ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the standard philosophical positions on the relationship of freedom and determinism. It gives some critical remarks about some of those positions. Incompatibilism is a thesis about the problem of free will. It doesn’t claim that determinism is true. Libertarians in political philosophy argue that the state should not interfere in buying and selling or in other spheres of life. Some defenders of capitalism hold that people should be free to engage in buying and selling without regulation by the state. However, this can result in “boom and bust” cycles that produce widespread suffering. If freedom from want is an entitlement that people have, then certain economic freedoms may have to be regulated or curtailed. The goal of a compatibilist theory is to show that an act is performed freely if it is caused in a particular sort of way; freedom doesn’t require the absence of causality, but the right sort of causality.
