compatibilism

Compatibilism, also known as soft determinism, is the position that determinism and moral responsibility are not mutually exclusive. Determinism holds that every event is causally necessitated by prior events and conditions. Compatibilists argue that free will should be understood not as the power to have acted differently in an identical past, but as freedom from coercion and the capacity to act in accordance with one’s own desires, values, or rational deliberations.

Historically, the idea that liberty can coexist with causality is associated with David Hume, who argued that liberty is compatible with necessity. Later writers such as Thomas Hobbes and, in modern philosophy, Daniel Dennett and Harry Frankfurt, have defended compatibilist readings. The view is often contrasted with incompatibilism, which holds that determinism rules out true freedom or moral responsibility, and with libertarian accounts that posit genuine, non-deterministic freedom.

Core claims of compatibilism include: freedom from external constraint, and freedom as alignment with one’s own reasons or desires; moral responsibility rests on an agent’s control over their actions, rather than on whether alternative possibilities were available. Some compatibilists also distinguish between action license (being able to act as one wishes) and control conditions (being the source of one’s actions).

Critics challenge the appeal to internal states by asking why freedom should require alternative possibilities. Frankfurt-style thought experiments attempt to show persons can be responsible without being able to do otherwise. In response, compatibilists refine criteria such as guidance control or sourcehood to preserve responsibility while acknowledging determinism.

Compatibilism remains a central position in discussions of free will and moral responsibility, shaping arguments in ethics, law, and the philosophy of action.