Easy to find, from Stanford, for instance.
Free Will and the Problem of Causal Determinism
''Compatibilism emerges as a response to a problem posed by causal determinism. But what problem is that? Well, suppose, as the thesis of causal determinism tells us, that everything that occurs is the inevitable result of the laws of nature and the state of the world in the distant past. If this is the case, then everything human agents do flows from the laws of nature and the way the world was in the distant past. But if what we do is simply the consequence of the laws of nature and the state of the world in the distant past—then we cannot do anything other than what we ultimately do. Nor are we in any meaningful sense the ultimate causal source of our actions, since they have their causal origins in the laws of nature and the state of the world long ago. Determinism therefore seems to prevent human agents from having the freedom to do otherwise, and it also seems to prevent them from being the sources of their actions. If either of these is true, then it’s doubtful that human agents are free or responsible for their actions in any meaningful sense.
These lines of argument, which have been regimented in the work of Ginet (1966), van Inwagen (1975, 1983), Wisdom (1934), Mele (1995), and Pereboom (1995, 2001), among many others, present a real problem for those who are inclined to think that we are free and responsible for our choices and actions and that the natural world might operate as a deterministic system (or if not completely deterministic, one in which an indeterminism is merely stochastic noise that is causally irrelevant at the level of human agency). How to respond to such arguments? On the one hand, incompatibilists accept (some version of at least one of) these arguments and so insist that our self-conception as free and responsible agents would be seriously misguided if causal determinism turns out to be true. Some incompatibilists argue for these conclusions indirectly—first by arguing that determinism precludes freedom or control and then second by arguing that such freedom is necessary for moral responsibility. Other incompatibilists argue directly that causal determinism precludes moral responsibility.''
The bit you quoted from Stanford begins, “on the one hand…” without supplying the other hand.
Everything I’m about to say I have said many times before. If someone new wants to join the convo, great. If not, there’s no I reason to go round the block for the 101st time when we, the usual suspects, have already been around it 100 times.
A compatibilist, especially a neo-Humean compatibilist, is going to challenge the very first premise of the so-called problem: the laws of nature.
He will point out, correctly in my view, that “laws” is a is misnomer. As the aforementioned Norman Swartz has argued, there are no “laws” of nature. What we call “laws,” contra Newton and others, are merely descriptions of stuff that happens. “Laws” have no coercive or causal efficacy. They are not prescriptive. They are descriptive.
So the whole framing of the alleged problem fails from the get-go. As Swartz says, the “laws” of nature are a hangover from theism. Newton thought there was a lawgiver (God), and the laws of nature are his laws. But they are not. They are descriptions of what happens in the world.
So what is the problem? There isn’t any.
There is only one actual world. In fact there may be others, under the quantum multiverse or David Lewis’s modal multiverse, but the only world we have access to is the one we call actual. So every moment of every day I must choose something in the actual world. Even not choosing among available alternatives if a form of choosing: choosing not to choose.
Standard compatibilism says that when I choose, my choice is free insofar as it is done according to my desire and free of impediment by external factors.
Some compatibilists affirm that we could not choose other than what we did, given antecedent circumstances.
I disagree. I think these compatibilists have failed to attend to modal logic, “modal” meaning modes of being.
My view is that we CAN always choose differently, given antecedent circumstances, only that we WILL not.
This is because all our choices are contingent (could have been otherwise).
If we could “back up” the whole history of the world and replay it again and again, it might well be true that I would always choose Coke over Pepsi.
It does not logically follow that I HAVE TO do that. I will do it always, again and again, because I WANT TO.
Give me DIFFERENT antecedents, I might want to choose Pepsi instead.
Which is compatibilism. And sounds very much like peacegirl’s author was arguing for, but apparently without knowing it.
It’s just shorthand for “possible states of affairs in the actual world.”
