Summations Only

Remember how philosophy has none of that rigour you like? We're at one of those positions here. What constraints free will is free of is a debate that has never been conclusively settled.It is not a settled issue on the basis of arbitrary definitions. Sometimes free will is definitionally the ability to take action and express without external coercion. It really depends on who is doing the talking when they make the utterance 'free will' and in what context.To back up my position that there is not one 'definitive free will' I'll quote from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's opening statement on free will:

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Free Will is a philosophical term of art for a particular sort of capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alternatives. Which sort is the free will sort is what all the fuss is about.

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The Stanford article goes into this line of reasoning too:

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On a minimalist account, free will is the ability to select a course of action as a means of fulfilling some desire. David Hume, for example, defines liberty as a power of acting or of not acting, according to the determination of the will. (1748, sect.viii, part 1). And we find in Jonathan Edwards (1754) a similar account of free willings as those which proceed from one's own desires.

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One reason to deem this insufficient is that it is consistent with the goal-directed behavior of some animals whom we do not suppose to be morally responsible agents.

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The article spends a lot of time talking about one particular reason most philosophers have cared about free will, and that is that free will gives us moral responsibility.I think we can agree that free will is not 'merely' choosing something we desire. It may require some level of metacognition about the choices available and a weighing up of basal desires with more complex social desires (I want money, but to get it I have to steal, Stealing is bad. I don't want to be bad. I therefore choose not to have money) and perhaps some other elements.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

The man in the street proclaims 'I raised my right arm of my own free will...I have free will.'. Dr A would agree that the man raised his arm of his own free will, and that the man has free will. In that sense, Dr A is going by the man in the street: They both are pointing at the same phenomena and they are both categorizing it as 'free will'. What differs, are some of the beliefs about this phenomena. The man in the street may well believe that the thing he calls free will is free of the deterministic rules of causality in some fashion. Dr A, seeing as there is no evidence supporting this belief, decides not to believe it.They are both pointing at a tiger and calling it a tiger, so even though the man in the street may think that a tiger is the animate spirit of some deity, and even though when he says 'tiger' he is carrying some metaphysical baggage, they are both using the word tiger to refer to the same thing.So yes, I think he can have it both ways. When two people point to the same phenomena and call it the same thing, they are in agreement with one another. Even if one person believes that they are seeing a living god and the other one sees a mere Emperor.abe: And Dr A gets there before me and does it better. Typical.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

I disagree that free will is abstract and so does the man in the street. The man in the street will say that free will is real and exists and is exhibited as he raises his arm. It is a phenomena that compatabilists and the man in the street both agree exists and they both agree with each other about it when the phenomena occurs. How else do we know what a tiger is, but by pointing at examples of tigers and telling each other 'that's a tiger'? 'Flow' is a real phenomena, but even if we disagree with one another how it happens, we can both agree with what it is on rudimentary level. We can both point to fluids and say 'It is flowing now' even if one person thinks it is something to do with the way the atoms are arranged and their energy while the other thinks it is an inherent aspect of quickening based on the liquids relation to the Void.I'm not suggesting they agree on your 'fundamental basis' notion. I'm saying they agree on a more important basis: They are pointing to the same phenomena and calling it the same thing.The only disagreement a compatabilist has with the man in the street is what the free will is free of. They both agree with what they are functionally talking about, despite this disagreement. Just as we can call agree on tigers, despite our differences in opinions regarding their metaphysics.

Nor does it mean it is abstract. Justice can both be an abstract concept and a concrete phenomena. Any concept is abstract. But free will itself: The thing being referred to by the man in the street and Dr A alike? That is a concrete phenomena that really occurs in the real world. The example was to explain the matter simply. I gave you a more complex example with 'flow'. Free will is also a noun and (says the compatabilist) has physical characteristics. But free will may well be a physical phenomena like 'walking' 'flowing' and 'breathing'.We can both agree that the man in the street is walking, even if one of us is an early Greek philosopher who has some apparently unusual understandings of the metaphysics of motion. Right, but that kind of disagreement is nothing to do with the compatabilist and the man in the street. Just as a man in the street and the coroner may come to different conclusions about a corpse apparently 'breathing', that doesn't mean they are referring to different things when they say 'breathing'.Possible disputes over some scenarios, does not mean that two people are not referring to the same phenomena when they talk about it.

Of course, and this is, as I said, the only disagreement between the man in the street and Dr A. Dr A agrees that there is something that is walking and quacking like a duck. Dr A would also agree that there is a physical explanation for the existence of ducks, though depending on where you are asking, the man on the street might say there is no physical explanation. But they are both pointing at ducks and calling them ducks. But that's exactly my point. You wouldn't mean completely different things just because of your metaphysical baggage. You'd be talking about walking whatever you thought about the mechanics of motion. But the reasons aren't important. The reason for the tiger is evolution, but you don't have to believe that to be able to identify it.The only disagreement is about what it is 'free' of. On all other counts, there is no fundamental disagreement between compatabilists and the man on the street. Yes it would confuse the MITS. That's because you are calling something that they would not regard as breathing, breathing.The compatabilist is calling something 'free will'. Its the same thing the MITS calls 'free will'. When we choose something of our 'own free will', we're both referring to same thing. Whatever its actual explanation turns out to be, whether it can be explained in terms of physical processes, or if it turns out that there is some non-deterministic animus powering the human body's decisions.The compatabilist is pragmatic. It sees the MITS say 'I have free will'. The Compatabilist says 'I agree you possess a thing that you are labeling 'free will', I'm even happy with the term since it seems absolutely appropriate: but I disagree with your understanding of its mechanics...or lack thereof.'

But walking does exist. We both know it does. And it doesn't matter how you think it works, we can both identify walking and be talking about the same thing. I am complete agreement that Mr Mits defines free will differently than Dr A. I'm sure Mr Mits would define 'Tiger' differently than Dr. B. But I am asserting that they are both referring to same real phenomena when they use the term and are as such in considerable agreement with one another. They have the same right you do so come in and say the compatabilists are using the wrong one All compatabalists are saying is that we should define free will by virtue of what it actually is, not what it seems like it is. Sure. Someone points a gun at my partner's head and says eat a shit sandwich. In order to do that I will have to exert my will, but will is not particularly free, since it is heavily constrained by the unbearable consequences of not eating it. Without that coercion, my will, free of such external coercive forces, would be to kiss my partner, not eat the shit sandwich. The phenomenon is the same, it's the expression of free will. Mr Mits simply believes something about the phenomenon that Dr A does not. That is of no importance: I am merely arguing for the congruency between Dr A and Mr Mits. Not for the congruencies of Dr A and the determinists. And Dr A and Mr Mits both agree that a process is going on, and that that process is called 'Free Will'. They just disagree on their beliefs about the process. I doubt Mr Mits would laugh if Dr A said "That thing you have that you call 'free will'? That's what I call 'free will'. You believe some things about free will that I don't." I used to think so too, but I was persuaded that the compatabilists have a decent point. And it is a point as equally valid as anyone else's. I personally have no set preference between the schools of thought. My own position is that we do not have free will, unless by free will you are referring to something that we do actually have. If you mean 'free will' to basically mean 'The capacity to make choices in line with what would will without coercive external forces constraining what choices are reasonably taken'...or something like that, that thing that we definitely have when as Men in the Street we are tempted to call 'Free Will'. That thing? Yeah we have that. And Free Will is what Mr Mits calls it. And Free Will is what Dr A calls it. But I don't think it is free of determinism, despite the beliefs of Mr Mits.

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.

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.

To cut down the size of messages, I've responded to a selection of your points. If you feel something I missed is important for the advancement of the discussion let me know. I read it all. This is not about the differences between the Incompatabilist Determinists who believe that Freewill is abstract thing only and the Compatabilists. It's about the man in the street and the compatabilist who both agree that Free Will is a concrete actually existing thing.I see no reason to suppose that we must consider Free Will as necessarily being a mere abstraction. How is being able to choose without a gun to your head different from choosing without a gun to the head? It seems like the answer should be self-evident. If I forced you to do everything at gunpoint - would you consider yourself 'free'? On the other hand, if I allowed you to do whatever you want, with a few restrictions (crime etc) would you consider yourself considerably freer? Even though you are a determinist and you don't regard yourself free of the laws of physics, you still consider yourself free in other regards. Not free from the laws of society free, but pretty free nevertheless.Another way to look at the question:
When a person points a gun at me, and says 'pick the red shirt'. Whose will is it that I pick the red shirt? I think it should be apparent that it is the gunholder's will. The gunholder can freely choose between all the different shirts I have (He is still constrained by what shirts I own of course) without any coercive force. He is the thing that makes the decision. While I employ my will to pick up the shirt etc, I am not doing so freely since there is an external (to me) force (viz. a fashion conscious gunman) A distinction without a difference. My point was to say where Dr A and Mr Mits were in agreement. They are both pointing at the same real events and giving them the same names. They do have differences of opinion about how it all works on some metaphysical level. They are in agreement that tigers are big cats, but they are disagreement over whether tigers were specially created by a magic designer. I could choose to steal a necklace. If I wasn't starving, if I have no gun pointed at my head or anything of that sort, if I do steal it, that would be of my own free will. Dr A and Mr Mits agree on this. They both see something in the world and they both call it the same thing. The just disagree about how it can be.So yes, they disagree about the metaphysics of the thing, but they don't disagree about anything concrete about the thing.The substance dualist believes humans have a non-material soul. To them, the very definition of human includes the notion of the soul. But when a substance dualist and a monist come into contact - they can both talk about humans and be referring to the same thing, even though they believe that some of the metaphysical properties are different. And if Mr Mits also says the tiger is the animate spirit of fear. Does that mean tigers don't exist or does it mean Mr Mits has some erroneous beliefs about tigers?If Mr Mits' belief about free will is right - then it is my view that he does not have free will. But I see no reason to believe that his beliefs are right. "I did it of my own free will."I might want to be able to allow Mr Mits to say the above and for it to be a true statement. I might want this so that I have grounds to praise Mr Mits or punish him, depending on the nature of his action.This is where Dr A and Mr Mits are critically agreeing with one another.If it was picking the red shirt out that day, that is presumably because he likes red, that he thought his boss liked red, or because he saw someone wearing red on TV, or it might because an undetermined determiner caused him to pick red. But the decision was made within the mind of the individual, without extreme external coercion. Both Mr Mits and Dr A would agree that it was not a completely random choice. They both agree that the choice is made weighted by such things as social preferences and individual preferences. They both agree that if he picked the blue shirt (a shirt he dislikes) there is probably some reason. They both agree that if the reason is not too strong, then picking it would still be an act of free will. But if the reason is very strong, for example he picked it because if he didn't he'd be murdered, then they both agree that picking the blue shirt is not an act of his free will. I would say that the illusion is the notion that the will is free from determinism. I'd say it was a very strong illusion.When a person says 'I did it of my own free will' they are not referring to something illusory, but an actual fact of human experience. They may be suffering under the illusion that something nondeterministic is going on, but they are right to notice that one can do something that is congruent with ones own desires/will, free of certain constraints.

I'm not for determinism because I'm against dualism.
Though perhaps, partly at least, I am against dualism because I am for determinism. Chaos Theory is deterministic. Just because it is not predictable due to sensitivity to initial conditions that can never be measured with sufficient accuracy, does not mean each step is not determined by a prior one.Think of the classic chaotic system: The Double Pendulum. It is perfectly deterministic, but impossible to predict. When one thing causes another thing, which results in a new state of affairs from which derives another one...we call that deterministic. The man's life was determined to change from the moment that fruit fly flew in through window (and if we follow the reasoning - we find ourselves at the big bang eventually).

You don't consider yourself freer if you have the freedom to choose what you prefer as opposed to being coerced into choosing what someone else prefers at gunpoint?You must be using the 'freedom' to mean 'a binary condition meaning one is not bound by any constraints whatsoever'. Whereas I am suggesting that freedom is a spectrum. I am freer if I have no gunman. I am freer if I have a million shirts. I am freer if I am not in prison. I am freer because I have fewer constraints - not because I have no constraints. As I said, it is trivial to prove that the will is free of certain important constraints such as external coercion with a firearm... I just have to define the scenario so as to state that.I am not suggesting that one's will is free of all rules of deterministic cause and effect.I don't think you get to say 'But the incompatabilists are right, therefore the compatabilists are wrong' and end the discussion there. What we I am talking about are the points of congruency between Mr Mits and Dr A. I am well aware of their points of disagreement, and I don't think you need to keep repeating them. I agree that they disagree on the metaphysics of free will - but I also believe they agree on, as Dr A puts it, the phenomenology of free will. And that's what it means to be free will. It means that the decision came from me alone. It was an internal process of decision making that occurred within my mind unconstrained by some predominant coercive force.Mr Mits might believe that the mind is itself unconstrained by determinism, but Dr A and Mits agree that if the decision was made by my mind - free of excessive coercion, that it was an act 'of my own free will'You are using an inherently incompatabilist definition of free will, and declaring yourself definitionally correct. But why can we not use a theory-neutral defintion of 'free will' such as

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the unique ability of persons to exercise control over their conduct in the fullest manner necessary for moral responsibility

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with perhaps some bells and whistles attached (Courtesy of Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). This does not make presuppositions about what free will is free of.As I have said previously - Mr Mits may well define tiger differently than a zoologist, but that doesn't mean they are referring to different things.Mr Mits and Dr A agree on the 'physical' free will - how it actually manifests and acts in the world as we can observe it. They merely disagree on some 'metaphysical' properties of free will. And how has Mr Mits come to this definition? I suggest he has come to that definition because that is how it seems to him the thing he has that he calls free will is. It is therefore a definition based on his beliefs about free will. But the fact that Mr Mits can make choices and subsequently calls those choices 'free choices made of my own free will' is an empirical fact. This is not an illusion.He may feel like the choice was not predetermined, but that is a belief he holds about it, that is not empirically confirmed. This is the illusion. According to the incompatabilist, yes.But something can be both free and predetermined. If you had a rope tied to my arm, and hoisted it into the air, I was not free to not raise my arm. I was constrained by something that was not my own mind. If the only constraints in play, are the contents of my own mind, then my will can be said to be free.Not free of cause and effect.
Not free of charge.
Not free of reality.But free of ropes.
Free of gunmen.
Free of external coercion.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Indeed. That's because free will is an ability of the human mind. If my mind causes the decision to be made it is an internal decision. If someone elses mind causes the decision to be made, then that is an external decision. I don't disagree that external information has an effect on the internal mind. I would have thought that would be obvious, right?Think of it as a matter of where in the process of things does the excessive narrowing of possibilities occur.Going back to the shirt example: Let's say I have three shirts: Red, Blue and Black. External factors are not conspiring to limit these choices. From an outside perspective there is nothing you can reasonably know about the world outside my brain, that will tell you with reasonable accuracy, which shirt I'm going to pick. All the important determining factors that narrow down the possibilities, ultimately to one single choice, occurs within my mind. In this example, compatabilist free will is preserved.Now someone pulls a gun on me and says 'pick the red shirt or die'. We might be wrong, but there is good reason in the world, external to my mind, to predict which shirt I'll pick. This is not of my own free will.The determining factor in which shirt I pick is almost certainly going to be something that is not 'my will' since it occurs outside of 'my mind'. I can say with utmost confidence that something that occurs outside of my mind cannot be my free will. If it is anyone's free will it is the gunman's.Now granted, without the gun - external factors will be important influences. What colours my missus likes, what colour my boss likes, what colours don't require as much ironing to look decent. But the point is that it is my mind weighing up these options, and it is my mind that is making the decision. It is not something external to my mind that is essentially determining my actions (a life threatening situation for example).The gunman narrows down the possibility space with sufficient force that Mr Mits and Dr A both agree that the person's will should not be considered 'free'. The constraints are so severe that almost every person would follow the gunman's orders and so should not be held accountable for his poor fashion choices. Sure, in the spirit of what I was saying. For instance: Picking shirts. There are plenty of constraints one can talk about: The number of shirts, the social pressures to avoid wearing the polka dot shirt and all that stuff. But when those are mild pressures and not the absolute constraints of having a gun pointed at your head: we can still reasonably call it free will.This is just really to point out that Dr A and Mr Mits are in agreement that when a person acts according to their personal wishes (ie., internal determining factors) - rather than because of some external constraints, they are acting of their own free will.It isn't some formal explanation, its just a way of getting across where there is agreement between two parties. I'm sure Mr Mits would agree with Dr A that having a gun pointed at your head would mean you weren't acting of your own free will.

Agreed. I agree. That's really all I'm going with here. I'm not proposing that you are free of determinism! And when Dr A says 'free will' he doesn't mean 'will: free of everything'. He means 'will: as free as it can actually be' Actually, where they agree is as important as where they disagree. And my entire reason for entering this debate was to take the position that Mr Mits and Dr A are in more agreement with one another than some people were saying.I was essentially responding to this:

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But if we are revising the terminology we are (by definition) not using the term "free-will" in the same way as the man in the street. Which Dr A also says we should do.

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My point is that he can't have it both ways. Either we use man-in-the-street terminology and end up with an incoherent concept. Or we don't really apply a man-in-the-street definition and end up with something more coherent and philosophically useful.

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From Message 204. I was building a case for why Dr A can indeed have it both ways: He is using 'free will' the same as Mr Mits, and he can disagree with Mr Mits on some of the metaphysical fine print. As interesting as it might be, I'm not here to draw the line on the limits of free will. You could even point out that a person isn't deterministically determined to pick a red shirt with a gun pointed at him and that he could fight the gunman, or pick the blue shirt anyway. There are lots of interesting scenarios we could imagine to test our notions.But none of this is about Mr Mits and Dr A's positions. I'm sure Dr A and Mr Mits may disagree about the answers to your questions, but it's not really relevant to the point I was making when I started this sub - thread.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

They don't define it the same and they disagree about the metaphysics, but they both refer to the same phenomonlogical event when they use the words.

Not just the visible effect but also the cause, namely: the self. When they raised the hand it has to be as a result of a decision made by the person raising it because it was something that they themselves wanted to do (ie., willed) and not because the alternatives were absolutely unbearable but just because they were less preferred. Yeah, they have different beliefs about what is going on, I've not denied this for one moment. I've explained why this doesn't mean they are talking about different things, it just means they have different beliefs about the thing in question. I'll respond to that message with my view of it a little later.