Another sloppy way to define compatibilism

One might say:

1. Compatibilism is the doctrine that some deterministic world contains a free agent.

But some libertarians will agree with (1). For suppose, as many libertarians do, that choices are instantaneous, and suppose that simultaneous causation is possible. Then we can imagine a world that comes into existence at time t₀, and at time t₀ there comes into existence Fred, an agent who in the first moment of his existence freely chooses to do A, and suppose that the choice simultaneously effects the existence of a deterministic process that will lead to A. We can imagine that everything unrolls deterministically in this world from t₀ on, and that Fred is the only free agent in this world. Then this world contains a free agent, and that free agent's action is not determined, but nonetheless determinism holds. For determinism says that later states are determined by earlier states. It does not say that the initial states are determined by anything.

What this means, I think, is that we want to define compatibilism in something like this way:

2. Compatibilism is the doctrine that some deterministic world contains a free agent whose beginning is posterior to the beginning of that world.

Or, perhaps:

3. Compatibilism is the doctrine that some world contains an agent all of whose choices and actions are strongly causally necessitated but who performs at least one free choice or action.

(For "strongly causally necessitated", see the previous post.)