Compatibilism, however, holds that determinism is true, and that it is compatible with free will. More specifically, compatibilism is the view or belief that causal determinism is true, yet human beings still exist as free, morally responsible agents when their actions are produced by their desires without external constraints. A compatibilist will classify a free act by the means that it does not change with the absence or presence of previous causes. An illustration of a free act to a compatibilist is an act that does not entail any coercion by another human agent. Since the laws of nature and the universe are obviously not human agents, actions that are caused them are not considered free acts. Therefore, for compatibilists, it is incorrect to say that human beings are always or never free under determinism. An example of the compatibilist way of thinking is, like libertarianism, one has the choice to continue or stop reading this paper. But compatibilism and determinism both believe in the position that either of the reader’s choices would have been casually determined since the dawn of time, but they disagree if this choice is an example of free will. Compatibilists think it is because the choice is not forced. However, someone may be threatening to blow the reader’s head off with a gun unless he/she reads this paper. According to compatibilists, that would be an example of a lack of free will.
There are many criticisms of compatibilism, and one of its most obvious problems pertains to their description of free will. Though compatibilists hold the position that free will is compatible with determinism, their classification of free will is flawed. Incompatibilists are very amenable to the notion that the absence of coercion is a condition that is essential for free will, but they believe there is more to the concept of free will to satisfactorily define it. Although a coerced act is not free, many would judge that an un-coerced act may not necessarily be free. Many believe that free will requires authentic and indisputable alternate choices for actions, beliefs, or desires, instead of simply spurious ones. Without the presence of true alternate choices, the compatibilist definition of free will creates a very hollow kind of freedom. Some libertarians – taking into account this weaker free will – could go so far as to criticize the compatibilists for being determinists in a different guise. Determinists could also criticize the compatibilists for categorizing freedom in a different manner with the intention for making the assertion that there is some freedom of choice.
For a moment, assume the compatibilist view in that determinism is true. When keeping this assumption in mind, at every given moment an unimpeded man is fully determined to possess the wants that he does possess. Since those desires causally determine his actions, then even though he does do what he desires to do, he cannot ever do otherwise. This fulfills the compatibilist specifications for free will. However, free will must require the capability to do otherwise, and determinism is incompatible with this notion. Thus, the compatibilist view of free will is insufficient; a freely willing agent must also have the ability to do otherwise. This lack of ability to do otherwise is Chisholm’s basic rebuttal to compatibilism. Even with research, it is difficult to find a valid compatibilist attempt to answer this incompatibilist objection. The unencumbered agent can live an entire life of doing what he wants, but if he is in a deterministic world (by the compatibilist’s definition), he could never have done otherwise. Since the freedom of will generally mandates the existence of alternative possibilities, the compatibilist premise of freedom fails.
Though compatibilists and libertarians have different views about the nature of free will, they concur that moral responsibility is a significant concept and tool for modern society. Without moral responsibility, the core concepts of justified punishment should obviously not exist. Yet compatibilists graft their definition for free will to enable them to bring in moral responsibility. The difficulty with that proposal, however, is the notion that determinism applies to all events in the history of the world; choices made by agents are forever casually determined by events that are outside of their control. As previously noted, this leads one to conclude that the agents could not have done otherwise. There is a chance they would have made a different choice if the events that controlled them were different, but because those events are entirely out of an agent’s control, the outcome is firmly determined. It is determined that this paper will be completed on time; there is no choice in the matter. Thus, there cannot be a true concept of moral responsibility for compatibilists, since the events of the world cannot truly be different due to one's decision-making procedure, there cannot be changes in the world for which a person could be held morally responsible. In this light, the compatibilist’s position is not very different than the determinist, who obviously disregards moral responsibility.
Assume for pragmatic reasons that there is free will. It may be easy to agree with the direction of the compatibilist and propose that through some tampering with the meaning of free will, moral responsibility and compatibilism can be made compatible – which insofar does not seem to work. Unfortunately, for compatibilists, agents cannot have both determinism and free will. As previously stated, if all the events of the world are strictly casually determined, then there is no possibility for moral responsibility based on free choice.
There are a numerous amount of positions that one can take regarding free will and moral responsibility. Two of the most prominent positions in the modern world come from the fundamental ideas of libertarianism and compatibilism. While compatibilism teaches that people have free will in a deterministic world, the libertarian belief contrasts this with the position that free will and determinism is incompatible. Though both positions demonstrate solid arguments, they also both have the burden of faults. But when one analyzes the stances and beliefs of both theories, libertarianism proves to be the superior view on free will and responsibility.
