Free Will and Determinism: The Positions

Contact: Dr. Jan Garrett

Last modification: April 15, 2008

On this issue, people divide into compatibilists and incompatibilists, depending on whether they think free will (or responsible agency) is compatible with determinism.

Compatibilists are generally soft determinists, which, in spite of the name, does not mean that they relax determinism, which would amount to adopting indeterminism, but that they believe both that determinism is true and that there exists free will (or responsible agency). The ancient Stoics, J. S.Mill, and, according to many scholars, Aristotle are classed as soft determinists.

The incompatibilists divide into two camps, depending on which side of the incompatibility they affirm.

Those who affirm determinism and deny liberty or free will are called hard determinists. Among them appear to be seventeenth century philosopher Spinoza, French Enlightenment thinker D'Holbach, Friedrich Nietzsche, the famous American lawyer Clarence Darrow, and behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner.

Those who affirm freedom and reject determinism are sometimes called (metaphysical) libertarians. They include thinkers as different as ancient atomist philosopher Epicurus, Immanuel Kant, existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, and American process philosopher Charles Hartshorne.

	Liberty/Free Will Exists	There is no free will
Determinism is true	Compatibilism/ Reconciliationism: Soft Determinism (Stoics, J. S. Mill, etc.)	Hard Determinism (Spinoza, D'Holbach, Nietzsche, Darrow, Skinner)
Indeterminism is true	Metaphysical libertarianism (Epicurus, Kant, Sartre, Hartshorne)