Free will · Quiz question 1/35
The Predicted Choice (Supercomputer Case)
If a scan could predict your breakfast with 100% accuracy, did you still choose it? The core question behind compatibilism — explained, with sources.
A scientist scans your brain perfectly and predicts, with 100% accuracy, what you'll eat for breakfast tomorrow. Sure enough, that's exactly what you eat.
You still chose that breakfast yourself.
The idea of perfect prediction goes back to Laplace (1814). The version in this question — a specific person who does exactly what was predicted — is best known from a 2005 experimental philosophy study by Eddy Nahmias and colleagues. They showed people a scenario where a supercomputer perfectly predicts someone's actions, and most still said the person acted freely.
This question asks whether "predictable" and "I chose it" actually conflict. Compatibilists say no. If your choice came from your own wants, reasons and deliberation, it's still your choice — even if that process follows laws and can be predicted. Hume gave the classic version, defining liberty as "a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will."
Incompatibilists disagree: if your choice can be predicted, the outcome is already fixed, and the "could have done otherwise" condition falls apart. Fun twist: experimental philosophers have found that people's intuitions swing a lot depending on how the question is framed (see Laplace's Demon).
Predictability and freedom don't clash. Freedom isn't "having no cause" — it's acting on your own reasons.
Key names: Hume, Daniel Dennett, Harry FrankfurtReal freedom needs genuinely open options. If perfect prediction is possible, there's no freedom.
Key names: Roderick Chisholm, Robert KaneDetermined or random, there's no freedom of the kind that grounds moral responsibility.
Key names: Galen Strawson, Derk PereboomIn the 2020 PhilPapers Survey, about 59% of professional philosophers accepted or leaned toward compatibilism.