Summations Only

Well it depends which notion of freewill is being talked about. That is the point. If the freewill in question requires that metaphysically robust alternative possibilities exist then you would be lying. If they don't then you would be telling the truth. Then how can you describe yourself as a "Revisionist" with regard to the issue of freewill? The whole point of revisionism is that the common concept of freewill requires revision in order to be philosophically coherent. OK. What is the "cause of free will" as far as you are concerned?I don't think the man-in-the-street concept of freewill thinks of freewill as something that is caused as such. Rather it is something one possesses and which imbues he who possesses it with the ability to act in ways that things that lack freewill cannot. In this respect "freewill" is much like "intelligence". Abilities. Not just properties.Ask the man-in the-street whether a planet has freewill regarding it's orbit and you will certainly get the answer "No". But ask the same man-in the-street whether he has freewill to jog around the park on Saturday morning and he will no doubt say "Yes". And if we press the man-in-the-street as to what the difference is the fact that the planet wasn't able to do anything other than that which it did will surely come into it.I am still not sure why anyone would deny the definitional relevance of this. I think the man-in-the-street concept of freewill has as much to do with the (illusory - as it happens) abilities it imbues it's owner with as your rather superficial assessment of what "free will" means. To do what you will is one thing. For the will itself to be free is quite another thing. But it's not just the cause at issue here. It is the very essence of what lightning conceptually is. Too simplistic as an analogy to freewill. If it is a core part of the kids concept that his "Santa sock" (as my son calls it) is from Santa and he asks you "Do I get a Santa sock?" you could quite legitimately say something like "NO. Your idea of a Santa sock is delusional. What you get instead is a sock full of presents from your parents".

We don't need to agree on a definition though. We can just observe a phenomena and both agree that the phenomena occurs and we can identify it when we see it.I might define walking as 'animal motion utilizing the legs'.
You might define walking as 'the changing of states of position by means of variation in spatial relationships with the Void and the Sphere of possibilities employed by humans when they are not in a hurry'.But we both point to the same phenomena when it happens and call it 'walking'. We might both have incoherent, incomplete, inaccurate or otherwise problematic linguistic definitions, but that doesn't matter as long as we can establish we are talking about the same thing as it really happens. That doesn't even make any sense. The phenomena is the real thing that actually occurs. The definition is how humans choose to define the phenomena for linguistic purposes. No. It looks like they are talking about exactly the same thing, but disagree on its mechanics.Just like a layman and an engineer can both point to an internal combustion engine and although they may differ on their understandings and definitions of the engine - they can identify the engine quite readily and when they say 'engine' they are referring to the same thing as the engineer. The point is that Mr Mits and Dr A are both pointing to a real phenomena and identifying it as 'free will'. The question is, should we define that phenemona by the way it feels to us, or the way it really is? The compatabilists say the latter.If you want to say that there exists a phenomena which two people mutually agree to call 'unicorn', then I suggest the best way of defining it would be to examine what it really is, rather than going by appearances. It might appear to be a horse with a single horn protruding from its head, but it might actually - upon considered examination - be a type of giraffe.Just because an expert says a unicorn is actually giraffe and Mr Mits says it is a horse - that doesn't mean they aren't talking about the same entity when they exclaim 'Oh look! A unicorn!' Some environmental factors apply more constraints than others. The presence of a marshmallow may not psychologically force me to choose which colour shirt to wear where a gun may. Freedom is a spectrum. In some situations one is freeer than others. They believe there is a break in causality. But they are both pointing at the same actual events and calling them the same things. But even from your position, you must admit that there is something that exists that Mr Mits is calling 'Free will'. Even if you don't think it is 'free will' by your own preferred definition of free will.My point is merely that Dr A has chosen to concur that the thing Mr Mits calls his free will really does exist, but that it is not quite as free as Mr Mits believes it is. There is no single 'Free Will Problem', incidentally. There are many problems in free will.It isn't about redefining terms. It is about giving actually occurring phenomena the names they have historically been given, but disagreeing about the details of said phenomena. I don't think it really is congruient with the way it has been used since the Ancient Greeks. I agree that if you want to only call something Free Will is if it is free of determinism, then we don't have Free Will. But the thing that people have that Mr Mits insists he calls 'free will'? We have that. [qs]But "that thing that [he] call[s] free will" is "the ability to break causation and be able to choose between two metaphysically robust alternatives." Dr. A doesn't believe he has that ability, so all Dr. A is doing is confusing poor Mr. Mits.[/qs]Yes, Dr And Mr Mits have different beliefs about free will. But when they use the term, they are referring to the same class of actual phenomena...one believes that there are 'metaphysically robust alternatives.' the other does not. But they are both talking about the same thing, despite there differences about the details of that thing.To repeat: Just because Mr Mits might think that a tiger is the spiritual Avatar of a Deity - that does not mean that Dr A and Mr Mits are talking about different things when they talk about tigers. The free will debate is intrinsically muddy. I think that saying 'Free will is an illusion' is just as confusing to Mr Mits who knows from personal experience that he has the thing he is calling free will.

The compatibilist approach is useful for this reason. But just accepting the illusion as real a la libertarians would achieve the same usefulness if that is all we are concerned about. I don't think you can fully blame Christianity for the man-in-the-street concept of freewill. I am no Christian bit as I wander around doing what I do day to day it certainly subjectively seems like I am exerting a libertarian form of freewill with "metaphysically robust alternative possibilities". Doesn't it to you too?As you type your response does it really seem like you are just following a physics script to reach a predetermined inevitability that was effectively put in place long before you even existed? Yep. It's an illusion. That's the point.

Well you say "the same phenomena" but surely it has to be the same concept as well for communication to be meaningful about said phenomena?ManA thinks a "tiger" is a telepathic beast from hell whose presence indicates the end of the world, punishment for those who think evil thoughts and terror and mayhem all round. ManB thinks a tiger is just a big stripey cat.They see a physical tiger. ManB says "Ahh isn't it cool". ManA sprints off literally shitting himself with fear. Are they really in agreement about what a "tiger" is?I would say not really.

I'd say if they both are pointing at the same entity and giving it the same name - they are in agreement that it is a tiger. They have different beliefs about tigers, one that causes one of the men to be more frightened than the other.Yet another example: some people believe that humans have immortal souls. Some people don't. By your reasoning - those groups of people are not talking about the same real thing when they say 'human'.They are talking about the same thing, they just believe different things about it.

Hi, RAZD.I think you and Perdition are making some valid points. I can agree that there certainly is a distinction between "will" and "free will" as the two of you define them, and it certainly makes sense in theory and semantics to distinguish them.My only problem with it is how well it really represents what people actually think about the subject. Surely even the most ardent believers in "free will" still believe that the decisions they make are under some measure of compulsion or obligation due to external factors, right?If they choose, of their own free will, to donate to a hospital or volunteer for disaster relief efforts, won't they acknowledge some amount of moral obligation to do so? Would their belief in free will cause them to report that moral obligation was not important in making the decision? Would it cause them to report decreasing free will in decisions with increasing moral or social obligations?Off the cuff, I don't think so; but I could be wrong. I'd be interested in finding out, one way or the other, though.My point is that it's easy to model the concept of "free will" with neutral examples like which Sudoko puzzle or which ice cream flavor to choose; but, surely you aren't proposing that free-will proponents believe all decisions are made in the absence of external obligations or influences?Perhaps the difference is that you classify such things as "causative agents," while they regard them as merely "peripheral influences" that help them make their decisions?

Its all maya!!!!!!!!!

Which is also wrong as our choices are influenced by our emotional senses which are, at least to some extent, pre-conditioned by our descendants and our culture. That is a physical force that can be seen by fMRI scans.The trouble with philosophy is that it messes with words instead of facts.

Then how should ManB try to reassure ManA? This is going to be a difficult conversation. If ManB is going to adopt your way of using words, it's going to go something like this. ... and so forth. Give them another half-an-hour and they could get this sorted out, and ManA will realize that ManB is speaking a bizarre sort of philosophese which only superficially sounds like English.Or we could do it my way, which goes like this. Sure, they don't agree in every way about the properties of tigers, but they agree phenomenologically on what a tiger is, which is why they do in fact both agree that they just saw a tiger. By admitting as much, ManB has cut to the chase. Whether or not he will convince his friend that he's wrong about tigers is another matter, but at least he's put himself in a position to try. You write that "it has to be the same concept as well for communication to be meaningful", but in fact that attitude is a massive impediment to meaningful communication. If we adopt that rule, then by what bizarre set of lengthy and tedious circumlocutions would it be possible for anyone to explain to anyone that he's wrong about anything?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

If it's physical, not if it's abstract. As I said before. You cannot point to "free will", you can only point to an action, such as someone raising their arm, and say "free will caused that." But then you're left justifying why you said that, because you need to define it in order to say if it was, in fact, the cause of the action you pointed to. But in your example, we're not talking about the same things. We're talking about the same end result, but walking is the process of attaining the end result, and the processes we're talking about is different. How does "free will" occur? When the thing we're discussing is abstract, the definition is everything. Again, you can't point to "free will" and say "That is free will" such that everyone will agree with you as you can with walking or a tiger, so the analogy is still flawed. Another concrete example to analogize an abstract concept. Would a lawyer and a layman point to the same thing when asked to point to "justice?" But the phenomenon they're pointing to is a man raising his arm. They then claim, together, that free will is what caused the arm to raise. Just because they use the same term doesn't mean they are talking about the same cause. I'm not saying there exists a phenomenon which two people call a unicorn, I'm saying that unicorns don't exist, despite the fact that someone believes they do. I say free will doesn't exist, because the definition of free will that is in use describes something that is inconsistent with the world as I know it.MITS and I agree on that definition, and the debate is over whether that phenomenon is real or illusory. The question is, "Does the phenomenon we have defined exist or not?" The thing Compatibilists choose to describe also using the term free will is not what we're discussing. And using the same term as us is confusing at best, dishonest at worst. Cause ==> Effect. A marshmallow has little to no causative effect on your choice regarding shirt color. Your genetically and environmentally determined color preference probably does. The environment that presents your shirt optins, certainly does. In conjunction, the options available, your color preference, the angle of light in the room, the brightnessof light in the room, the length fo your arm, your state of alertness, etc conspire to make it such that your "choice" is constrained to one and only one outcome.Again, how is that different from the person pointing a gun at you, combined with your genetic and historical preference for being alive, except that the equation appears to be a little simpler and more obvious to the layperson? No, they are point at the same actual events and saying they were caused by something they both call the same, despite them both having different concepts of what the actual phenomenon is. Nope. I agree that something exists that Dr. A is calling free will, I call that will. What MITS says is free will doesn't exist. This is where I disagree. He says what he believes free will is. It is different than what MITS says free will is. The end result is apparently the same, and Dr. A then says to MITS, "see, since it ends up with the same result, we must both be talking about the same thing." Again, confusing or dishonest. The phemenon is question is the ability, or lack thereof, of people to break causality. If no break in causality is considered, the phenomenon in question is no longer what we were originally talking about. But that's the point! What Mr. MITS insists he has is the ability to be free of determinism. He calls this ability "Free Will." You agree with me that he doesn't have this ability, thus he doesn't have free will. Right?Now, you can say that Mr. Mits has another ability, one that is not free of determinism, and you can call this other, different ability free will, too, but why would you do that? Concrete vs abstract. Just like saying that the experience Mr Mits has that the sun goes around the earth is an illusion is confusing?The fact that it is an illusion means that Mr Mits believes something that isn't there, but appears to be.

They would say the moral responsibility didn't determine the decision. They would think that, given the exact same moral responsibility, they could have not given to the charity.In other words, they had two, equally possible outcomes, given the state of the entire universe right before the decision is made. Determinists, however, say that the state of the entire universe right before the decision is made makes it such that only one choice is, in actuality, possible, the other is an illusion.

Exactly, which is why I saw the phenomenon, as defined, does not exist. No, philosophy requires robust definitions in order to determine if the facts support the phenomenon in question. In some cases, the facts seem to support more than one answer because the question is not one that is easily explored by the facts of the universe. In others, the facts support one conclusion to the exclusion fo another. In those cases, we can reject the unsupported claim, a la a will that is free of determinism.

Luckily for them, no such definition exists so they can argue with each other until the end of time about meanings without any noticeable effect on the real world of stuff.(You can deduct from from that, that I've lost patience with philosophy - science has left it standing in the road scratching its arse and wondering where everybody went.)

Well, technically, science can discover all it wants without any noticeable effect on the real world of stuff.Robust definitions do exist in philosophy. Now, sometimes, epople disagree on a definition, and then they can argue about that, but once they agree on the definition, ithey can then argue about the implications of that definition, and see if what they've defined, and its implications are really evident in the real world. I respect that, but in my view, philosophy encompasses everything, including science. In fact, science used to be called natural philosophy. The scientific method is a philosophical concept about what is the best way to deduce things about the world.So, without philosophy, there would be no science. You're welcome.

There ya go with your slippery words again...Meanwhile here's some science on how to fix your problemhttp://www.medicinenet.com/anal_itching/article.htmYou're welcome ;-)