← See the axis · Freedom of the will

The subterfuge

Redefining freedom, is that not dodging the real question?

Objects to Compatibilism

Kant, William James

1. The question was: could we have acted otherwise? The compatibilist answers it by changing the meaning of the word "free", not by answering it.
2. Kant called it a "wretched subterfuge"; William James, a "quagmire of evasion". The freedom that truly matters, they say, is the power to do otherwise, which determinism removes.
3. To call an entirely determined act "free" would be to save the word while losing the thing: responsibility, merit, remorse presuppose more than the mere absence of external constraint.

Therefore So the compatibilist compromise may be a word over a problem: either freedom is real, or it is not.