- Diagnostically misleading(as Fischer's claim about why incompatibilist thinking is unhelpful)
- Appearing to give us important information or intuition about a problem, but actually leading us in the wrong direction if we follow it.
- Fischer(philosopher reference)
- John Martin Fischer, an American philosopher known for his work on free will and moral responsibility, especially regarding how God's knowledge relates to human freedom.
- Semi-compatibilism(as the specific philosophical position being explained)
- Fischer's view that moral responsibility doesn't require free will in the traditional sense, but only requires the ability to respond to reasons.
- determinism(Discussion of classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, and general relativity)
- A property of physical theories concerning whether the laws governing a system fully fix future (and past) states given present conditions; admits of degrees ('fall only a bit short')
- incompatibilism(The passage questions whether survey respondents who endorse incompatibilist conclusions genuinely hold incompatibilist views.)
- The view that free will and moral responsibility are incompatible with determinism.
- moral responsibility(The author argues for a pluralistic understanding rather than a Kantian-exclusive one)
- A normative concept whose scope is contested; the passage implies it encompasses at least Kantian notions (centered on individual rational agency) and other notions (potentially sociological, collective, or non-individualist in character)
- philosophically decisive(the distinction between resource constraints and law-governed impossibility is treated as crucial to getting the philosophy right)
- An important distinction that meaningfully settles or clarifies a philosophical debate or argument.
- reasons-responsiveness(Epicurean philosophy of mind)
- The capacity to respond to reasons, which allows humans to control their own development, unlike other animals.