INTRODUCING DOUBLE COMPATIBILISM Free-will is best understood as two or more contingencies combined. Every type of free-will is, in other words, 'a choice about a choice'. Jean-Paul Sartre says we are "condemned to be free". John Locke says we are wound up like God's stopwatch. We have no choice but to choose, in other words. Aristotle says the world is controlled by a 'prime mover' whose virtue we can only imitate. Leibniz says that souls are imitations of God's perfection, parts of God that have been fragmented from God, according to his perfect plan. What I say is that all genuine freedom involves a 'contingent contingency', and freedom is possible because there are two types of compatibilism, two definitions which are BOTH contingent to determinism and free-will, but which MUTUALLY amount to another form of free-will. We may not choose the objects of our experience, but we choose how we deal with them (this is based on game theory). I think contingent contingency is a highly effective defense. According to the view, we may only say that we are determined when we don't get what we want. If we get what we want part of the time, it means that we have some control over an objective world. Since we are not the world, we cannot argue that we are not getting what we want. Relative to the world, we are. If we don’t get what we want, we can argue we are justified in getting what we want. If we do get what we want, we can argue that we got what we want. Either we are justified in getting what we want, or we have free will. Determinism, on the other hand, is the view that if we add up all the choices, we end up with no choice at all. This might be possible in the following cases, which I think are unreasonable: (1) If materialism leaves no room for choices, because we're 'just not that privileged'. (2) If the forces and events that determine aspects of our lives are more powerful than we are. (3) If God or Nature or what have you is the only genius in deciding who we are. (4) If we can't stop time, and time is a series of powerful causes and weak effects. However, if effects are more powerful than causes, or if God or nature grants a will, or if we have more power or motivation about ourselves than any single outside event affecting us, or if we have a material privilege, then it appears that free will is absolutely possible. Most conventionally, in formal philosophy, determinism is seen as opposing its opposite, libertarianism (different from the political philosophy by that name). To be clearer, some philosophers have more recently begun naming the opposite of determinism merely 'indeterminism', because there are many intermediate theories, especially the variations of soft determinism. Many people, perhaps following popular scientific opinions, consider determinism to be dominant. However, I disagree. In my philosophy published in The Dimensional Philosopher's Toolkit I express free-will and determinism as a square of four or nine DIFFERENT categories. For your interest, there are at least two, and possibly three ways to conceive of the opposition. One way to compare is neutral terms, for example, 'the determined will' and 'free determinism'. Another way is to compare pure opposites, which in terms of neutral must be expressed as: 'the liberated will' and 'arbitrary determination'. I argue that neither way is wrong. In the complex case of multiple properties, there is no such thing as the discrete will or the discrete determination. But I think you will find, that determinism is compatible with the will, whereas the will is not compatible with determinism. This seems to suggest that free will is a more viable option in the complex case. While this may require absoluteness, it does not seem impossible. My critical perspective is that normally terms like 'free-will' and 'determinism' or 'arbitration' use only one or two words. Adding additional terms potentially adds meaning in the case of a complex subject. In nine categories, there is also a third dimension of opposition, in which 'freely-arbitrated determinations' and other similar categories become important. As it turns out this view of multiple categories (using either four or nine categories instead of two) is important, because it is easier to defend free-will when there are multiple categories of it, whereas determinism becomes weaker under a pluralist view. A critical angle I have on another gentleman's comment (vis. indeterminism), is that simple negations are not true opposites, thus both free will and determinism must be meaningfully defined apart from the opposition. If determinism were fact, the debate would be meaningless. And simply because someone makes a determined choice does not mean it was determined in the past. That is the fundamental confusion, and it is resolved by considering that creative values are possible. Nathan Coppedge / SCSU 6/7/2015, p.