2 Comments
User's avatar
Adam Arnfield's avatar

I have my reservations about compatibilism, but this was very fun to read and quite convincing :)

Tell me if I misunderstood you, but it seemed as though you used the piano example as an analogy which would prove that Maxim has free will. But the piano analogy doesn't compare because you haven't specified that the pianist lives in a deterministic world. So either you specify that and then the incompatibilitist just denies that the pianist is free, or you don't and the analogy no longer holds. What do you think of this? Sorry if I'm just missing the point!🙇‍♂️

Epsilon's avatar

Well presumably the pianist is also in a deterministic world. The piano analogy was meant to draw the distinction between narrow and wide abilities and how the pianist lacks the latter while Maxim has both. The incompatibilist could deny that this proposed account of ability is what we usually mean when we say we could have done otherwise.