You cannot change the past or the laws of nature, so are your choices yours?
In the 1960s Carl Ginet sharpened an old worry into a crisp argument. If determinism holds, your present state follows from the distant past plus the laws of nature, and you control neither. So, the reasoning goes, you do not control what follows from them either, including what you do next.
Free will usually means the ability to choose between genuine alternatives, to control one's actions in the way moral responsibility needs, or to be the true source of what one does. Praise, blame, desert, deliberation and persuasion all seem to presuppose it. Christian philosophy of the 4th century CE introduced the Latin term liberum arbitrium, understood as a will that need not be the way it is, and whether such freedom exists is among philosophy's longest-running arguments.
The problem is ancient. Aristotle in the 4th century BCE and Epictetus in the 1st century CE have both been credited with a compatibilist idea: we control what nothing prevents us from doing or choosing. According to Susanne Bobzien, the incompatibilist alternative, freedom as being causally undetermined in the moment of decision, may first appear in Alexander of Aphrodisias in the 3rd century CE. Some modern philosophers grumble that the debate has barely moved since.
The camps are now well defined. Incompatibilists say free will and determinism cannot both be true. Hard determinists such as d'Holbach accept determinism and give up free will, while metaphysical libertarians deny determinism so that freedom stays possible. Compatibilists argue the two can coexist; classical versions said you are free whenever nobody coerces or restrains you, and some go further, claiming choice needs predictable outcomes to mean anything.
Arguments on each side have become famous. One incompatibilist intuition pump compares people with wind-up toys, billiard balls and puppets; Daniel Dennett rejects the analogy. Ginet's consequence argument troubles compatibilists because it implies nobody could ever have done otherwise. A compatibilist who has just sat on a sofa wants to say she could have stayed standing had she wished, yet the argument appears to rule that out. The deep tension remains between a vivid felt sense of agency and a physical world governed by law.
Source: Free will
