[teew]

One thing that's really strange about this article is that it presents compatibilism and incompatibilism as having a different concept of 'free will' – compatibilism sporting an everyday sense of free and incompatibilism roughly a more scientific one. The article assumes incompatibilism to be correct on those grounds and goes from there. Coming from the philosophical literature, this is simply not the case. If both sides assume the same definition of free will, e.g. as "the agent could have chosen differently", they still have a genuine disagreement...

[raindeer2]

Well there are many versions of compatibilism I guess, but just reading the Wikipedia article on compatibilism I don't think most compatibilists think freedom relies on whether or not causal determinism holds. Please tell me if i'm wrong.

Defining free will: Compatibilists often define an instance of "free will" as one in which the agent had the freedom to act according to their own motivation. That is, the agent was not coerced or restrained. Arthur Schopenhauer famously said: "Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills."[14] In other words, although an agent may often be free to act according to a motive, the nature of that motive is determined. This definition of free will does not rely on the truth or falsity of causal determinism.[2] This view also makes free will close to autonomy, the ability to live according to one's own rules, as opposed to being submitted to external domination. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism

[teew]

> don't think most compatibilists think freedom relies on whether or not causal determinism holds

I guess it is technically true that they would be okay if it turned out determinism was false, since their argument is that determinism and free will CAN be true at the same time. Their line of argument is only really worthwhilein the first place if you believe it plausible that causal determinism holds. And I think most of them do (maybe it's telling that the position is also sometimes called 'soft determinism'). If they denied determinism from the outset, they'd probably be in the 'libertarianist' camp instead (not to be confused with political libertarianism).

The 'tree' of positions relating to determinism & free will is roughly: Do you believe determinism and free will to be mutually exclusive? If no: you're a compatibilist. If yes: you're an incompatibilist. -> In which case: do you believe determinism to be true OR do you believe free will to exist? You believe determinism is true: you are skeptical about free will, to you free will is an illusion. You believe free will to exist: You're a libertarianist and believe complete determinism not to be true.

Although often much lengthier and more technical than Wikipedia, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has very well-vetted entries on philosophical topics, where the authors all are scholars in the respective topic and are asked to write introductory entries (potential downsides: English only and not always completely novice-friendly). There is one on compatibilism, too https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/

[GoblinSlayer]

>If we assume that the materialists are right (i.e., that we lack free will)

Yep, philosophic aspect of the article one big facepalm.

[raindeer2]

Why?