Can a determinist believe in free will?

Compatibilism is the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism. In other words, a compatibilist is someone who doesn’t have a quarrel with using the term “free will” and who doesn’t think we need to run around with our hair on fire if determinism turns out to be true. I think free will skeptics and libertarians are entirely wrong about the dramatic consequences that would follow from not possessing libertarian freedom.

As you may have gathered, I’ve finally migrated from the free will skeptic camp over to the compatibilist camp. Years ago, learning about determinism and moral luck for the first time rocked my world. But as the dust settled, I wondered if I had been too quick to reject the entire notion of free will. How much does it matter that we don’t have libertarian free will? How much has actually changed? Is our ordinary sense of free will really unsalvageable?

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/ timestamps /

00:00 Determinism and luck

01:06 Has anything actually changed?

05:20 Could've done otherwise

10:13 Final thoughts on compatibilism

[justindoud]

I LOVE this video. Been thinking a LOT about free will and compatibilism and this video probably strikes such an artistic balance between concise and useful.

[baxterwilliams]

This is my absolutely favorite quote on free will and compatibilism. It's from the YouTube channel, This Place.

"Go outside and look at leaves under a microscope. Are the leaves green? Or are they made up of little specks of blue and yellow?  And let's say they really are made of little specks of blue and yellow. The hard determinists are going, 'oh yeah, I guess leaves aren't green'. The compatibilists are going, 'guess what? We already have a word for when blue and yellow light hit your eyeball. We call that GREEN dumbass. It's green from all regular viewing distances and in every way that matters. What else would you call it?'.

And people who believe in souls are saying... 'microscopes are the work of the devil'

..actually I think the metaphor breaks down for them."

-This Place

[dustinellerbe]

Have you watched CosmicSkeptic's video on Compatibalism? He makes some really good points on it. I tend to agree with him on the topic.

[dustinellerbe]

All physics must be taken into account for a given situation. It's not a linear cause and effect. Its more of a web like structure.

With the dice roll, all aspects must be the same, so it wasn't actually random. If you change one factor of the physics, the outcome changes. If the exact same scenario takes place physically, you get the same outcome.

[caricue]

Your position is perfectly reasonable which makes it very annoying. I am used to the standard determinist doctrine that allows me to be creative and cunning in my responses. I've never even had to admit to a determinist that I can't rule out categorically that there could be some level of reality where it might really make sense to say that free will couldn't be a thing, even though I can't even imagine how that would work. Determinists are so confident and cocksure that they never bother to figure out what I am actually saying. I do think you could get more traction if you were a little less reasonable and took one or the other extreme position. YT comments thrive on controversy.

[MrCmon]

It matters a lot.
The belief in something called "free will" is the entire basis for all pride, shame and hatred. That's abundantly clear when you talk to people. Why do people look down on others? Because they "could have" been as awesome as the other and missed their "opportunity".
The belief in "free will" is the motor of resentment and cruelty.
That's why compatibilism is so incredibly toxic. It keeps people from reexamining their ideas about ultimate culpability.

[quad]

Let’s suppose that for all Dan knows prior to deciding, that he will end up donating money to charity. It wouldn’t surprise him if he decided to do so, or if he refrained from doing so.
But, after the fact, when he instead decides to spend the money on lottery tickets, because Dan believes that determinism is the case, for what Dan knows, no other outcome could have occurred, given the same antecedent conditions he was presented with. So, only in regards to future actions can Dan say that he could do X or not-X, but, in retrospect, Dan realizes he could not have done otherwise than what he ended up doing, since determinism is the case.

[JohnCamacho]

When I bring this up to theists they either don't answer or they try to give me the impression that my thinking is wrong without going into detail.

If God knows everything and all the choices I make, am I allowed to choose differently from what God has seen? No, right? If that isn't a manipulation of our choices, I don't know what is.

Is God determinism anthropomorphized?

[CosmoPhiloPharmaco]

The best argument for human determinism is derived from the fact that brains are closed systems. To understand what this means, just imagine a table with billiard balls hitting each other: every time a billiard ball moves, it is because it was hit by another billiard ball; this is deterministic and predictable. From the non-naturalist Libertarian point of view, you have to imagine that (some of) the billiard balls suddenly start moving, without anything visible making them move -- the explanation is that a poltergeist (i.e., a non-material ghost) caused this movement. This thesis is surely ludicrous.

That's exactly what the libertarians want you to believe, but instead of billiard balls, the sudden movements occur in a smaller scale: in neurons and atoms/electrons in your brain. How so? When the ghost makes a choice, it transmits this information to the system -- thus violating energy conservation -- and making neurons suddenly start moving (or changing their trajectories) so that the body will act accordingly.

Some may talk about non-determinism of quantum mechanics, but quantum coherence is barely stable in the brain, so we really have a violation of physics.

[MarkLeBay]

2+2 = 4. I may not have the choice to believe otherwise, but isn’t that trivially true?

The position that I think is hardest to defend is the free will skeptic who believes there is objective morality.

If there are objectively things that you ought to do based on the objective facts in the world, then there truly is no difference between the world with libertarian free will and the fully determined world.

If my beliefs comport with reality and my behaviors comport with what I ought to do based on an objective morality, then I’m behaving as I would expect to behave if I had full knowledge and control of my actions. If that’s “determinism”, then we need another word for determinism.

[robertsaget]

** A reductionist who doesn't understand he's assuming reductionism has entered the chat **