Word.ws English Dictionary

compatibilist

/kəmˈpætɪbəlɪst/

compatibilist adjective: of, pertaining to or supporting compatibilism, the belief that free will and determinism are compatible ideas.

Adjective

compatibilist (comparative more compatibilist, superlative most compatibilist)

  1. Of, pertaining to or supporting compatibilism, the belief that free will and determinism are compatible ideas.
    • Such a reply is not, however, in the spirit of the compatibilist strategy of interest here.2007 September 29, Richard M. Glatz, “The (near) necessity of alternate possibilities for moral responsibility”, in Philosophical Studies, volume 139, number 2, →DOI
    Antonyms:
    incompatibilist

Noun

compatibilist (plural compatibilists)

  1. A supporter of compatibilism.
    • Moreover, suggestions that compatibilists can refute hard determinism on non-semantic grounds are misguided, building more into hard determinism than an adherent of this view needs to accept.2009, Susan Pockett, William P. Banks, Shaun Gallagher, editors, Does Consciousness Cause Behavior?, MIT Press, →ISBN, page 128
    • To which the compatibilists replied, This is still totally artificial—choosing when to leap into an abyss or whether to turn left or right in a driving simulator tells us nothing about our free will in choosing between, say, becoming a nudist versus a Buddhist, or becoming an algologist versus an...2023, Robert M. Sapolsky, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, New York: Penguin, →ISBN
    Antonyms:
    incompatibilist

Antonyms of compatibilist

Forms of compatibilist

Adjective
comparativemore compatibilist
superlativemost compatibilist
Noun
pluralcompatibilists

Origin of compatibilist

From compatible + -ist.

Questions about compatibilist

What does compatibilist mean?
Compatibilist means of, pertaining to or supporting compatibilism, the belief that free will and determinism are compatible ideas.
What part of speech is compatibilist?
Compatibilist can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce compatibilist?
Compatibilist is pronounced /kəmˈpætɪbəlɪst/.

Words near compatibilist in the dictionary

  1. compatibiliser
  2. compatibilisers
  3. compatibilises
  4. compatibilising
  5. compatibilism
  6. compatibilist
  7. compatibilistic
  8. compatibilists
  9. compatibilities
  10. compatibility
  11. compatibilization

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: compatibilist (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “compatibilist.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/compatibilist. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.