Ask HN: Is "compatibilism" causing students to lose interest in philosophy?
1amichail216/2/2025, 2:22:36 PM
I feel that this idea is giving philosophy in general and philosophers who support it a very bad reputation.
Comments (21)
techpineapple · 15h ago
Ok, I didn't know what compatiblism was, but I asked Claude, and now curious if you can you expand on your thesis? I'm interested as someone who is dipping his toes into philosophy.
amichail · 15h ago
It's claiming that people without genuine free will can still be morally responsible.
It does this by redefining genuine free will into something that isn't free will but still calling it free will.
Why would anyone want to study philosophy further after hearing this nonsense?
JohnFen · 13h ago
> Why would anyone want to study philosophy further after hearing this nonsense?
Why should one single philosophical idea cause someone to reject the entire approach to understanding? Philosophy is full of different, sometimes competing, ideas of which this is just one.
Rejecting an entire field of study because of one hypothesis seems like rejecting all of literature because of a single book you didn't like.
amichail · 13h ago
It shows they have very poor peer review.
JohnFen · 13h ago
I don't see how it shows that at all, but even if it does, I don't see how that counters what I said. Just because a person disagrees with one philosophical idea doesn't imply that all of philosophy is worthless.
amichail · 13h ago
Compatibilism is not an obscure topic in philosophy. Its popularity reflects poorly on the field.
If you read about it, you will notice they are redefining terms such as free will and moral responsibility to mean something else entirely.
And in so doing, they are trying to gaslight the general public into thinking that a deterministic world is compatible with moral responsibility.
Ukv · 11h ago
> they are trying to gaslight the general public into thinking that a deterministic world is compatible with moral responsibility
To my understanding:
1. We have something that we've come to call moral responsibility. If I punch someone, I'm considered morally responsible for that action and may be punished for doing so. Seems to me a useful social construct to discourage behavior detrimental to a collaborative society
2. We have a world that is, to all evidence we've observed so far, consistent with both deterministic and non-deterministic interpretations of physics. True that Copenhagen interpretation is the most prevalent and is non-deterministic - but I'd argue that's at least in part because it makes the math simpler opposed to physicists necessarily believing that a split between classical observers and quantum systems, with random collapses when the two interact, is actually how the universe works
If tomorrow new experiments somehow validated Everett's interpretation, that the whole universe is just one big quantum system evolving according to the Schrödinger equation, would it mean we've been wrong this whole time to talk about our moral responsibility? Would we have to upend laws based on supposedly realizing that we don't actually have moral responsibility? Personally, I don't see why it should have any real bearing on the concept of moral responsibility - or really anything in day-to-day life (else our observations wouldn't have been consistent with both interpretations for so long).
amichail · 9h ago
If free will does not exist, then punishing people for wrong doing doesn't make sense. They should be isolated from society and rehabilitated if possible — just like people found not liable due to mental illness.
Ukv · 9h ago
> then punishing people for wrong doing doesn't make sense
I think all that's needed for punishment to make sense is for that punishment to have a deterrence effect, reducing frequency of the targeted behavior. I'm not seeing why whether or not punishment makes sense would hinge on whether our universe turns out to be deterministic or to be non-deterministic.
amichail · 8h ago
A deterministic universe would make free will impossible.
While a punishment in a deterministic universe can have a deterrence effect, it might not be the morally right thing to do.
Jtsummers · 8h ago
There is no deterrence effect in a deterministic universe without free will. Deterrence requires the individual to make a choice, which per your question they cannot make.
And if you remove moral responsibility from criminals (to the extent that makes sense as a term in a free-will-free deterministic universe), then those punishing criminals are also free of moral responsibility. They did not make a choice, it was made for them and they are merely moving per the rules of the deterministic universe.
amichail · 7h ago
You can certainly make a robot without free will that tries to avoid being punished.
In terms of humans without free will, evolution could make them try to avoid punishment as a survival instinct.
Ukv · 8h ago
> While a punishment in a deterministic universe can have a deterrence effect, it might not be the morally right thing to do.
I feel whether it's the morally right thing to do depends on your ethical framework, not really whether the universe is deterministic. For instance in terms of maximizing pleasure and minimizing suffering, you'd want to punish when you estimate the suffering relieved by enacting the punishment (deterred crime, long-term precedents encouraging benevolence, etc.) outweighs the suffering caused by the punishment itself.
techpineapple · 6h ago
"If free will does not exist, then punishing people for wrong doing doesn't make sense. They should be isolated from society and rehabilitated if possible — just like people found not liable due to mental illness."
I mostly agree with you but punishing people for wrong doing does make sense if it's aligned with your definition of rehabilitation - i.e. if you think it will have a deterrence effect.
But I guess, and maybe it's because I'm a compatibilist, I personally think it's morally wrong to punish people for for purely moral reasons.
JohnFen · 12h ago
Hmmm, I suspect that you and I may not agree as to what the purpose of philosophical studies is. It's a very different purpose than that of the sciences.
I personally don't agree with most of what compatibalism posits, but that doesn't mean I don't agree with philosophy as a field of study.
> they are trying to gaslight the general public
Who is "they"? And I'd venture to say that the vast majority of the general public have never even heard of compatibilism, so are hardly being "gaslit" by it.
amichail · 12h ago
Philosophy does not have much utility nowadays. Scientists should stop pretending that it does.
Scientists who say they don't understand compatibilism should say what they really think about it (e.g., that it is nonsense or an attempt at gaslighting).
JohnFen · 9h ago
> Philosophy does not have much utility nowadays.
I have no idea what you mean by this.
> Scientists should stop pretending that it does.
Science and philosophy are two entirely different fields. Very few people are both. Whatever scientists think about philosophical topics carries no more weight than what anyone else thinks about philosophical topics.
amichail · 8h ago
Maybe astrology should be an academic field also and scientists should not mock it?
beardyw · 12h ago
> And in so doing, they are trying to gaslight the general public into thinking that a deterministic world is compatible with moral responsibility.
Since moral responsibility does exist it is obviously "compatible" with determinism.
Perhaps you meant free-will which I would agree is a chimera.
[Though I would argue it is still compatible]
techpineapple · 14h ago
me? I don't understand, aren't there all sorts of different schools of philosophy and ways of looking at the world? Wouldn't studying philosophy help me find counter-examples that may expand my worldview? Compatibilism is probably my default position, but studying philosophy I may have that position challenged, isn't that the goal of studying any field of inquiry? To engage with new ideas?
amichail · 14h ago
What compatiblism is saying would be ok in an academic context if they define a new term like consistency instead of hijack free will to mean something else entirely. But even then, consistency of behavior in a deterministic world would not lead to the possibility of moral responsibility unless you also hijack that term and give it a different meaning.
It does this by redefining genuine free will into something that isn't free will but still calling it free will.
Why would anyone want to study philosophy further after hearing this nonsense?
Why should one single philosophical idea cause someone to reject the entire approach to understanding? Philosophy is full of different, sometimes competing, ideas of which this is just one.
Rejecting an entire field of study because of one hypothesis seems like rejecting all of literature because of a single book you didn't like.
If you read about it, you will notice they are redefining terms such as free will and moral responsibility to mean something else entirely.
And in so doing, they are trying to gaslight the general public into thinking that a deterministic world is compatible with moral responsibility.
To my understanding:
1. We have something that we've come to call moral responsibility. If I punch someone, I'm considered morally responsible for that action and may be punished for doing so. Seems to me a useful social construct to discourage behavior detrimental to a collaborative society
2. We have a world that is, to all evidence we've observed so far, consistent with both deterministic and non-deterministic interpretations of physics. True that Copenhagen interpretation is the most prevalent and is non-deterministic - but I'd argue that's at least in part because it makes the math simpler opposed to physicists necessarily believing that a split between classical observers and quantum systems, with random collapses when the two interact, is actually how the universe works
If tomorrow new experiments somehow validated Everett's interpretation, that the whole universe is just one big quantum system evolving according to the Schrödinger equation, would it mean we've been wrong this whole time to talk about our moral responsibility? Would we have to upend laws based on supposedly realizing that we don't actually have moral responsibility? Personally, I don't see why it should have any real bearing on the concept of moral responsibility - or really anything in day-to-day life (else our observations wouldn't have been consistent with both interpretations for so long).
I think all that's needed for punishment to make sense is for that punishment to have a deterrence effect, reducing frequency of the targeted behavior. I'm not seeing why whether or not punishment makes sense would hinge on whether our universe turns out to be deterministic or to be non-deterministic.
While a punishment in a deterministic universe can have a deterrence effect, it might not be the morally right thing to do.
And if you remove moral responsibility from criminals (to the extent that makes sense as a term in a free-will-free deterministic universe), then those punishing criminals are also free of moral responsibility. They did not make a choice, it was made for them and they are merely moving per the rules of the deterministic universe.
In terms of humans without free will, evolution could make them try to avoid punishment as a survival instinct.
I feel whether it's the morally right thing to do depends on your ethical framework, not really whether the universe is deterministic. For instance in terms of maximizing pleasure and minimizing suffering, you'd want to punish when you estimate the suffering relieved by enacting the punishment (deterred crime, long-term precedents encouraging benevolence, etc.) outweighs the suffering caused by the punishment itself.
I mostly agree with you but punishing people for wrong doing does make sense if it's aligned with your definition of rehabilitation - i.e. if you think it will have a deterrence effect.
But I guess, and maybe it's because I'm a compatibilist, I personally think it's morally wrong to punish people for for purely moral reasons.
I personally don't agree with most of what compatibalism posits, but that doesn't mean I don't agree with philosophy as a field of study.
> they are trying to gaslight the general public
Who is "they"? And I'd venture to say that the vast majority of the general public have never even heard of compatibilism, so are hardly being "gaslit" by it.
Scientists who say they don't understand compatibilism should say what they really think about it (e.g., that it is nonsense or an attempt at gaslighting).
I have no idea what you mean by this.
> Scientists should stop pretending that it does.
Science and philosophy are two entirely different fields. Very few people are both. Whatever scientists think about philosophical topics carries no more weight than what anyone else thinks about philosophical topics.
Since moral responsibility does exist it is obviously "compatible" with determinism. Perhaps you meant free-will which I would agree is a chimera.
[Though I would argue it is still compatible]