compatibiliteitsverzoeken

Compatibilism is a philosophical position that asserts that free will and determinism are compatible. Determinism is the view that all events, including human actions, are causally determined by antecedent events and conditions. Free will, on the other hand, is the capacity of agents to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded. Compatibilists argue that these two concepts can coexist without logical contradiction.

There are various forms of compatibilism, but they generally share the idea that the kind of freedom required for moral responsibility is not the ability to have done otherwise in an absolute sense, but rather the ability to act according to one's desires and intentions, without external coercion or constraint. For example, if a person chooses to eat an apple because they want to eat an apple, and no one is forcing them to do so, then according to compatibilists, this action is free, even if their desire to eat the apple was itself determined by prior causes.

Key figures in the history of compatibilism include Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, and contemporary philosophers like Daniel Dennett and Harry Frankfurt. They have developed arguments to show how the traditional understanding of free will, often termed "libertarian free will," is not the only way to conceive of freedom and that a different, less demanding conception is sufficient for our intuitions about agency and moral accountability.

Compatibilism stands in contrast to incompatibilism, which holds that free will and determinism are mutually exclusive. Incompatibilists are divided into two main camps: libertarians, who believe in free will and deny determinism, and hard determinists, who believe in determinism and deny free will. Compatibilism offers a middle ground, attempting to preserve both our sense of freedom and the scientific or metaphysical plausibility of a deterministic universe.