Jaime asked:

"If determinism were true, it would be compatible with freedom?" Any suggestions?

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This sounds like an essay question. Since we don't want to write essays for people, here's an
approach that assumes you know something about the topic already.

Question1. Does acting freely require being able to act differently?

Let 'S' denote a subject, 'x' some action, and 't' a time. Imagine this possible scenario:

S chooses to x at t, and does so; but if he had not chosen to x at t, a neurosurgeon would have
intervened and altered his brain to make him do x at t.

If so, when S chooses x at t, he could not have acted differently at t.

If so, S's acting freely at t does not require S to have been able to act differently at t.

So, it is sufficient for S's action to be free that S's doing x at t is brought about by his reasoning at t. It
does not matter whether or not he could have acted differently at t.

Question 2. What if the neurosurgeon not onlyintervened by giving S the choice, but by giving him
the mental states that reasoned to that choice? In what sense is action x now not the result of S's
deliberation?

A problem highlighted here is that even for someone who says that freedom is compatible with
determinism, the outcome of a choice is determined by one's prior mental states and dispositions. It is
true that S has the free choice whether or not to marry a blonde woman for example, but if S was
never the sort to marry a blonde woman in the first place, he will never make that choice.

How far you want to push the compatibilist line is up to you. The main issue is, Is the distinction
between free and unfree actions robust enough for that kind of freedom to be worth having?

Question 3. Here is a Strawsonian argument (from P.F. Strawson's British Academy Lecture
'Freedom and Resentment' reprinted in Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays) to think about:

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Adopting a deterministic view compels one to adopt an 'objective attitude' towards people and events.

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If one adopts an objective attitude to people, one cannot reason with them. Rather we would treat
them as objects to be manipulated.

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It is not rational to adopt the objective attitude to persons, as our lives would be worse for it.

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So, It is not rational to adopt the deterministic view even ifdeterminism is in fact true.

The idea is that reason compels us to adopt reactive attitudes towards people — feel affection, praise
and blame. What are the strengths/ weaknesses of that argument?

Question 4. If your choice is determined in the sense of being in the power of your practical
reasoning, consider whether this is a necessary condition for free choice.

If you are a realist, your beliefs are determined to some extent by the way things are. So is the
problem that we feelfree all the time in making our choices, but this belief in itself does not show that
we are free?

— These are some possible avenues to pursue.

Adam Gatward