Summations Only

Says the guy who doesn't want to touch identity ;-)

I don't know, and for the purpose of this discussion I don't care either. When I made the choice, I made the choice. This is what free will means.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Yes, what of it?Tell you what, you solve the Problem of Identity, then I'll see if my philosophy of free will fits in with your solution.Until then, it's not a criticism of my view of free will to complain that I haven't solved a completely different question. Nor have you.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

In man in the street terms - which you rightly ask us to prefer - when you use words like me, I, my choices, my personality, my wishes, my mind, you appear to be talking about identity.

But the question remains whether those other options were actually available, inclinations or not.The person "chose" one action over another, did they not? Either there was a reason that choice was made, meaning that reason was enough to tip the scales toward that option, meaning that as long as that reason persists, the other options have no chance of being chosen. True, we may never be able to work out exactyl what someone will choose because of the sheer number of causes acting on the final outcome, but that doesn't mean that those causes could have, without changing, somehow made a different outcome happen in some other universe that is identical up until that point. Only on atomic scales or smaller. On the macroscale, quantum effects are overshadowed by classical physical processes and laws.And even with quantum mechanics and th probability distribution, there might be no difference to the outcome. Like with nuclear decay, we can't say which atom will decay, but we can say how many will decay over a given time, and knowing that, we can calculate how many alpha particles will be emitted and vice versa. In the macro world, does it matter which atom decays or only what the effect of the decay is?

But you're stopping too soon. You ask why you chose A, and answered because you prefered A. But why do you prefer ? If you can keep asking that question and go further and further back along a causal chain, you've got determinism. Free will requires that at some point you can't answer the why question, that the chain breaks.

Uh, no. If my state of mind ensures that I do action A, then this is precisely what we mean by choosing. It's if anything else was the causal factor that I had no choice. Because the causal factor that determined what I did was that I decided to do it.Again, you seem to be yearning for a will so free that even my choices don't determine what I choose, and so that my decisions don't decide what I decide. This is like wanting an election so free that even the electorate doesn't determine the outcome of the election. It goes beyond freedom and into complete nonsense. But is the decision of the "immaterial me" also to have no cause? Am I only free if every time the immaterial me makes a decision, it is determined neither by the prior state of the immaterial me, nor by the sense-data of the immaterial me, but by the spinning of an immaterial roulette wheel? --- a complete severance of the causal chain?If it is determined by prior states of the universe, then an incompatibilist would have to say that this is not free will. But if instead it is the result of spinning a metaphysical roulette wheel, then we would all have to agree that this is not free will.Making the self immaterial really doesn't help, it doesn't get you out of this. Whereas compatibilism does.Now you seem (stop me if I'm wrong) to be suggesting that since the average person believes that an immaterial self would get him out of this mess, therefore we should define free will as something you can only have if you have an immaterial self, and therefore conclude that we have no free will. But it doesn't get him out of this mess, and it doesn't follow.If the average man thought that the horizon could only be explained as being the edge of a flat world, should we therefore redefine the horizon as being the edge of a flat world, and then go about saying "there is no such thing as the horizon"?No, instead we should say: "The horizon is basically what you think it is, namely that thing over there, but the explanation you have thought up for it is erroneous and should not be part of its definition." Well, I guess none of us is perfect.Perhaps you could stop trying to guess my motivations for doing what I have not in fact done, and instead address what I actually say.

No it doesn't.Free will requires that the correct answer to the first "why question" is "because I wanted to".It does not require that the last "why question" that anyone can answer has the answer: "Because the Magic Decision Fairies spun the Great Roulette Wheel Of Decision and without any underlying causal factors whatsoever it just happened to come up with "don't rape the nun"".

Sure, but unfortunately that observation doesn't allow you to solve the Problem of Identity. Let us know when you can.

But the thing that gave them no chance of being chosen was that I really didn't want to choose them. Which would be an exercise of free will.Try it out on the man-in-the-street."Dr A didn't rape a nun!""Oh ... well good for him ... I guess ... why do you mention it?""Well, he had no free will in the matter.""Oh, you mean he wanted to but there were armed guards protecting the nun?""No, I mean that he didn't want to.""WTF, dude, WTF?"

Nonsense.There are research papers and research monographs published on quantum indeterminism.Publishing a research paper occurs at the macro scale.

Luckily I'm not trying to and neither is it necessary.You wish to define freewill as what you 'want' to do. So under that definition, if you don't rape the nun, we can conclude that you didn't want to.Similarly, if you smile at a child it was because you wanted to. If you didn't, then obviously you wouldn't.You are not asking why you don't want to rape the nun or why you did want to smile at the child. What is it that makes you think you do or you don't want to do things? Presumably you'll say that it is your mind and of course that's true; but it's a very narrow answer because it doesn't get to causation.You can only say that you are truly excercising free will if you have unlimited and absolute control of your feelings and emotions - a kind of Vulcan. If your feelings and emotions are pre-configured to make some things feel good and right and some things feel not fair or plain wrong you are not truly free to choose. So of course you are free to choose what to do but if your feelings about those things is pre-set, then it's a limited kind of freedom.Which is a very good thing indeed because it allows our society to work.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

What about things that you do but do not choose to do?Breathing you cannot choose to not breathe, even if you hold your breath for a long time as soon as you drop unconsciousness your reflexes will start breathing for you.Other reflex actions like if you antecedently touch something hot your body moves the hand away not your free will.When you lie your micro expressions and speech give you away contradicting your free will to lie.Disorders that cause involuntary movements also act against the free will not to do something.Or some Fobias can cause you to not be able to leave the house because fear prevents you from acting out your free will to leave the house.The question would be how much free will do we actually have? If homosexuality is a sin, do non homosexuals have the free will to sin in that way or will their penis let them down?

It does, it just doesn't mention ultimate causation. Why should it? In other circumstances my answer to a "why" question does not begin: "Well, see, thirteen billion years ago the whole of space was compressed into a tiny dot ..." Actually, I can say I am truly exercising free will any time I like. Which is itself an exercise of free will. I am. It is simply that I do the choosing. Which is what makes it my will.I'll quote again the dialog I suggestion to Perdition:Try it out on the man-in-the-street."Dr A didn't rape a nun!""Oh ... well good for him ... I guess ... why do you mention it?""Well, he had no free will in the matter.""Oh, you mean he wanted to but there were armed guards protecting the nun?""No, I mean that he didn't want to.""WTF, dude, WTF?"You're claiming, in effect, that I lack free will because I act on my preferences. Well, that would be free will.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Well, it's a point, but not particularly against my compatibilist version of free will; after all, these would be arguments against libertarian free will too.While I see your point, I think that these are merely qualifications of the proposition that I have free will: just because occasionally I sneeze involuntarily, that wouldn't make me say I have no free will.It is true that I don't have complete control over my body. To take an example you missed, I can't levitate. But we don't regard this as a limitation of my freedom of will, but rather of my freedom of action. Or alternatively, fear causes your net will to be not to leave the house.However, the point is not without merit. What if there is a sense in which you want to do something, and a sense that you don't, and you would, if you could, remove one impulse in favor of another? I suppose it might be argued that the housebound phobic does in a sense have less free will than the rest of us.