RE: Soft Determinism, Hard Determinism, Necessitarianism, Fatalism...Huh?
January 9, 2014 at 2:33 am
(January 8, 2014 at 6:25 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Compatibilism is horseshit, because it includes embedded in it a total redefinition of what "free will" means. I hate it when people do that: they make an operational definition for the lab, or a skewed definition that fits a physical monist view, and then say, "Voila!" when their begged question inevitably provides the "answer" they knew was there all along.
The problem is that the usual idea of free will (i.e libertarian free will) is itself incoherent. The standard argument and regress problem just leave it in tatters. So no, it (compatibilism) isn't question-begging in the slightest.
And redefining things is basically a staple of philosophy. I guess we better chuck out, I dunno, the coherentist theory of truth. After all, it redefines truth...
As for the OP, fatalism is logically fallacious, and is not the same thing as determinism. Determinism sees events as fixed due to causality, while fatalism sees events as not being fixed because of causailty (at least not alone), but fixed ultimately because of fate, hence the name. You see this with concepts like the "bullet with your name on it" and such.
@Rasetsu I tend to find the short and sweet definition of compatibilism being the position that "one can act on their determined desires" to be decent.
