Title: Compatibilism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Headings: Compatibilism
Compatibilism
1. Free Will and the Problem of Causal Determinism
1.1 Determinism and Alternative Possibilities
1.2 Determinism and Sourcehood
1.3 Compatibilists Replies
2. Classical Compatibilism
2.1 Freedom According to Classical Compatibilism
2.2 The Classical Compatibilist Conditional Analysis
2.3 The Lasting Influence of the Conditional Analysis
3. Compatibilism in Transition
3.1 The Consequence Argument
3.2 A Challenge to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities
3.3 Focus upon the Reactive Attitudes
4. Contemporary Compatibilism
4.1 Compatibilism about the Freedom to Do Otherwise
4.1.1 Challenging Power Necessity and the Past
4.1.2 Challenging Power Necessity and the Laws of Nature
4.1.3 Challenging the Inferences Based upon Power Necessity
4.1.4 Accounting for the Freedom to Do Otherwise
4.1.5 The New Dispositionalism
4.2 Hierarchical Compatibilism
4.2.1 Higher-Order Desires and Free Will
4.2.2 Two Problems for a Hierarchical Theory
4.3 The Reason View
4.4 Reasons-Responsive Compatibilism
4.4.1 Agent-Based Reasons-Responsiveness
4.4.2 A Tension between Reasons-Responsiveness and Frankfurt Examples
4.4.3 A Mechanism-Based Reasons-Responsive Theory
4.4.4 Assessing Reasons-Responsive Compatibilism
4.5 Strawsonian Compatibilism
Bibliography
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Acknowledgments

Content: 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. Compatibilists, on the other hand, claim that these concerns miss the mark. Some compatibilists hold this because they think the truth of causal determinism would not undermine our freedom to do otherwise  (Berofsky 1987, Campbell 1997, Vihvelin 2013, etc.). As a result, these compatibilists tell us, the truth of causal determinism poses no threat to our status as morally responsible agents (notice the enthymematic premise here: