Semicompatibilists assert only their belief in moral responsibility. They are agnostic on free will and argue that moral responsibility exists whether determinism or indeterminism is "true."

A broad incompatibilist sees determinism as incompatible with both free will and moral responsibility. Broad incompatibilists thus include (very confusingly) both those who accept and those who deny free will and moral responsibility. Those who deny one or both are variously called "hard incompatibilists," "illusionists," or "impossibilists."

Here is a taxonomy of determinist and compatibilist positions showing where semicompatibilism fits.

Many of these philosophers reduce free will to the "control condition" for moral responsibility. This is to make freedom dependent on moral responsibility, which we call an ethical fallacy.

As Fischer says:

Some philosophers do not distinguish between freedom and moral responsibility. Put a bit more carefully, they tend to begin with the notion of moral responsibility, and "work back" to a notion of freedom; this notion of freedom is not given independent content (separate from the analysis of moral responsibility). For such philosophers, "freedom" refers to whatever conditions are involved in choosing or acting in such a way as to be morally responsible.⁵

Free will is of course a prerequisite for responsibility. Questions about free will are scientific questions about the physical nature of minds. The question of moral responsibility is a moral and ethical question, not a question for physical science. We must separate the problem of free will from the issue of moral responsibility.

Fischer has written three books on moral responsibility and compiled what is the largest anthology of articles on free will, determinism, and moral responsibility - his four-volume, 46-contributor, 72-entry, 1300+ pages, Free Will, a reference work in the Routledge Critical Concepts in Philosophy series.⁴

Although it is titled "Free Will," the material is mostly about moral responsibility.

Fischer describes the development of the idea of semicompatibilism:¹

In ancient times — some fifteen years ago — I suggested that Frankfurt-type examples call into question the principle of transfer of nonresponsibility (which I then called, a bit too narrowly, the 'principle of transfer of blamelessness', following John Taurek's usage in his fascinating Ph.D. dissertation at UCLA in 1972). In the introductory essay to my anthology, Moral Responsibility, I presented a somewhat informal version of van Inwagen's modal principle (which he called principle 'B'), and (following van Inwagen) explained how it could be employed as part of a 'direct' argument for the incompatibility of causal determinism and moral responsibility (i.e., an argument for the incompatibility claim that does not employ the claim that causal determinism rules out alternative possibilities):

... if you are not morally responsible for one thing, and you are not morally responsible for that thing's leading to another, you are not morally responsible for the other. [This, roughly speaking, is the principle of transfer of nonresponsibility.] Now, an argument ... can be generated to show that causal determinism rules out moral responsibility. Given that you are not morally responsible for the past, and you are not morally responsible for the laws of nature, and assuming the principle of transfer of blamelessness [the principle of transfer of nonresponsibility], causal determinism seems to rule out moral responsibility.²

Also, I told the following story:

... a man [Green] walks along a beach and, noting that there is a child drowning, dives into the water and rescues the child. Though Green has had a device implanted in his brain [by scientists in a research institute in California—one might now say 'craned neurophilosophers in La Jolla'], the device does not play any role in Green's decision to save Ow chill (and his subsequent action). That is, the device monitors Green's brain activity but does not actually intervene in it. Let us suppose that this is because the scientists can see that Green is about to decide to save the child and to act accordingly [they are morally good, albeit crazed, neurophilosophers]. But let's also suppose that the scientists would have intervened to bring about a decision to save the child if Green had shown an inclination to decide to refrain from saving the child. That is, were Green inclined to decide on his own not to save the child, the scientists would ensure electronically that he decide to save the child and also that he act to carry out this decision.³

Of course, this case contains the distinctive characteristics of a Frankfurt-type case: a fail-safe arrangement that plays no actual role but the presence of which nevertheless ensures the actual result.

I then suggested that the Frankfurt-type examples are plausible counterexamples to the principle of transfer of nonresponsibility, even though they would not be counterexamples to the parallel modal principle employed in the argument for the incompatibility of causal determinism and alternative possibilities (the principle of the transfer of powerlessness):

... Green is not morally responsible for the fact that the scientists are ready to intervene, and he is not responsible for the fact that, if they are so ready, he will save the child. But he does seem to be morally responsible for saving the child.... So a compatibilist about determinism and moral responsibility might accept the fixity of the past ... the fixity of the laws . . ., and the principle of transfer of powerlessness but might reject the principle of transfer of blamelessness.⁴

Thus, semicompatibilism was born. Here I wish to defend the basic intuition, which I still believe is correct, that the principle of transfer of blamelessness (or, more broadly, nonresponsibility) is called into question by the Frankfurt-type cases, and that it cannot be employed in an uncontroversial, decisive argument against the compatibility of causal determinism and moral responsibility.

Given the appeal of the fundamental argument for incompatibilism about causal determinism and the sort of freedom that involves genuine access to alternative pathways into the future, one might be attracted to an indeterministic notion of freedom. The libertarian believes that causal determinism would rule out free will (this is incompatibilism), but that causal determinism is false. Further, the libertarian holds that we do in fact have free will. Just as with the compatibilist, it is not enough for the libertarian simply to assert our freedom — it is desirable to provide some sort of account of such freedom.

There are two basic strategies for coming up with an indeterministic analysis of freedom. The first is the "event-causal approach." On this approach, prior events do in fact cause our decisions and behavior, but via indeterministic sequences. The structure and nature of some of these sequences confers control and moral responsibility on agents. Kane offers a detailed and sophisticated event-causal account of indeterministic freedom ("Free will: New directions for an ancient problem"). It is important to Kane to render his libertarianism consistent with materialism about the mind, and, indeed, with contemporary neuroscience and physics. Some libertarian approaches, particularly in the past, have been committed to extravagant or unscientific excesses; Kane is at pains to avoid such implausible commitments. Dennett offers a critique of Kane's analysis of freedom.

Laura Ekstrom offers an alternative, event-causal model of freedom ("Excerpt from 'Varieties of libertarianism'"). O'Connor presents a critique of event-causal indeterministic models. A fundamental worry, according to O'Connor, is that the event causal approach does not confer control on the agent. Clarke ("Event-causal accounts and the problem of explanation"), and Kane ("Responsibility, luck, and chance: reflections on free will and indeterminism") discuss and respond to some such worries.

The following selections by Clarke ("Agent causation and event causation in the production of free action") and O'Connor ("Excerpt from 'The metaphysics of free will'") develop cutting-edge versions of agent-causal libertarianism. On this view, agents cause certain events (choices, decisions, actions), but they are not caused by prior events to cause these events. Further, when an agent causes such events, the causation by the agent is basic: the agent's causal role cannot be reduced to that of an event or set of events. Whereas this approach may seem attractive to those who are concerned that event-causal theories do not offer enough in the way of control, there are various problems with agent-causation, Some of these problems are explored in Ekstrom ("Excerpt from 'Varieties of libertarianism'") and Pereboom ("'Empirical objections to agent causal libertarianism'").⁶

In his landmark essay, "Freedom and resentment," Peter Strawson argues that the concept of moral responsibility is analyzed in terms of a set of attitudes he termed the "reactive attitudes": indignation, resentment, hatred, respect, gratitude, and love. A morally responsible agent is the target (or perhaps appropriate target) of such attitudes. Practices such as punishment presuppose and express the reactive attitudes. Strawson suggests that human life without moral responsibility, so understood, would be extremely unattractive, if coherently conceivable at all. Further, he suggests that his analysis of moral responsibility can help to show that moral responsibility is compatible with causal determinism.⁷

That we apply the reactive attitudes toward ourselves and other persons signals something extremely important: we take a certain distinctive perspective toward persons (as opposed to nonpersons). We are engaged with persons. In contrast to the perspective from which we view other persons, our perspective toward nonpersons tends to be "objective." We treat nonpersons as objects to be used, exploited, manipulated, or perhaps just enjoyed. But we do not have attitudes such as resentment or love toward them; rather, we view them from a more detached and uninvolved - a more objective - perspective.⁸

Ordinarily, we simply assume that we and other human beings are persons and are at least sometimes morally responsible agents. Thus, we assume that we (most of us) at least sometimes have the kind of control that grounds moral responsibility and personhood. Typically, this assumption is deemed so obvious as not to command any attention or elicit even the slightest bit of controversy.

But imagine now that a certain doctrine turns out to be true: the doctrine of causal determinism. Roughly, causal determinism is the view that all events can in principle be fully explained by reference to past states of the world and the laws of nature. Slightly more carefully, "Causal determinism is the thesis that, for any given time, a complete statement of the facts about that time, together with a complete statement of the laws of nature, entails every truth as to what happens after that time."

We certainly do not know that this doctrine is true; indeed, many contemporary physicists would claim it is false. But then again we do not know that it is false. For all we know, contemporary physicists could announce that their previous theories were defective, and that the indeterminacies those theories posited were the result of inadequacies of information and analysis. They could in the future develop an entirely deterministic theory of the universe.

There is an additional reason to focus our attention on causal determinism. Although contemporary physicists tend to believe that causal determinism is false, they believe that something very much like it is true: a doctrine we shall call "almost causal determinism." On this view, macroscopic events are not, strictly speaking, causally determined, but they are very close to being determined. We would claim (although we will not develop the argument in this book) that the threat from almost causal determinism to moral responsibility is very similar to the threat from causal determinism. Agreeing with this point is Peter van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will.¹⁰

.

Our contention is that even if causal determinism were true, there is a strong impetus to think that human beings should still be properly considered persons, morally responsible, and at least sometimes in control of their behavior. That is, even if we discovered that causal determinism were true, there is a strong tendency to think that this sort of discovery should not make us abandon our view of ourselves as persons and morally responsible agents.¹⁰

Fischer separates an agent's control into two kinds he calls "legislative control" - the kind needed to choose between alternative possibilities, and "guidance control" - the kind of control needed to initiate or originate an action, by being "reasons responsive" and taking ownership of the action, meaning the agent can say the action was "up to me."

Fischer is convinced enough by Harry Frankfurt's arguments against the Principle of Alternate Possibilities to give up the need for legislative control. All Fischer says he needs for his "semicompatibilism" is guidance control in the "actual sequence" of events. Hypothetical alternate sequences are unimportant.

Incompatibilist critics attack the idea of guidance control with what they call "sourcehood" or "source incompatibilism," which requires that the source of an action be "internal" to the agent. Fischer notes that if causal determinism is true, then our behavior is the result of external causally deterministic sequences that began well before we were even born. Compare Peter van Inwagen's Consequence Argument.

Fischer says source incompatibilists call for some kind of "gaps" in the actual causal sequence to make room for free will. Fischer does not go into any detail on these gaps, bur they may be something like a causa sui. Fischer calls the kind of "total control" demanded "a total fantasy - metaphysical megalomania." ¹²

So total control is a chimaera. It is manifestly ludicrous to aspire to it or to regret its absence. The locus of control is not wholly within us. We do not exist in a protective bubble of control. Rather, we are thoroughly and pervasively subject to luck: actual causal factors entirely out of our control are such that, if they were not to occur, things at least might be very different. Quite apart from any special assumption about causal determinism, we can see that from a broader perspective, it is entirely a matter of luck or arbitrary that I behave as I do (or even that I developed into an agent at all — or have maintained that status). Although it is perfectly reasonable to wish to be the source of one's choices and behavior, it is not reasonable to interpret the relevant notion of sourcehood in terms of total control and internality.¹³

Nietzsche famously said, "the causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far; it is a sort of rape and perversion of logic." The quotation is from Twilight of the Idols, or: How to Philosophize with a Hammer, section 8, "The Four Great Errors." Now I am not sure that the causa sui would make my Top Ten List of Good (or perhaps Egregious) Self-Contradictions, but to be the cause of oneself (in a stringent way) is surely an unreasonable aspiration. Whereas some philosophers would claim (with Nietzsche) that being a causa sui is both ludicrous and part of commonsense, I would urge that we note that being the "initiator" or "source" of our choices and behavior is indeed part of commonsense, but that it is inchoate and undeveloped in commonsense. We should not be quick to attribute a ludicrous and obviously self-contradictory notion to commonsense. Rather, we should seek to capture the kernel of truth embedded in our ordinary conceptual scheme and articulate it in a more plausible, attractive way. (p.70)

Since taking responsibility is one of the components of guidance control, we need to argue that the conditions we have specified for taking responsibility are compatible with causal determinism. Clearly, causal determinism does not rule out an individual's believing that he is an agent (in our sense) and that the given social practices render him a fair target for the reactive attitudes in certain circumstances.¹⁴

Things get a bit more complicated when we turn to individuals who are philosophically sophisticated and have reflected on the relationship between causal determinism and the fairness of the application of the reactive attitudes. So, imagine that an individual has immersed himself in the debates about causal determinism, free will, and moral responsibility.

Presumably, most reflective individuals will not be confident about what to think here. That is, most reflective individuals will find considerable force in arguments on both sides. We believe that many (although not all) of these open-minded individuals can be brought to adopt a certain stance. More specifically, they can be brought to think that it is at least plausible that causal determinism does not rule out the aptness of the reactive attitudes. Further, they can be convinced – if they need to be convinced – that, for all practical purposes, they should "put aside" their doubts about the consistency of causal determinism with the aptness of the reactive attitudes. ¹⁵

Why should such an individual deem himself a prima facie plausible candidate for the reactive attitudes, and be willing to put aside metaphysical worries? We believe that the considerations developed thus far in this book can move a reflective individual in precisely this direction. First, we have sought to defend the idea that the sort of control that involves alternative possibilities is not required for moral responsibility. Thus, we have attempted to remove what is probably the most significant objection to the compatibility of causal determinism and the appropriateness of the reactive attitudes. This should move reflective, open-minded individuals toward adopting the stance we have specified.

Further, we have contended that moral responsibility is grounded in a kind of control – guidance control – with two components. The first component is moderate reasons-responsiveness of the mechanism leading to the behavior in question. And we have argued that this sort of responsiveness is entirely compatible with causal determinism. Of course, the second component remains – the ownership condition. But we would suggest that the Frankfurt-type examples are also illuminating here. ¹⁶

We concede that some individuals will not be convinced. For example, some individuals are "natural incompatibilists"; when they adopt the assumption of causal determinism, they might be dubbed "natural hard determinists." Such individuals will not deem themselves apt targets for the reactive attitudes, and thus they will not take responsibility for the kinds of mechanisms that lead to their behavior. Thus, on our account, they will not be morally responsible for their behavior. But we do not take this to be a defect of our theory. Indeed, it follows straightforwardly from the fact (noted earlier) that we agree with Galen Strawson in embracing a "subjectivist" approach to moral responsibility. Recall that this sort of approach requires that an agent have a certain kind of view of himself, in order to be morally responsible for his behavior. And this is precisely the case, on our account of taking responsibility (and moral responsibility). In order to be morally responsible, a person must see himself as an agent who is an appropriate candidate for the reactive attitudes.¹⁷

Fischer makes it clear that he is trying to develop a compatibilist position based on a priori metaphysical truths that will remain defensible even if causal determinism is found to be true. He says that a compatibilist need not flip-flop metaphysically and give up his assumption,

"even if he were to wake up to the headline, "Causal Determinism is True!" (and he were convinced of its truth). Nor need the compatibilist give up any of his basic metaphysical views — apparently apriori metaphysical truths that support his views about free will — simply because the theoretical physicists have established that the relevant probabilities are 100 percent rather than 99 percent. Wouldn't it be bizarre to give up a principle such as that the past is fixed and out of our control or that logical truths are fixed and out of our control, simply because one has been convinced that the probabilities in question are 100 percent rather than 99 percent. A compatibilist need not "flipflop" in this weird and unappealing way." ¹⁸

Fischer also has been influenced by Harry Frankfurt's attack on what Frankfurt called the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP). Before Frankfurt, compatibilists and incompatibilists alike had argued that alternative possibilities seemed to be a condition not only for free will but for moral responsibility.

Frankfurt's clever examples changed the debate from compatibilism vs. incompatibilism to the very existence of alternative possibilities.

Although attacks and counterattacks continue, Frankfurt-style examples have become far too arcane and unlikely to win support outside a small number of compatibilists and incompatibilists.

Nevertheless, Fischer has tried to carve out a position called semicompatibilism, which de-emphasizes alternative possibilities and emphasizes agent control. Fischer hopes that semicompatibilism will be resistant to any discovery by science that strict causal determinism is true. He does this by dividing the needed agent control into two parts, "regulative control" and "guidance control."

Regulative control involves alternative possibilities, which lead to what Fischer calls "alternative sequences" of action. Fischer thinks he can simply deny that agents have regulative control, and bypass the question of alternative possibilities, based on Frankfurt-style examples. Although Fischer generally supports Frankfurt-style examples, he is the author of one of the cleverest counterattacks, the idea that the mere possibility that the agent might try an alternative gives rise to a "flicker of freedom." ¹⁹

Fischer wants to focus our attention on the more critical guidance control, which describes the "reasons-responsiveness" and "sourcehood" involved in the "actual sequence" of events leading up to the agent's action. For Fischer, no alternative sequences, however many and however they flicker with freedom, are as relevant as the actual sequence.

Being the source of our actions allows us to say that our actions are "up to us," that we can take ownership of our actions. This is what Fischer regards as the "freedom-relevant condition." It is what Robert Kane calls our "ultimate responsibility (UR)." And it is what Manuel Vargas calls the "self-governance condition" in his Revisionism.

Kane, Vargas, Derk Pereboom and Fischer co-authored the recent book Four Views on Free Will. Pereboom also focuses on moral responsibility like Fischer, but he disagrees with Fischer that moral desert justifies praise and blame, reward and punishment. At the most, says Pereboom, responsibility can justify that we can be "legitimately called to moral improvement." Desert implies retributivism. Pereboom says the most we can justify is moral rehabilitation, for its beneficial consequences to society.

Parallel to Fischer's guidance control (sourcehood in the actual sequence) and regulative control (alternative possibilities), Pereboom distinguishes source incompatibilism from leeway incompatibilism, the latter corresponding to Fischer's regulative control, which depends on the existence of alternative possibilities.

Although Fischer is officially agnostic on the ancient problem of free will versus determinism, he shows a strong commitment to causality and determinism over his years of defending compatibility with determinism.

Nevertheless, Fischer's dividing of agent control issues into regulative control (involving alternative possibilities) and guidance control (what happens in the actual sequence) is an excellent approach that allows us to situate the indeterminism that many thinkers feel is critical to any libertarian model. Fischer notes that indeterminism in the alternative possibilities might generate "flickers of freedom." And he says clearly (Four Views, p.74) that guidance control is not enhanced by positing indeterminism.

In his 1998 book Responsibility and Control, written with Mark Ravizza, Fischer describes what he calls the Direct and Indirect Arguments for incompatibilism. The Indirect Argument says that determinism rules out alternative possibilities. From his semicompatibilist view, that does not threaten moral responsibility. Only in the Direct Argument for incompatibilism does determinism rule out moral responsibility.

So might Fischer agree with a view that 1) allows the "freedom-relevant condition" (reasons responsiveness and ownership) in the actual sequence to be governed by what he calls "almost causal determinism" (Responsibility and Control, p.15n) and 2) allows indeterminism in the generation of the alternative possibilities (flickers of freedom)?

That is the view we offer in the I-Phi Cogito model. Although they do not endorse it themselves, Daniel Dennett and Alfred Mele have also offered this view as something libertarians should like.

Indeterminism is important only in microscopic structures, but that is enough to introduce noise and randomness into our thoughts, especially when we are rapidly generating alternatives for action by random combinations of past experiences. But our brain and our neurons can suppress microscopic noise when they need to, insuring what we call adequate determinism, what Fischer calls almost causal determinism, and what Ted Honderich calls near determinism - in our willed actions.

In Robert Kane's contribution to Four Views on Free Will, he correctly identifies noise in messages as generated indeterministically, but mistakenly thinks these are merely a "hindrance or obstacle" that raises our level of effort when making his rare but morally significant "self-forming actions."

The role of indeterminism in free will is better seen as simply generating Fischer's AP "flickers of freedom." These alternative possibilities are then the "free" part of "free will" (Fischer's regulative control).

The "will" part (Fischer's guidance control) is "almost causally" determined to be reasons responsive and to take ownership for the determination to act in a fashion consistent with the agent's character and values.

Event-causal libertarians like Kane, Mark Balaguer, and Laura Waddell Ekstrom think this kind of freedom is not enough. And agent-causal libertarians like Randolph Clarke and Timothy O'Connor want even more "metaphysical" freedom. They say that if the will is determined to act in a rational way consistent with its character and values, then the agent will make exactly the same decision in exactly the same circumstances.

Such consistency of action does not bother the common sense thinker or the compatibilist (even a hard incompatibilist?) philosopher.

Kane, Balaguer, Ekstrom, and others continue to invoke some indeterminism in the decision process itself. As Daniel Dennett recommended as early as 1978 (in Brainstorms) and Alfred Mele has been promoting as a "modest libertarianism" in his recent books (Autonomous Agency and Free Will and Luck), indeterminism is best kept in the early stage of a two-stage process.

We first need free (alternative possibilities) and then will (adequately determined actions) in a temporal sequence. First chance, then choice.

I think that John Martin Fischer's guidance control, perfectly compatible with his "almost causal determinism," validates not only his semicompatibilist view of moral responsibility, but also supports the common sense or popular view of free will that is found in the opinion surveys of experimental philosophers Joshua Knobe and Shaun Nichols.

While limited compared to "metaphysical" freedom, this view is consistent with a broadly scientific world view, a requirement for any systematic revisionism that Manuel Vargas calls "naturalistic plausibility." ²⁰

Ironically perhaps, this view would be the very opposite of a revisionism, in the sense that the diagnostic (descriptive) analysis of common sense would agree remarkably well with what Vargas calls the prescriptive view for philosophers. Or perhaps it is the philosophers' views that need revision?

As an illustration of just how naturalistically plausible this new view of free will is, consider the case of biological evolution. The evidence is overwhelming that variations in the gene pool are driven by random mutations in the DNA. Many of these mutations are caused by indeterministic quantum mechanical events, cosmic ray collisions for the most part. Think of the mutations as alternative possibilities for new species. An adequately determined process of natural selection then weeds out those random variations that can reproduce themselves and compete with their ancestors. First chance, then selection.

Indeed, the story of life is maintaining some information stability (parts of our DNA have been the same for 2.8 billion years) in a chaotic environment - and not the pseudo-random deterministic chaos of the computer theorists, but real irreducible chaos.

Only a believer in metaphysical determinism would deny the evolutionary evidence for indeterminism and two stages, the first microscopic and random (chance) the second macroscopic and adequately determined (choice). Sadly, such a metaphysical belief is the intelligent design position of the creationists.

Of course we are discussing only science, not logical certainty.

So we can also ameliorate John Martin Fischer's nightmare of waking up one morning to a New York Times headline "Causal Determinism Is True." ²¹

Nothing in science is logically true, in the sense of true in all possible worlds, true by the principle of non-contradiction or the weaker law of the excluded middle. It is the excluded middle argument that leads us to the muddled standard argument against free will.

Our two-stage argument is quite old. We can trace it back to William James (1884 in The Dilemma of Determinism), Henri Poincaré (1906), Arthur Holly Compton (1935), and Karl Popper (1961).

What does Information Philosophy have to do with the two-stage model?

Information is the principal reason that biology is not reducible to chemistry and physics. Information is what makes an organism an individual, each with a different history. No atom or molecule has a history. Information is what makes us ourselves. Increasing information is involved in all "emergent" phenomena.

In information philosophy, the future is unpredictable for two basic reasons. First, quantum mechanics shows that some events are not predictable. The world is causal but not determined. Second, the early universe does not contain the information of later times, just as early primates do not contain the information structures for intelligence and verbal communication, and infants do not contain the knowledge and remembered experience they will have as adults.

The universe began in a state of minimal information nearly fourteen billion years ago. Information about the future is always missing, not present until it has been created, after which it is frozen.

John Martin Fischer calls this the "Principle of the Fixity of the Past." ²² It suggests that even divine foreknowledge is not present in our open expanding universe, lending support to the religious view called Open Theism.