Arguments for incompatibilism

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2003/2017)
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Abstract

Determinism is a claim about the laws of nature: very roughly, it is the claim that everything that happens is determined by antecedent conditions together with the natural laws. Incompatibilism is a philosophical thesis about the relevance of determinism to free will: that the truth of determinism rules out the existence of free will. The incompatibilist believes that if determinism turned out to be true, it would also be true that we don't have, and have never had, free will. The compatibilist denies that determinism has the consequences the incompatibilist thinks it has. According to the compatibilist, the truth of determinism does not preclude the existence of free will. (Even if we learned tomorrow that determinism is true, it might still be true that we have free will.) The philosophical problem of free will and determinism is the problem of understanding, how, if at all, the truth of determinism might be compatible with the truth of our belief that we have free will. That is, it's the problem of deciding who is right: the compatibilist or the incompatibilist

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Kadri Vihvelin
University of Southern California

Citations of this work

(In)compatibilism.Kristin M. Mickelson - 2023 - In Joseph Campbell, V. Alan White & Kristin M. Mickelson (eds.), Wiley-Blackwell: A Companion to Free Will. New York: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 58-83.
Able to Do the Impossible.Jack Spencer - 2017 - Mind 126 (502):466-497.
Incompatibilism and the Past.Andrew M. Bailey - 2012 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 85 (2):351-376.
The Soft-Line Solution to Pereboom's Four-Case Argument.Kristin Mickelson - 2010 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (4):595-617.

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References found in this work

A Treatise of Human Nature.David Hume & A. D. Lindsay - 1969 - Harmondsworth,: Penguin Books. Edited by Ernest Campbell Mossner.
Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility.John Martin Fischer & Mark Ravizza - 1998 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Mark Ravizza.
Freedom and Resentment.Peter Strawson - 1962 - Proceedings of the British Academy 48:187-211.

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