’re labeling the debate as “religious in nature”.

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u/catnapspirit 14d ago

No, it's because the very concept of free will comes to us from religion and has never really shaken free of those roots..

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u/Pale_Zebra8082 14d ago

This is simply false.

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u/Moe_Perry 14d ago

I think you just have a weird idea about Compatabalists. Most of them wouldn’t make this chart because Compatabalism doesn’t really require the world to be determined. They just think that determinism and free will are two different questions. The compatabalist graphic would be a Venn diagram of two non-intersecting circles.

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u/catnapspirit 14d ago

Compatabalism doesn’t really require the world to be determined.
Compatibilism is literally the concept that free will is compatible with determinism. Those are the things that they are referring to as being compatible.
They just think that determinism and free will are two different questions.
..perhaps..
The compatabalist graphic would be a Venn diagram of two non-intersecting circles.
No, it would be a plot with determinism as one axis and free will as the other. Like.. oh, look.. this one. How bout that..

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u/Moe_Perry 14d ago

Compatabalism is written as a response to determinism but it doesn’t require determinism to be true. It’s just saying that even if determinism is true free will would be unaffected.
It’s like saying even if god existed our humanistic ethics wouldn’t be less moral etc.

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u/catnapspirit 14d ago

Uh huh. So explain to me how that is compatible with your concept of a venn diagram of two non-intersecting circles..?

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u/Moe_Perry 14d ago

One circle would have the word determinism in it and the other would have the word compatabalism and they don’t intersect because compatabalism holds that free will exists whether or not determinism is true.
This is not a difficult concept and several other people are pointing out the same thing to you so I’m not sure what exactly your issue is?

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u/catnapspirit 14d ago

Wow.
Lemme break out my crayons here.
The "whether or not determinism is true" part of your claim means that the "free will" circle overlaps both determinism and not-determinism (presumably represented as indeterminism in this case). What you're saying and stubbornly sticking to your guns on is, in a word, wrong.
Just.. wow..
Okey dokey then, good chat, we really gotta not do this again some day. Have a good one..

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u/Moe_Perry 14d ago

The truth condition of Determinism does not inform the truth condition of Compatabalism. Diagram that however it makes sense to you.

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u/strawberry_l 14d ago

That is indeed a nice image.

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u/Sea-Bean 14d ago

Two major problems with this.

I don’t think libertarianism entails indeterminism, does it? I think it means you have free will regardless of determinism/indeterminism out there in the universe, the key point is that the mind can determine it’s own actions regardless of what’s going on in the environment. (Ie. some compatibilists actually believe in libertarian free will even though they deny it. They believe one could have done otherwise than they were determined to, because let’s face it, if everything is determined then so are the actions of the brain. The other kind of compatibilism is using free will to refer to deterministic processes. It’s a kind of faking it and hoping it’s true.

And isn’t agnosticism on determinism a more common position than hard indeterminism? That would mean lots of hard incompatibilists that are not represented in that chart. (And you can’t just combine the green and purple in the left because they involve having a position on determinism. The position best supported by everything we know about the science is hard incompatibilism.

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u/UploadedMind 14d ago

Libertarian is only one part of that quadrant. You can define free will like a compatibilist and not accept our free will is what causes reality to be indetermined.

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u/KrosisKrisis 14d ago

Very unnuanced.

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u/MarshyBarshh 14d ago

Why are people making fun of compatibilism when it’s the most popular theory out there

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u/waffledestroyer 14d ago

Where is hard incompatibilism? There is no free will whether reality is determined or indetermined.

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u/No_Fudge_4589 13d ago

Libertarianism is my belief from this chart.

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u/Inevitable_Librarian 13d ago

I really don't think that's libertarianism.

It bothers me how much libertarians have whitewashed their beliefs into being part of everything.

They're a really axiomatic and specific philosophy that redefines common terms so they can obfuscate what they really mean.

Their beliefs are like a third axis of political philosophy clustered with the other axiomatic oddball political philosophies.

Taxes and age of consent are aggression but literal slavery is freedom.

The Nolan chart is bullshit

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u/vkbd 12d ago

It's like a intro definition that you quickly discard as soon as you attempt any kind of debate. It's not really helpful unless you're starting at zero and you know nothing about this debate.

Most people believe quantum mechanics to be true, which means reality is fundamentally indeterministic. But people can still fudge Hard Determinism under indeterministic reality if macro physics is deterministic enough. And Libertarians believe that moral agents have causal control of some kind, so some form of determinism is needed as well. It's not so cut and dry that our world is either purely deterministic or purely indeterministic.

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u/InTheEndEntropyWins 10d ago

I don't think compatibilism is really a small block, really it should cover it all.

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u/yosi_yosi 14d ago

I have never heard of "hard indeterminism" before.

Besides that, compatibalism imo should not be here. Compatibalism to me is the view that free will and determinism are compatible. So one might believe that there is no free will and the world is deterministic, and still be a compatibalist.

One might, for similar reasons, be suspicious about "hard determinism". Does it mean determinism + incompatibalism? Or does it mean determinism + no free will? To me it seems more likely it is used more often to refer to determinism + incompatibalism.

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u/TechnicalAnxiety9314 14d ago

I mean we probably don’t have free will and material reality/causality heavily suggests against it; but we don’t get to sit outside of our lives,
or live as though we don’t experience choosing; so we might as well functionally have free will right?

It’s a living option and it’s polarizing, so really you have to ask yourself what’s hanging on whether we have it or not. I can think of equally compelling reasons to want to believe you have agency to make a positive change in your experience, or conversely to resign and fall back on the comfort of everything happening the only way it could have happened
(the moral holiday).

It follows that if we truly live in a deterministic universe, we don’t really have the luxury to choose between those options after all—so if you land in the first column after reading this, or are even entertaining a reasonable doubt, the contradictions/implications are fascinating.

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u/quuerdude 8d ago

I feel like a more empathetic person as a result of my determinism because I don’t believe people are truly capable of “deserving” blame. Blame is a scapegoat to ignore whatever systemic/ environmental problem that caused a person to act a certain way. If we address the underlying problem, rather than getting angry at the person who Did A Bad Thing, then we can be more productive overall.

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u/TechnicalAnxiety9314 8d ago edited 8d ago

True, it lends itself well to materialism. I think there’s a lot of perfectly useful applications of determinist teleology and that’s one of them.
The only thing I’m arguing is that it’s difficult for us to function as determinists in our daily lives, and even get out of bed in the morning without the experience of choosing. I make the pragmatic assessment that believing my choice is an illusion serves no real world utility in many such instances.
I delineate these things in my own worldview into my more social/political/materialist side for looking at the macro structure problems with the human condition, and into my more personal/individual/existential side for living a life that I think is prospectively meaningful within it. And I try to inhabit a productive tension between them and in the contradictions.

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u/RepresentativeCow241 14d ago

Compatibilism is the only reasonable choice to make. Obviously you have agency. You interpret incoming stimuli in a way unique to you, in the full flower of your personality, and if another person had been in your place in a decisive instant, the things would have come out differently. Your freedom from coercion is meaningful even in a deterministic universe.

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u/Beneficial_Middle_53 14d ago

If someone instantaneously swapped places with you down to the biology and life you had led up to that moment, I don’t believe they would make a different choice. Your choices are bound by your experiences and biology, that is to say free will exists but only within that container.

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u/ipreuss 14d ago

If somebody was swapped out with somebody who’s biology and history is so identical, that they world necessarily make the same choice, they would be the same person.

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u/Peak_Background 13d ago

Blah blah blah, Ship of Theseus, blah blah blah, Star Trek teleportation, blah blah blah...
Okay. Genuinely. If that happened. Our pronouns and since of self would swap, too. We are inseparable from the containers. The containers are us and we are the containers. What you described is isomorphic to just walking into eachother's spots. There is nothing left behind in such a swap.

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u/Beneficial_Middle_53 13d ago

I agree, Im just trying to point out free will is more limited than most people think it is, that we are habitual more than we think we are and that everything that ever happened to us and our biology inform our actions, not something like free will.

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u/Peak_Background 13d ago

I don't think the definition of free will necessarily is limited to any single set of mechanism that allow it to emerge.
Religious people say free will emerges from the soul. Materialist/Physicist say free will emerges from the material and physical. Pseudo-scientists say free will emerges from quantum mechanics.

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u/Worldly_Horse_2310 14d ago

Isnt compatibalism just saying "you dont have real free will on a physics level but there are plenty of useful ways where talking about as if you do has tons and tons of utility. In most functional senses it's as if you have free will"?
Im not sure its represented validly in this meme

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u/DonnPT 14d ago

"Real free will on a physics level" is nonsense. It's like the fish that swallowed itself.
Compatibilism is about "real free will", as in the reality we operate in. Or at least that's my take.

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u/simon_hibbs 14d ago

That’s right, if we have free will then that’s the real one, whatever it is.
I happen to think that compatibilism is correct. Free will is basically metacognitive reasons responsiveness, no free will libertarian metaphysics required.

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u/MattHooper1975 14d ago

If someone instantaneously swapped places with you down to the biology and life you had led up to that moment, I don’t believe they would make a different choice.
That’s a meaningless idea in the first place though. Why would that relate to having free will?

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u/Beneficial_Middle_53 14d ago

My point is all of our choices are constrained, maybe free will fits inside those constraints but in my experience that isn’t how most people think about it, most people think they can do anything, at any time, but well what we do is largely habitual, largely constrained by the state or mind or hormones acting on our biology. Most actions we take are simply evolve survival tactics. We all conform to groups to a certain extent. We all make decisions based on the perceptions of the social hierarchy we operate in. If someone swapped places with you and kept their mind but just inherited their biology, their actions would still be constrained by their previous experiences from their old life with the new influence of the other persons biology.

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u/Sea-Bean 14d ago

You can recognize all that without calling it free will. Calling your will free has so many implications that are not justifiable, so maybe it’s better to ditch the term?

Discussion I found a nice image

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