Summations Only

I am almost a compatibilist.I agree with the compatibilist conception of free will. However, I am inclined to think it incompatible with determinism. That is to say, if the universe were really rigidly deterministic, I don't think we would be here.

I'm not convinced that is correct.For myself, I never thought I was performing an action that had no cause. Rather, I though I was performing an action for which I was a cause.I wonder whether part of the problem is simplistic thinking. As best I can tell, every event has infinitely many causes and contributes as a cause of infinitely many consequences. When we say X causes Y, we only mean that X is a dominant cause of Y. We don't mean that there were no other contributing causes.

It comes from studying human cognition, and considering the ways that we are different from computers.

We supposedly speak the same language. So you know as much about the mean of "I" as I do.And sure, language is messy, and full of ambiguities. I don't think it can be disambiguated, so I won't try.

It's a long story, and experience in other threads shows that I am unable to communicate it to you.A quick summary, and I will leave it at that - a computer works with defined inputs. A human has to do the defining any inputs used.

My sympathies. Quite so. And what does that have to do with breaking causality? The best evidence from physics does not support that kind of determinism. However, that's a good explanation of why I don't actually think that the compatibilist conception of free will is compatible with a strict determinism.This so called "chain of causality" is a myth based on an idealized oversimplification.

When somebody says "I could have chosen otherwise," they only mean that their rational analysis made other choices available. It does not imply that they had any inclination to make other choices. By saying "Choice B was an illusory choice" you are ruling out a person from following his own inclinations. Yet, surely, following one's own inclinations is exactly what choice is about. Physical theory is an idealization, that describes individual things isolated from other effects. In reality, everything affects everything, and you could never work out the complete story.Additionally, quantum theory determines a probability distribution, and that does not determine a single fixed outcome.

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

He would scratch his head, and wonder what you had been smoking.

Perhaps the most important use of free will is in our ability to rationally analyze evidence, and the decide on what to conclude from that evidence.Those who deny free will often say something equivalent to:

• I have rationally analyzed the evidence, and on that basis I have decided that we do not have the ability to rationally analyze evidence and make decisions thereon.

And then there are often comments about how we treat criminals. They are often of the form:

• The criminal could not have chosen to do otherwise, and therefore we must choose to do otherwise in how we deal with criminals.