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I think this article is useful when thinking about determinism and free will:
Incomparibilist free will means independence from external circumstances, not internal ones.
Oh! Okay. I mentioned this quote to my high school religion teacher, and he seemed to think free will was determined by our internal mind-state, and that our choices would result the same every time, so I guess he probably believed in incompatibilist free will, and that fits with what you're saying... although it doesn't sound very free to me.
So how would you describe compatibilist free will then? Is that the belief that our decisions are random, that based on the external and internal circumstances, they could still go either way?
Why would you want to be free from your own brain state?
Compatibilitism: No, See wikipedia,
From wikipedia:
I'm reading, and having a hard time seeing the difference between compatibilism and hard determinism.
Isn't every action done out of some determined motive? Even when we choose which motive to act on, isn't that choice motivated by some other motive? Or is that the difference, that the compatibilist would say the choice to act on a motive is free and not based on another internal motive?
I guess it would help me if you could write something that briefly describes all three positions like this (not saying my descriptions are accurate, just an example):
Incompatibilist free will = Belief that we'd always choose the same thing, dependent on internal states and independent of external circumstances, and this is freedom
Compatibilist free will = Belief that we could choose differently, even with the same internal and external circumstances, and this is freedom
Hard determinism = Belief that we'd always choose the same thing, based on the same internal and external circumstances, and this is not freedom
Compatibilism=free will could exist even if determinism is true.
Incompatibilism=free will could not exist if determinism is true
Hard determinism=incompatibilism+determinism, ie no free will.
Compatibilists don't generally deny that actions have motives, they deny that your own motives are a constraint on your own freedom. They typically define freedom as being able to do what you want, irrespective of whether what you want is determined.
How aware are we of our real motives? What's the hard evidence for that?
Oh. So it really is just a definition thing? I thought the two sides might actually have different beliefs about the outcome of that original thought experiment.
So compatibilists think we do have "real motives", but since we're not so aware of them, we might as well keep calling our decision-making process free will. And hard determinists acknowledge the same "real motives" but think that since there are motives driving our decisions that we aren't aware of, we shouldn't call our decision-making process free will. Is this basically the difference between the two?
Compatibilism and incompatibilism have different definitions, and various mechanisms have been proposed to fulfill them, which is why I have been using phrases like generally and typically.
A incompatibilist libertarian ... someone who takes the could-have-done -otherwise view of free will.... should view the thought experiment as a bit of a have-you-stopped-beating-your-wife question. It funnels them into thinking that if they could have done otherwise under a set of circumstances, they would have done something less connected with their values and thought process.
The wise libertarian would want to interpret CHDO on the donut principle, as meaning the ability to have done differently under the same external circumstances but not necessarily given the same brain state. The fact value divide makes it not implausible that thought processes could have some independence from events, although an appropriate causal mechanism would be needed too.
Compatibilism is more about definitions than mechanisms. For a compatibilist, you are free if you can do what you want, ie, if no one is impeding you, ie the legal fiction of acting of your in free will. That doesn't demand much in the way of a special mechanism, and so is compatible with determinism. Because compatibilists define free will differently, people talk about "incompatibilist fee will".
The problem with intuitive, folk models of decision making is that they reflect the individuals beliefs about FW, so they are unit independent evidence.