SOFT DETERMINISM

Also called Reconciliationism. Causality is a descriptive, empirical generalization about the world or a useful assumption for scientific investigation. It is not a priori or prescriptive. Causality is not compulsion, although compulsion is one kind of causality. The question is not whether moral choices are caused but how. Free choices and acts are uncompelled choices and acts consciously determined by interests, goals, etc., by the self or one's character. There can be no freedom, i.e., self-determination, without determinism (compatibilism). Responsibility is related to the degree of conscious self-determination or control by the individual. Avoidable acts are free; unavoidable (inadvertent) acts are not free. Unlike hard determinism , the cause of moral choices is settled later and by human character. Responsibility is limited to what a person will choose, given the kind of person he is. The agent is responsible, e.g., to the extent that he could have been a different kind of person. Praise, blame, reward, and punishment are justified only to the extent that they change a person or his behavior. Freedom is the possession of the requisite power to act and the absence of interference at any of these points: possible desires actual desires decisions acts. Also see cause ; determinism ; and hard determinism