The Metaphysical Irrelevance of the Compatibilism Debate (and,More Generally,of Conceptual Analysis) |
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| Authors: | Mark Balaguer |
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| Affiliation: | 1. California State University, Los Angeles;2. Mark Balaguer is Professor of Philosophy at California State Univer‐sity, Los Angeles. His areas of interest are metaphysics, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language, free will, and metaethics. He is the author of Platonism and Anti‐Platonism in Mathematics (Oxford University Press, 1998), as well as numerous journal articles. |
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| Abstract: | It is argued here that the question of whether compatibilism is true is irrelevant to metaphysical questions about the nature of human decision‐making processes—for example, the question of whether or not humans have free will—except in a very trivial and metaphysically uninteresting way. In addition, it is argued that two other questions—namely, the conceptual‐analysis question of what free will is and the question that asks which kinds of freedom are required for moral responsibility—are also essentially irrelevant to metaphysical questions about the nature of human beings. |
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