Three Arguments for incompatibilism

Abstract

Free will and determinism are fundamentally incompatible. If determinism is true, all human actions are necessary consequences of the laws of nature and the state of the world in the remote past. Because agents lack the power to alter the past or the laws of physics, they necessarily lack the power to alter the consequences of those factors, including their own current actions. Analytical frameworks involving propositional truth-values, possible-worlds accessibility, and modal operators corroborate this position. A possible-worlds model demonstrates that in a deterministic universe, no agent has access to any non-actual state of affairs, as such access would require either a divergent past or a violation of nomological constraints. Furthermore, a modal logic analysis utilizes the principle that if an agent lacks choice regarding a proposition $p$, and lacks choice regarding the fact that $p$ entails $q$, then the agent lacks choice regarding $q$. Since the past and the laws are fixed and entail all future actions under determinism, agents possess no choice over their conduct. This conclusion remains robust even when “choice” is defined specifically in the context of moral responsibility. – AI-generated abstract.