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But that is not the question of your survey. Compatibilism is the philosophical position that free will and determinism are not incompatible.In other words do you think Humans have free will?
I actually find the wikipedia article on compatibilism rather poor; a much better explanation and argument can be found in Smullyan's essay, Is God a Taoist? (originally cited to me by Hollow Bastion). Essentially, we make a false distinction between 'ourselves' and whatever outside force we see as potentially controlling us--God, nature, society, etc. But, as Smullyan points out, when we realize that we are not something separate of our own biological makeup and social conditioning--we are those things--the question of whether they control us or we control them is rendered moot.
Smullyan says that free will is "part and parcel of the very essence of consciousness." That is, as LongLiveLife points out, we are aware of ourselves as causal agents--we do things that have consequences. And that awareness of our own role in the chains of cause-and-effect is really what we define as free will. Determinism is merely taking a step further back and realizing that we are not the first cause nor the last, and we do not exist in a vacuum. Compatibilists see only a difference in perspective between free will and determinism.
At any rate, that is my understanding of compatibilism, and it is how I have imagined the free will / determinism divide since first reading Smullyan.
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