Of course, the outcome of choice is determined by the criteria used by the agent, but those criteria belong to the agent. 1. And that output is determined, just as the output of the words I am typing is determined. Emrys Westacott is a professor of philosophy at Alfred University. What the soft-determinist says is that we should not worry so much about whether or not some sort of magical indeterminate power of free-will exists, but whether the term 'free-will' has a useful meaning. I decide to make a spelling mistake in this sentince. He has deliberated over the options. If my legs are tied, I am not free to run. Any other course is bound to have disastrous social consequences. We refer to the events involved in the decision and action, all of which were strictly determined. Soft determinism is the view that determinism and free will are compatible. I decided that such an example would be a good one. What it means is everything that we ordinarily mean when we refer to the process of choosing among options. If I hand over my wallet to a robber who is pointing a gun at my head, I am not acting freely.
So, a person makes his/her own decisions, but they are the result of the way his OS ,up to that moment, deals with (and is modified by) stimuli. Compatibilism is sometimes called soft determinism pejoratively (William James 's term). So, determinism and moral responsibility are compatible given this meaning of freedom. What matters to us, they argue, is that we enjoy some degree of control over and responsibility for our actions. Here's how he argues. If acting freely simply means doing what you want, acting on your desires, then the answer is yes, you acted freely. Soft determinism is the view that determinism and free will are compatible. Hardware and software are in a way unique to a person --no one is genetically identical to another person, but have many universal, shall we say components. It is thus a form of compatibilism. "Basically human beings are organic robots with hardware that is programmed through various experiences and the way the hardware (brains and nervous systems) is (genetically) set up to deal with those experiences. The upshot is still that you do not, ultimately, have any control over or responsibility for your actions. Deciding what (if anything) counts as "morally obligatory" is a principal concern of ethics. That being the case, we can hold people morally responsible for their actions. One could make the example still more dramatic by imagining a mad scientist implanting electrodes in your brain and then triggering in you all sorts of desires and decisions which lead you to perform certain actions. Moral responsibility is a meaningful and useful concept; it is true. Someone with enough knowledge of your circumstances and condition would have been able, in principle, to predict what you would choose.2. But if the desires, decisions, and volitions (acts of will) that govern your actions are really yours, then it is reasonable to say that you are in control, and hence acting freely. Given the preceding list, this process is precisely what we mean when we say someone did something of his own free-will. The term was coined by the American philosopher William James (1842-1910) in his essay “The Dilemma of Determinism.” Soft determinism consists of two main claims: He is not coerced internally or externally; no one or thing forces him to choose one option over another. I typed the error having deliberated over whether to do it or not. Those choices have moral relevance because they meet the conditions of what we mean by 'free choice.' Published in the November / December 2014 Humanist Compatibilism, as the name suggests, is the view that the existence of free will and moral responsibility is compatible with the truth of determinism. "Look," the soft determinist says.
Determinism is true. Since neither determinism nor free will can be proved to be a fact, pragmatic humanism must assume that every person bears moral responsibility for his or her actions. On the stroke of ten, you get up and pour yourself some water. All events are determined, including the processes in our brains that end in decisions. And, he makes the choice given the criteria that are his own. And, says the soft-determinist, it does. 2. A person is said to have made a free-choice and is morally responsible for his action when he has complied with all the conditions of free-choice. I knew what I was doing. The relations among free will—determinism, moral responsibility, and agency are considered. Immanuel Kant called it a "wretched subterfuge" and "word jugglery". They reject the idea that free will must involve some strange metaphysical capacity that each of us has–namely, the ability to initiate an event (e.g. (Brains are like PCs; though the motherboards are different, they process the information in similar ways.) What else can we mean by making a free-choice except that we were not forced to choose one option and that we deliberated over the options using our own criteria? When all those conditions in making a choice are met, that's what we mean by and refer to in making a free-choice.