Imagine you’re an actor in a very peculiar stage production. In this play, rather than memorizing lines and stage direction, the actors read them off a teleprompter during their scenes with no prior knowledge of the story or what they’re about to say. In addition to this, all of the actors are subject to real world consequences for their actions as if they actually happened. Kill someone in the play and you’ll be tried for murder. Inherit a fortune from your estranged uncle and you’re suddenly a millionaire. Fall in love and get married, congrats you’re hitched.

At this point you’re probably asking yourself why the actors would even participate in a production where their fate is nothing but a whim of the writer/director. From their perspective the consequences they face are random, why roll the dice and face prison or worse when you have no control over the outcome? Now imagine they had no choice, that they were compelled by the forces of the universe to act in whatever way was decided for them by the script. No matter what backstory they’re given, what motivations or goals are written for their characters, what choices or deliberations are handed down by the script, they must act them out and face the consequences of their actions.

Okay, that sounds like a nightmare, but at least they know what’s happening to them. The actors are aware they’re being forced into something against their will. They realize that they cannot really control their actions even if it may appear otherwise, that they’re being compelled to act. What would be truly horrifying is if they were oblivious to that fact, if they were born in the theatre they’re performing in and raised to believe that the script is of their own devising, directed by the script itself to act as if they were free from the moment they were born.

Such a fate would be terrifying, but there would still be hope. The actors can still see the teleprompters, and would eventually begin to question the origins of their actions and the consequences that accompany them. The only way they wouldn‘t is if the instructions were hidden in some way, beamed directly into their skulls by some broadway black magic or other unknown technology employed by the writer/director in order to maximize realism. What a performance they would give if the actors truly believe that the script is their own thoughts, feelings and desires.

At this point it’s safe to assume that anyone who‘s browsing this sub understands what this thought experiment is not so subtly pointing to. That what I’m saying is that we‘re all acting out determinism’s script, that the brain responsible for our thoughts, feelings and desires is not our own creation. So, why the clickbait title? Where do compatibilists go wrong?

For the compatibilist, the important distinction between the metaphor of actors having their mind created by the authored script of a play, and our reality of mind being created by the universe, is the author’s ability to deliberate, to choose to control the actors, where as the universe simply is. According to compatibilism, the actors would not have free will, or at least much less than they would have if creation of their minds was left to non thinking material and the forces that govern them. Ironically, the very same material and forces govern the deliberation of a hypothetical play author. So why the distinction if they’re created by the same fundamental processes? It comes down to ownership.

A common argument compatibilists make is that even if you are created by something that is not you, you are still you. Your mind, its thoughts, feelings and desires are yours. This isn’t just to assert that anything that exists must be itself, that’s self-evident. What the compatibilist means when they say “but you are you” is that only material that can deliberate and make choices can have ownership of itself, can be responsible for its actions. This is where the mistake is made, not in concluding we are responsible for our actions, but asserting this is what makes us free.

The freedom of our will does not hinge on our ability to deliberate or make choices, instead it depends on the existence of the script. It is the script that determines everything about us, our mind, our thoughts, feelings and desires, and through them our actions. The presence of an author who himself can deliberate and make choices is inconsequential to what the script means for the actors. They, and we, are still forced by the laws of the universe to act in the same way, do the same things, suffer the same consequence, with or without a chooser who is responsible for it. The unauthored script of determinism supersedes choice in every conceivable way by determining not only the outcome of all choices but their very existence. It is to this unauthored script that we are chained, and nothing that is chained can be free.