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Is hard determinism a form of compatibilism?
Author(s) -
Koons Jeremy Randel
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
the philosophical forum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.134
H-Index - 15
eISSN - 1467-9191
pISSN - 0031-806X
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9191.00082
Subject(s) - compatibilism , determinism , citation , epistemology , philosophy , computer science , library science
Libertarianism is ailing. Once the preferred account of free will, it has now fallen into considerable disfavor. Most philosophers are suspicious of libertarian accounts of agent causation and unmoved movers, and are convinced that the opposite of determinism is not freedom, but indeterminism. I think that libertar- ianism's current low state is entirely justified. I will not argue for this conclusion, as it has been adequately argued elsewhere. This conclusion leaves only hard determinism and compatibilism on the field. Although hard determinism is scarcely more popular than libertarianism, many philosophers seem to reject it, not because of its philosophical implausibility, but because they fear the consequences of its being true. Metaphysicians' inability to come up with a sat- isfactory compatibilist account is thus a source of worry, and might lead one to fear that hard determinism is true. On their face, compatibilism and hard determinism are very different. Of course, compatibilists and hard determinists agree that the thesis of determinism is true: Determinist thesis (D): Every event (including human actions) has a cause, and the chain of causes leading to any given action by an agent extends back in time to some point before the agent was born. 1

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