
Sabine Hossenfelder, over at her Backreaction blog, is arguing for hard determinism — that is, for the claim that we don’t have free will.
She’s making the mistake that many (but not all) scientists make when they confront this question: she’s assuming that the libertarian analysis of freedom is correct, she’s not recognizing the compatibilist’s account of free will, and she’s slipping into conflating determinism and fatalism.
To quickly recap, libertarians believe that we can be free only if our decisions are not fixed by pre-existing physical laws and facts (or any pre-existing laws and facts, for that matter). If we make a free choice, they say, then it is impossible that anyone — even a Laplacean Demon — would be able to predict the action I choose. Determinism is not compatible with freedom.
Compatibilists (also known as soft determinists) argue that it doesn’t matter if our actions are the result of physical laws and pre-existing facts. The only think that matters is whether we acted because we wanted to act in that way. As long as we weren’t coerced, as long as nothing forced us to do something against our will then we acted freely. Free will is compatible with determinism.
I’ve made the case for compatibilism before, so I won’t rehash it all here. But I do want to step through and highlight the specific point where Bee (I hope Dr. Hossenfelder won’t be offended if I use her nickname in the informal context of blogging, even though we aren’t acquaintances) goes astray. Continue reading →