52 Classical Compatibilism and Incompatibilism
How convincing is the classical compatibilist account of free will as free
action? As it stands, it demands refinement. To cite one concern, an agent might
have certain compulsive desires, and when she acts on those desires, she intuit-
ively acts as she wants, and she might do so unencumbered. Yet it would seem that
in such cases the agent does not act of her own free will. For example, imagine a
person suffering from a powerful neurosis acts in ways that, upon subsequent calm
reflection, she herself finds alien. Other examples might involve cases of drug
addiction or action under enormous duress, such as in a time of war. Careful quali-
fication, it might be thought, could rule out these deviant cases while retaining the
modest sort of account of free will the classical compatibilist favors.^9
3.1.2. The Free Will Problem as a Pseudo- Problem
One striking feature of the classical compatibilists was their bold presumption
that their account bears virtually no burden of proof. Common sense, ordinary
language, and careful thought, they believed, all spoke only on behalf of the
compatibilist position. On their view, the only considerations favoring incom-
patibilism arose from conceptual confusions or the misappropriation of terms.
Once these missteps were laid bare and the terms clearly articulated, any appar-
ent “free will problem” would vanish, exposed as the pseudo- problem that clear-
headed compatibilist thinking takes it to be. This attitude is found in the opening
remarks of Moritz Schlick’s (1939) essay, “When is a Man Responsible?”
Schlick titled the opening section, “The Pseudo- Problem of Freedom of the
Will,” and began as follows:
With hesitation and reluctance I prepare to add this chapter to the discussion
of ethical problems. For in it I must speak of a matter which, even at present,
is thought to be a fundamental ethical question, but which got into ethics
and has become a much discussed problem only because of a misunder-
standing. (54)Schlick went on to credit Hume with having put the free will problem to rest
years ago, and complains that its survival well past Hume’s time was a scandal.
What were these alleged misunderstandings? The classical compatibilists
accused their incompatibilist rivals of several, but the most common involved
running together the distinction between causation on the one hand and notions
such as compulsion, constraint, and coercion on the other. When one is com-
pelled to act in a certain way, for instance, one is forced to act contrary to what
one wishes and may well not be free. To be compelled is one way of being
caused. Incompatibilists, so the diagnosis went, were guilty of making a false
generalization from a certain kind of cause—a compelling, constraining, or
coercing cause—which does stand to undermine free will, to any kind of causa-
tion undermining free will. The classical compatibilist response is that it is only
a certain kind of causation, and not causation per se, that is incompatible with
freedom. For example, A.J. Ayer (1954) writes: