The Pros And Cons Of Determinism And Incompatibilism
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Compatibilism and incompatibilism are two sides of the same coin-determinism. Determinism is defined as the belief that all events of the universe are a result of events that have occurred in the past and are governed by the laws of nature. Determinists believe that all outcomes are fixed and guided by these two conditions (Kane 5). However, compatibilist and incompatibilist conceptions of determined, undetermined and free willed actions differ greatly. Incompatibilists believe that events that are predetermined and events that occur due to the exercise of free will cannot both be true. On the other hand, compatibilists believe that free will and determinism are simultaneously true which leads me to believe that the arguments for compatibilism…show more content… Their basic view of such events is that everything that happens in the universe is the inevitable and necessary result of two factors. First, the antecedent conditions, which says that every event is a result of a prior event and second, the invariable laws of nature that our world abides by (Kane 5). For example, a pot of water will boil when heat is added to it. While incompatibilism divides all events into either determined or free willed, compatibilism divides all events into either determined or undetermined. According to compatibilists undetermined events are those events that are random and unpredictable and are explained by uncertain activity at the microscopic level. Though the compatibilist and incompatibilist views of determined events may merge, their conceptions of free will differ to quite an extent. Kane argues compatibilistic free will to be a combination of two fundamental conditions: the potential to make any decision or choice that we want to along with the capacity to not make that decision and doing so without having any obstacles blocking our path (14). Similarly, the incompatibilist believes free will to be the availability of several open avenues to a person and the person choosing which…show more content… Their belief is that free will must also imply that what we choose to do must be free from external influences from our surroundings. We must possess the eventual freedom from all kinds of manipulations over our will. But the validity of this criticism is substantially questionable considering the fact that such an ultimate freedom is impossible to achieve and thus, compatibilists defend their stance by rejecting the plausibility of such a deeper free will (Kane 16). The principle argument in defense of incompatibilism is the Consequence Argument which states that a person cannot currently act in any way other than the way he/she actually does act in and that if a person cannot act in any such way, there is no free will since the prerequisite of free will is to have the ability to choose freely. The assumption that a person cannot do anything except what he/she actually does comes from the facts that we can neither currently change the invariable laws of nature nor the events of the past and since each event is a consequent result of a past event, we have no control over current events (Kane 23-24). I find that this argument is not adequate to prove the rationality of incompatibilism because it fails when taking into account an ordinary