“An Argument For Compatibilism”
Jason Streitfeld
from the Specter of Reason website
On the contrary, what makes this discussion and debate particularly tricky is that we must first start out with the assumption that any working definition we arrive at is one in which we were free to have chosen another one instead. Right from the beginning we are stuck. So, compelled or not, here we go.
For example:
What if this philosophically respectable way of defining it is the only possible way that one ever could have defined it? And then around and around we – everyone – goes.
Then the part that peacegirl seemed to focus in on: “…the extent that a person has free will is the extent to which they are morally responsible for their actions, where moral responsibility is predicated on their ability to make choices.”
The fact that, unlike rocks and other mindless matter, we actually do choose. And, thus, moral responsibility rests entirely on that. Like, say, intuitions themselves are something that rocks don’t have and so the matter comprising minds/brains that produce them is qualitatively different from all other matter.
And it surely is that. But if all the consequences/effects that our minds/brains precipitate is also wholly in sync with – caused by – the laws of matter that govern rocks, how is responsibility itself not just another manifestation of the only possible reality?
I’m always willing to acknowledge that I’m not thinking this through correctly, if the compatibilists are willing to acknowledge that they were only ever able to think it through as they do.
Then what?
I’m sorry, but given the manner in which I construe a wholly determined universe, human “rationality” produces a man or a woman that like the rock unfolds into the only possible future. Here only the existence of a God, the God allows me to imagine an entity able to create material objects – us – in possession of whatever “free will” actually is. And even here there’s the problem [for me] of those who insist that their own God is omniscient. How is that squared with human autonomy?