Free will? You only realize it looking back. While you were free to make a decision and take a course of action, you only took one. How many times do we look back and say, “I wish I had taken another course of action.” At the time the decsion seemed as the best one, or the only one which could be made at the time, or not constrained like the others not taken. There is freedom retroactivelly, but at the time there was only one taken. That is not present freedom. I could will to take multiple routes, but usually all but one was abandoned. Or even if not, there was prioritization as to degrees of importance.
Freedom is a deconstructed idea of the past through the present,
As far as pistacchio ice cream is concerned, I can make myself believe I like it, but I’d rather have moccha any day.
Until science is able to fully unravel the mystery that is mindful matter, I don’t believe any of us can ever know for certain the extent to which matter [having evolved into “I”] either is or is not able to “choose” – to choose “freely” – one set of behaviors [course of action] rather than another. If you can’t at least admit that what does it really mean to tout “evidence” one way or the other? It’s still a mystery the hard guys are working on.
As for philosophers, they tend to “solve” things like this through the internal logic of their arguments: words telling us what other words must mean based solely on the alleged meaning of yet more words still.
Here’s how I approach it:
1] Joe says, “I believe in God.”
2] Jane says, “I don’t believe in God.”
I say to Joe, “what actual evidence do you have God does in fact exist?”
Joe provides what he construes to be evidence.
I say to Jane: “well, what do you think?”
So, I’ll be Jane here. You be Joe. What substantive evidence do you have that God does exist?
Language is the tool through which transcendence can arise out of the immenance. It is through transcendence that we prove the ultimate immenance of what we think substance is. Why go through the gyrations? Why create the world, if it was already there all along? In the beginning was the word, and besides God is not an old man sitting up above eating pistachio ice cream.
Er, are we actually going to be having these discussions in this thread? I thought this was just to set up such discussions. I’m more than happy to get into the God thing with you though.
You not only thought to set up these discussions, you actually did set them up. Moreover, You brought up God and pistacchio ice cream in the same token. So what is one to think? How can we expand on these quite different concepts, keeping in mind the impression one gets,as to their qualitative differences needing clarifiication?
Not really sure who this is addressed to but if you do believe in God, I’ll play along. Again:
Here’s how I approach it:
1] Joe says, “I believe in God.”
2] Jane says, “I don’t believe in God.”
I say to Joe, “what actual evidence do you have God does in fact exist?”
Joe provides what he construes to be evidence.
I say to Jane: “well, what do you think?”
Freedom is often mistaken as free will. Our will has the ability to decide, but it is not free, which means, we cannot weigh two diametrically opposed alternatives without strong feeling or concern for the outcome.
Our will then has the ability to decide,then how is a free will different from an unfree one? Wouldn't it be safer to say only "will"? A definition of volition, which has the potential to realise freedom?
Freedom is never defined as having unlimited power, uncontrolled or unrestricted by law, nevertheless, it is a state in which the cognitive-volitive faculty does exist.
That’s precisely what some of the ones who don’t have free will say. I can’t blame them. They have to say it. And it has to seem to make sense to them. It’s got that ‘feels right’ quale attached.
The reason that the two are confused are not necessarily because the people that confuse them have necessarily no freedom of will, but it is because a will is an excercise of power. In the case where will is to attain freedom of choice, it will be able to excercise it’s power, toward a freedom to choose.
Examples are the semantic arguments:
“I will to do this”. Or", I will not do this". Why someone asks? " I will to do it, but I will be stopped". So do you have free will, if you will something but can’t do that something? Am I free in the sense of wanting to do it, knowing I can’t?
I think the only type of argument when we can entail a freedom to impose our will, is if it’s said “I will to do this, and I kmow I can do it. No one can stop me.”. So free will is not free until it is excercised into a position where I can do what I want to do by the imposition of my will.
Will to power implies a will to have a power to affect change. The will is not free until it can have the power to do it. After it’s done, the will has effectively caused to use power to attain whatever it wanted.
Prior to that, the will is just an idea, such as" I have the will power to do it. ". Having the will to do something, doesent mean it is free to use it. Hence the confusion, in my opinion.
A presumption of a freedom of will, is a hypothetically formal statement. It’s preformance depends on overcoming the constraints to freedom.
Moreno, we use the word free will, in that conjunction, and this is why we are lead down to the confusion.
I agree, there is a lot of equivocation/confusion around the term. But really, I was following the subject of the thread and playing. I like jabbing at determinists given some of the access to knowledge issues immediately raised when one claims one is determined (along with everything/one else). An organism workign from the assumption that it is utterly determined, must be rather agnostic about all of its own conclusions, even about what seems obvious to it, including that generalizations about determinism and free will ‘make sense’. Could just be a compelling quale. IOW the ontological claim, since it must include the claimant, creates epistemological challenges (in the extreme) for the claimant. Note: this does not mean they are wrong, it’s just that a clear implication should be their own very strong doubt that they can, for example, evaluate their own arguments. The last time I brought this up I was labeled a person who believes in free will. Which is a confused conclusion. I mention this last pre-emptively.
True, granted. But the, how is it defined? The problem is, freedom in-its-self is just an empty vessel (form) into which the substance of definition is to be poured. That substance is defined by it's function. What is the function of freedom? It is to afford the maximum number of people the ability to excercise their will, in order for them to be able to live a happy and unhindered life.
So you are taking a non positional position for arguments' sake, in order to not to be labeled? I think that' an agnostic, neutral position that's a fair one to take.
Freewill is defined by atheists as creating all of the constituents of your thoughts and experiences. And the argument against is that you need to think and experience before you create these constituents, therefor the strong definition of free will is impossible or incoherent for all possible beings, this argument can be amplified by the concept of informed consent.