Determinism, Compatibilism, Libertarianism

Contemporary philosophical debates about free will can frequently resemble the old parable of the blind men and the elephant. Various blind sages are asked to examine an elephant: one grabs the tusk and declares the elephant is very like a spear, another grabs the tail and says that the elephant is like a rope. In the case of free will debates, we witness various schools of thought groping around a central question. Determinists examine free will -- the human capacity to choose a course of action from different ethically-weighted possibilities -- and decide that every cause has a prior cause, and thus free will is a myth. Libertarians examine free will, and decide that determinism is a myth. Meanwhile compatibilists examine determinism and libertarianism and find some middle route whereby the two possibilities can be made consistent with each other. In this paper I will examine the...
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