Compatibilism

More specifically, scholastics like Thomas Aquinas and later Thomists (such as Domingo Báñez) are often interpreted as holding that human action can be free, even though an agent in some strong sense could not do otherwise than what they did.

In the early modern era, compatibilism was maintained by Enlightenment philosophers (such as David Hume and Thomas Hobbes).

[3] This view also makes free will close to autonomy, the ability to live according to one's own rules, as opposed to being submitted to external domination.

Alternatives to strictly naturalist physics, such as mind–body dualism positing a mind or soul existing apart from one's body while perceiving, thinking, choosing freely, and as a result acting independently on the body, include both traditional religious metaphysics and less common newer compatibilist concepts.

[17] Also consistent with both autonomy and Darwinism,[18] they allow for free personal agency based on practical reasons within the laws of physics.

The incompatibilists believe that free will refers to genuine (i.e., absolute, ultimate, physical) alternate possibilities for beliefs, desires, or actions,[21] rather than merely counterfactual ones.

James accused the soft determinists of creating a "quagmire of evasion" by stealing the name of freedom to mask their underlying determinism.

[23] Kant's argument turns on the view that, while all empirical phenomena must result from determining causes, human thought introduces something seemingly not found elsewhere in nature—the ability to conceive of the world in terms of how it ought to be, or how it might otherwise be.

Kant proposes that taking the compatibilist view involves denying the distinctly subjective capacity to re-think an intended course of action in terms of what ought to happen.