Humean compatibilism. (Philosophical Abstracts).

Beebee, Helen ; Mele, Alfred

Humean compatibilism is the combination of a Humean position on laws of nature and the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism. This article's aim is to situate Humean compatibilism in the current debate among libertarians, traditional compatibilists, and semicompatibilists about free will. The authors argue that a Humean about laws can hold that there is a sense in which the laws of nature are "up to us" and hence that the leading style of argument for incompatibilism--the consequence argument--has a false premise. The authors also display some striking similarities between Humean compatibilism and libertarianism, an incompatibilist view. For example, standard libertarians face a problem about luck, and this article shows that Humean compatibilists face a very similar problem.--Correspondence to: helen.beebee@man.ac.uk, almele@mailer.fsu.edu