Determinism.....

[Ryft]

So you mean it is the person's choice (and not his ability to reason that choice) which describes his will? In other words, their rationalizing isn't relevant to will?

Describes his will? Sort of. Our conative faculties inform and influence our will, and the instantiation of our will is the volitional activity called choice.

Here, let me lay out my understanding on this. In order for choice to be meaningful and morally significant, it must be deliberate. To make a deliberate choice is to contemplate a set of options (e.g., chocolate or vanilla pudding) and to instantiate that which enjoys the greater degree of our desires (e.g., chocolate pudding), whether those desires are rational or emotional or some concert of both. If we evaluate this series closely, we realize that our choices are a function of our conative faculties; for example, the choice of chocolate pudding is a causal chain that is propagated and filtered through the motivational complex of our desires. This is why choices of the will always reveal the character of the person. The causal chain runs through the agent's conative faculties, not irrespective of them (libertarianism) but concordantly with them. Put in other words, the volitional activity of our will actively shapes this causal chain, as opposed to passively responding to a causal chain (determinism). We are not puppets. Nothing makes our choices for us. We make our own choices. Although our will is determined or "causally necessitated," it is so in the right way by forces internal to the choice-maker, not external. We know from the laws of nature that determinism is real, but we also know from the human experience that choice is real. Compatibilism is the theory that takes both seriously and articulates them as co-existent realities.