If free will was not real

[bennyboy]

I think the biggest problem with this personhood argument is that it ends up in having you be responsible for things you did not have a part in.  Take a choice at time T.  The personhood responsible for making the decision at T was formed by a prior decision at T-1.  And personhood at T-1 was formed by a decision or experience at T-2.  And so on back to the birth of the individual at T-N.The experiences at T-N that form this causal chain were themselves formed by events at T-N-1, -2, -3, and so on, before the individual was even born.  So when you say the personhood is responsible, you're really holding all past events in the universe as being responsible, yet prosecuting the contemporary expression of that causal chain.  It makes no sense to hold the personhood responsible in the present moment as there was no point in history that this personhood could have diverged from becoming what it is now.

I think this view of personhood is in accord with reality. And EVEN IF there were a magical soul, I believe it would still go down like that: a soul could be born pure, then come into corrupting influences in the world, leading to the same causal chain. And even in an indeterminist world, while you couldn't predict the future, because of the way time works, the past must be deterministic anyway, so you can STILL trace that chain back to the Big Bang, and anyway randomness, unless it is somehow under the control of the thinking agent, isn't really a kind of freedom anyway.

I have a conception of choice that is as follows.  A choice is when a person has within their power to actualize one of two or more possible worlds by the expression of a simple act.  Thus I could choose between the world in which I eat chocolate ice cream or vanilla ice cream by the execution of saying the appropriate word, vanilla or chocolate, to the ice cream vendor.  The manifestation of will comes about through the recognition of a choice followed by an evaluation.  At the end of the evaluation, the simple act is expressed.  But what does this evaluation consist of?  I think that when presented with a choice, we evaluate the options to find that which best fits our inclinations at that moment.  It is an optimization.  We always choose the best for us at that particular moment, even if we consider doing something bad for us as best (which we sometimes do).  But where do the inclinations of the present come from?  They were already formed at T-1.  Thus which simple act we will perform is predetermined by the world of our inclinations prior to being given the choice.  Given any choice and set of inclinations, there will only be one possible evaluation, that for which is best.  So at the moment a choice appears, it has already been decided.  That is not in any sense 'free' in my opinion.

Yeah it is. The point of using the concept of personhood is that the history is not regarded. At the moment of making a decision, you form an intent and act on it. I think you are thinking of the idea of a soul that is outside this universe. . . but I've argued even such a soul couldn't meet the definition of free will as freedom from causality anyway.

The question isn't whether will as I define it exists-- it does, by definition. The question is whether we should continue using that word, especially in the way I use it. For you and Koz, the answer seems to be no, because there's too much linguistic baggage that taints the word, and maintains unnecessary links to old religious ways of thinking about freedom. For me, the answer is yes, it is useful. Whatever we are and however we've arrived at our respective personhood, we do in fact form intent, and we at least sometimes are able to express it without compulsion or obstruction. "Will" is a perfectly fine word to talk about that.