Honderich maintains that we care morally about both the compatibilist's and incompatibilist's conception of freedom. Is it possible to be both a compatibilist and an incompatibilist? Explain your answer.
In order to determine if it is possible to be both an incompatibilist and a compatibilist, one must first define the two terms. Incompatibilism is the thesis that if determinism is true, then (for that reason) one has no free will. That is, an incompatibilist is someone who thinks that whether or not we have free will depends on a contingent fact about the laws that govern the universe: one has free will only if he is lucky enough to be living in a universe which is non-deterministic. Though incompatibilism is divided in two subgroups (hard determinists and liberatarians), all incompatibilists agree that a necessary condition of free will is that determinism is false. Compatibilism, on the other hand, is the thesis that one in fact has free will and that even if determinism turned out to be true, one would still have free will. It is the denial of incompatibilism; the compatibilist is someone who rejects the claim that the truth of determinism would mean that we lack free will. Note that given this minimal definition, a compatibilist might be a free will revolutionary: someone who believes that we lack free will regardless of the truth or falsity of determinism. Given these definitions and distinctions, one can ascertain if it is possible to be both compatibilist and incompatibilist. Neither compatibilists nor incompatibilists are free will revolutionaries or fatalists. Compatibilists believe that the worlds where we have free will include deterministic worlds; incompatibilists believe that the only worlds where we have free will are non-deterministic worlds. Hence it is impossible to remain incompatibilist with compatiblist views and vice versa, for determinism" role in free will makes it too contradictory.
