Compatibilism Quotes

“But recently I have learned from discussions with a variety of scientists and other non-philosophers (e.g., the scientists participating with me in the Sean Carroll workshop on the future of naturalism) that they lean the other way: free will, in their view, is obviously incompatible with naturalism, with determinism, and very likely incoherent against any background, so they cheerfully insist that of course they don't have free will, couldn’t have free will, but so what? It has nothing to do with morality or the meaning of life. Their advice to me at the symposium was simple: recast my pressing question as whether naturalism (materialism, determinism, science...) has any implications for what we may call moral competence. For instance, does neuroscience show that we cannot be responsible for our choices, cannot justifiably be praised or blamed, rewarded or punished? Abandon the term 'free will' to the libertarians and other incompatibilists, who can pursue their fantasies untroubled. Note that this is not a dismissal of the important issues; it’s a proposal about which camp gets to use, and define, the term. I am beginning to appreciate the benefits of discarding the term 'free will' altogether, but that course too involves a lot of heavy lifting, if one is to avoid being misunderstood.”
― Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained

“Where is the freedom in being perfectly satisfied with your thoughts, intentions, and subsequent actions when they are the product of prior events that you had absolutely no hand in creating?”
― Sam Harris, Free Will

“A puppet is free so long as he loves his strings”
― Sam Harris, Free Will

“At one conference Hameroff told Dennett, publicly, "You know, Dan, maybe the reason you like this [mechanistic] idea is because you're a zombie. And maybe the reason I see things differently is because, I'm not."

Hameroff told me he was half-joking. But Dennett took offense. "I wound up apologizing," says Hameroff. "I guess he only likes the idea of being a zombie if we're all zombies.”
― Steve Volk, Fringe-ology: How I Tried to Explain Away the Unexplainable-And Couldn't

“I’m going to be discussing some of the common attitudes held by people writing about free will. These come in four basic flavors:
The world is deterministic and there’s no free will. In this view, if the former is the case, the latter has to be as well; determinism and free will are not compatible. I am coming from this perspective of “hard incompatibilism.”
The world is deterministic and there is free will. These folks are emphatic that the world is made of stuff like atoms, and life, in the elegant words of psychologist Roy Baumeister (currently at the University of Queensland in Australia), “is based on the immutability and relentlessness of the laws of nature.” No magic or fairy dust involved, no substance dualism, the view where brain and mind are separate entities. Instead, this deterministic world is viewed as compatible with free will. This is roughly 90 percent of philosophers and legal scholars, and the book will most often be taking on these “compatibilists.”
The world is not deterministic; there’s no free will. This is an oddball view that everything important in the world runs on randomness, a supposed basis of free will. We’ll get to this in chapters 9 and 10.
The world is not deterministic; there is free will. These are folks who believe, like I do, that a deterministic world is not compatible with free will—however, no problem, the world isn’t deterministic in their view, opening a door for free-will belief. These “libertarian incompatibilists” are a rarity, and I’ll only occasionally touch on their views.”
― Robert M. Sapolsky, Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will

“If you make yourself really small, you can externalize virtually everything.”
― Daniel C. Dennett, Freedom Evolves

“In the cosmic scheme of things, your life barely registers as a blip. It is hardly noticeable in the long arc of history. The information you produce by moving your arm up is not going to tell you much about anything of interest. But when you scope down in a way that reflects the horizon scaled to human thought and action, your life looms large in the image. It doesn’t just loom large; it occupies a central place. The events of your life provide the frame of reference around which the events of History arrange themselves in circles of diminishing knowledge and concern. The difference that your choices make to your own future is large, indeed.”
― Jenann Ismael, How Physics Makes Us Free