Summations Only

Your definition of free will does. But you have yet to show that that is what most people mean when they say free will. All it requires is something like this:"Why didn't you rape the nun?"
"Because I didn't want to?""Why didn't you want to?"
"Because my morals are such that raping a nun is wrong and I don't want to do something wrong?""Why don't you want to do something wrong?"
---------------------Now, as a determinist, I would be able to answer with something involving evolution of the brain and the fact that humans are social animals. As a free willist, there would haveto be no answer...or perhaps, simply a circular answer such as "I didn't want to do something wrong becuase my morals say that it is wrong to do so and I don't want to do something wrong."Either way, simply not wanting to isn't enough, as most people view it.

I should say that there have been some studies done on the quantum mechanical effects in the brain. On the biological side, the "typical" time scale for a process in the brain is around 1 millisecond. In concrete terms, the electric signals in the brain only contain information down to the millisecond level. Any detail in the signal on smaller scales has no meaning to the rest of the brain. (I'm sure there are others here much more well-versed in these things than me)However the brain is a nightmare when it comes to trying to create quantum mechanical superposition. Superposition is the common microscopic effect where an object has a probability of possessing several different values of a quantity, rather than a 100% probability of possessing one value. For example, a regular spinning top is either spinning left or right, not 40% chance of spinning left and 60% chance of spinning right. Such states are the basis of quantum mechanics, however the brain is not very conducive to these states.First of all, it's a very warm place in absolute terms (310 Kelvin). Secondly there is constant collisions between the neural material and ions such as Cl-, the ions themselves having thermal fluctuations due to the heat. Collisions with these ions external to the cell will count as a measurement that collapses the wavefunctions of the neurons to single definite values. Secondly there are water molecule collisions, as well as interactions with distant molecules.All together these mean that the average wavefunction in the brain collapses within:
0.00000000000000000001 seconds / 10^(-20) seconds*
compared with
0.001 seconds, which is the lowest meaningful timescale for the information processing in the brain.*This is not guess work, the original paper is:
Tegmark, M. (2000). Importance of quantum decoherence in brain processes. Physical Review E 61, 4194—4206.Available for free here: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9907009A more readable account by A. Litt et al for a talk at the university of Waterloo:
http://cogsci.uwaterloo.ca/Articles/quantum.pdfDecoherence is basically the process where quantum superpositions die off.

Very intersting. It would seem I can comfortably go back to being a determinist without worrying that I'm leaving QM out of the equation.Thanks!

Oh yeah? I just got off the phone with most people and it turns out they agree with me.Seriously, how would you expect me to show that? What of it?Do we deny that someone has a free vote just because we can point to reasons why he wants to vote the way he does? Do we deny that he has freedom of association because we can find out how he met the people he likes to hang out with and why he likes them? No, there is an answer. It's just that the existence of an answer does not negate free will.

Equivocation on the term "free." We're not talking about your freedom not to be coerced by the government, we're talking about the freedom not to be coerced by the laws of physics.Which you don't have. There's no escaping the chain of causality between the laws of physics and your actions, attitudes, and desires. Can't be done. Ergo, you have no free will.Sorry, but you don't. The state of your mind at any time is entirely determined by physical law. Hence, free will is impossible.

Yes. And he'll choose the one without peanuts. Unless he's suicidal.This would be an example of the exercise of free will.His will would not be freer by his actions being divorced from him and what he wants. If he was, then the decisive fator would not, in fact, be his will. And what makes this awkward is that you are a causal factor.What would that even be like? Would you have to be a complete tabula rasa with no preferences one way or the other?If someone progressively removed your opinions and preferences, would you become more and more free, or would that actually be murder? But if there's no cause of you doing one thing rather than the other, how is that not random --- and how is your will free?Freedom of will means that there is a cause, and it's you. That depends on the people and what they take to be definitional. Incompatibilism would mean redefining what I mean by free will. But the question is, is he defining it that way, or is that merely what he thinks the horizon is?

Where by "equivocation" you mean "consistent usage"? Speak for yourself. I'm not. Ah, assertion.

No I'm not. I'm trying to distinguish between my sensations and my wishes. It is perfectly possible for me to feel hungry but to not want to eat --- if, for example, I am on a diet. No. Now, if the causative force is not me, and makes me do something contrary to what I want, then is it or is it not external to my mind and desires? No, because it would be forcing me to do the opposite of what I want. Which would be an instance of me not having free will. Sheesh.

So you have the desire to eat as well as the desire to restrict your calories. I'm not impressed. The fact that you have competing desires in your physical brain doesn't mean that some of them aren't physical; the laws of physics can pull in multiple directions. So, case closed. How would your own will be forcing you? You've abandoned any sensible definition of words, looks like.

Well, ok, what part of the state of your physical brain is not determined by physical law? Please be specific.

If the tiger of the creationist were compatible with evolution ...It is, but he doesn't think it is. Well, that would depend on who one is. Perhaps you could ask the next person you meet to define free will and see if s/he mentions determinism. Quite so, because the creationist's beliefs are not really definitional, even to him, even if he thinks they are. As do creationists when you tell them about the causes of tigers. But their conviction that tigers exist is much stronger than their beliefs about creationism, and even more basic to their conception of tigers. The same is likely true of free will. "Sir, we know our will is free, and there's an end on't!" as Dr. Johnson said. The m-i-t-s knows he has free will. He might well be incredulous as to my claims about its cause. Now, if I convince him to my point of view, then he still has exactly the same properties as he thought he had when we began the debate. In particular, he still has whatever quality it was he was calling free will to begin with. He was wrong about its cause, and he is now right about its cause, but whatever it is, he has it still. If I had originally walked up to him and said: "You have no free will", he would have taken me as denying his possession of that property, would he not? So if we are to speak the same language at the end of the discussion as at the beginning, we should say: "You have free will".

That is not the assertion that I was objecting to. It's the bit about having no free will that is giving me difficulties.

Which is why I never claimed or implied any such thing. Not quite, because you omitted to answer my question, which I repeat. "Now, if the causative force is not me, and makes me do something contrary to what I want, then is it or is it not external to my mind and desires?" It would be making me do something I don't want to do, and therefore would (a) be forcing me and (b) not be my will. The pot is calling the snowball black.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

So it's not the premises or the argument you object to, just the conclusion? Look, if you can't follow premises and an argument to an inescapable conclusion, there's not much I can do. You can insist that 2 + 2 equals something besides 4, all day long if that's your desire, but it's not a compelling way to advance your case. But again, I'm talking about a causative force that is in you, not one that isn't. And that causative force would be the free will that you continue to insist that you have.Do you have free will, or not? If you do, you'll be able to use it to do something besides that which you have the desire to do. If all you can do is what you desire, though, you have no free will. Unless you have desires that aren't a consequence of physical law, but you've already stated that you don't:

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The fact that you have competing desires in your physical brain doesn't mean that some of them aren't physical ...

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Which is why I never claimed or implied any such thing.

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So, roger that - no desires that aren't a consequence of the physical state of your brain, no actions that aren't the consequence of your own desires, as you keep insisting; therefore, no free will. I can only lead you to the water, I can't make you take a bath in it.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Hi, Dr Adequate. This might be a good place to start:

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Abstract.

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Free will can be understood as a novel form of action control that evolved to meet the escalating demands of human social life, including moral action and pursuit of enlightened self-interest in a cultural context. That understanding is conducive to scientific research, which is reviewed here in support of four hypotheses. First, laypersons tend to believe in free will. Second, that belief has behavioral consequences, including increases in socially and culturally desirable acts. Third, laypersons can reliably distinguish free actions from less free ones. Fourth, actions judged as free emerge from a distinctive set of inner processes, all of which share a common psychological and physiological signature. These inner processes include self-control, rational choice, planning, and initiative.

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My university doesn't have access to this journal, so I've only read the abstract; but it was the closest I could find to research on what laymen think about freewill. The bolded part of the abstract might be support for your position, but I can't really tell.Maybe somebody else here can get access to the full text.