page_title: Compatibilism
section_title: Criticism
hierarchical_section_title: Compatibilism / Criticism
caption_attribution_description: Čeština: Hodinkový strojek značky Prim (kalibr 52), hodinářská expozice, Městské muzeum Nové Město nad Metují English: Prim clockwork of a wristwatch, watchmaking exhibition, Municipal Museum, Nove Mesto nad Metuji, Czech Republic This file was uploaded with Commonist.
context_page_description: Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are mutually compatible and that it is possible to believe in both without being logically inconsistent.
  Compatibilists believe freedom can be present or absent in situations for reasons that have nothing to do with metaphysics. They say causal determinism does not exclude the truth of possible future outcomes.
  Similarly, political liberty is a non-metaphysical concept. Statements of political liberty, such as the United States Bill of Rights, assume moral liberty: the ability to choose to do otherwise than one does.
context_section_description: A prominent criticism of compatibilism is Peter van Inwagen's consequence argument.
  Critics of compatibilism often focus on the definition(s) of free will: incompatibilists may agree that the compatibilists are showing something to be compatible with determinism, but they think that this something ought not to be called "free will". Incompatibilists might accept the "freedom to act" as a necessary criterion for free will, but doubt that it is sufficient. Basically, they demand more of "free will". The incompatibilists believe free will refers to genuine (e.g., absolute, ultimate) alternate possibilities for beliefs, desires, or actions, rather than merely counterfactual ones.
  Compatibilism is sometimes called soft determinism (William James's term) pejoratively. James accused them of creating a "quagmire of evasion" by stealing the name of freedom to mask their underlying determinism. Immanuel Kant called it a "wretched subterfuge" and "word jugglery". Kant's argument turns on the view that, while all empirical phenomena must result from determining causes, human thought introduces something seemingly not found elsewhere in nature—the ability to conceive of the world in terms of how it ought to be, or how it might otherwise be. For Kant, subjective reasoning is necessarily distinct from how the world is empirically. Because of its capacity to distinguish is from ought, reasoning can 'spontaneously' originate new events without being itself determined by what already exists. It is on this basis that Kant argues against a version of compatibilism in which, for instance, the actions of the criminal are comprehended as a blend of determining forces and free choice, which Kant regards as misusing the word "free". Kant proposes that taking the compatibilist view involves denying the distinctly subjective capacity to re-think an intended course of action in terms of what ought to happen.  
  Ted Honderich explains his view that the mistake of compatibilism is to assert that nothing changes as a consequence of determinism, when clearly we have lost the life-hope of origination.
caption: Compatibilism has much in common with so-called "hard determinism", including moral systems and a belief in determinism itself
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