I'm not an expert on it, but that position's sometimes called "compatibilism", if you're looking for a keyword. This Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article's a decent starting point, if a bit academic: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/
The really short answer is that it boils down to a disagreement over what "free will" means. Compatibilists dispute the claim that free will is definitionally equivalent to something like a videogame with multiple endings, where your actions can change which endings you get (the "garden of forking paths" model of free will).
It's actually usually taken as an alternative to dualism, because if humans are 100% made of physical matter that's bound by the usual laws of physics, and we think something called "free will" is meaningful to talk about, then they must somehow be compatible. The alternatives are: 1. dualism, claim that some part of human thought/action takes place outside of the laws of physics; 2. deny that free will exists; or maybe 3. somehow deny that the laws of physics exist, or at least claim they exist in some different way than usually understood.
Daniel Dennett is probably the best-known-among-the-general-public proponent of compatibilism.
Comments
I'm not an expert on it, but that position's sometimes called "compatibilism", if you're looking for a keyword. This Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article's a decent starting point, if a bit academic: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/
The really short answer is that it boils down to a disagreement over what "free will" means. Compatibilists dispute the claim that free will is definitionally equivalent to something like a videogame with multiple endings, where your actions can change which endings you get (the "garden of forking paths" model of free will).
It's actually usually taken as an alternative to dualism, because if humans are 100% made of physical matter that's bound by the usual laws of physics, and we think something called "free will" is meaningful to talk about, then they must somehow be compatible. The alternatives are: 1. dualism, claim that some part of human thought/action takes place outside of the laws of physics; 2. deny that free will exists; or maybe 3. somehow deny that the laws of physics exist, or at least claim they exist in some different way than usually understood.
Daniel Dennett is probably the best-known-among-the-general-public proponent of compatibilism.