Chisholm’s Response to the Campatibilist Claims
Much of Chisholm’s argument can be interpreted as a response to three essential compatibilist claims.
Claim 1: free will (as the necessary condition for responsibility) is properly opposed to coercion not to causal determinism. Ch disputes this in #2.
Claim 2: the opposite of determinism, indeterminism, is incompatible with moral responsibility. Ch admits this is #1, and develops it in #4.
Claim 3: “could have done otherwise” means “would have done otherwise if…” Ch states the position in #3, up to the top of 355a, and then refutes it in a short, difficult bit of reasoning which I will expound if we get through the rest of the selection).
Ch’s constructive point is that determinism and indeterminism are not the only logical possibilities. The idea of agent causality indicates a third possibility. #5 and #6 state the position: note the use of Aristotle’s example of the man moving his hand etc. Don’t be thrown by the medieval lingo; note carefully his definitions of immanent and transeunt causation on 355b at the bottom.
#7 and # 8 and # 9 state and respond to two objections to this view. Difficult, but not so central.
#10 clarifies the relevant sense of free will, as against the standard compatibilist account. The actus imperatus is the voluntary human action—not the issue; the actus elicitus is the free choice itself, the person’s own choosing, which is the issue.
#11 starkly and famously states the meaning of agent causality and #12 draws the conclusion relevant to naturalistic explanations: no science of humans in the strict sense. So, the answer to Sellars’ hope of reconciling the manifest and scientific images is that it is just not o ...