I view free will as simply the option to choose between one option or another.

Whether there there is no option except to choose option A over B is a mere religious one.

I have no free will as I am a slave to my own selfish desires.

Have you tried flogging yourself?

I checked with my psychologist and she said I had to vote 'other'.
Explanation;
If radically free will existed then I would be able to levitate better.
If I can't tell 'truly free' from 'free but illusory' then I can't say 2. or 4. are true or false.
I don't understand 'compulsory free will', 3. seems a self contradiction.
I'm most inclined towards 5. and 6. together because I believe that consciousness is a process that emerges from brain function of which the appearance of free will is a sub-process. None of this has been shown to be anything other than deterministic as we understand the term in the context of physics and chemistry.  As will appears to be free although all processes making it up are observed to be deterministic, the freedom must be illusory.  Though it does signify exactly what I say it does.

1. Radically free in the full blooded libertarian sense.
   
2. Free but inescapably (and thankfully) constrained.
   
3. Compulsory. Nothing gets willed unless I get off my lazy ass.
   
4. Free when not impeded by the will of another or circumstances beyond my feeble powers.
   
5. "Will" is an illusion of the mind, a concept believed by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
   
6. Will is epiphenomenal, a byproduct of useful processes of the brain.
   
7. Other please explain unless the repeated call to so causes nausea. Check with your doctor to see if your constitution is strong enough for this debate.
   

(May 28, 2015 at 7:32 pm)whateverist Wrote: Have you tried flogging yourself?

Every night, and twice on Sundays.

(May 28, 2015 at 7:32 pm)whateverist Wrote: Have you tried flogging yourself?

No but I thump my nuts until I cry. Does that count?

If you were a catholic boy scout you'd probably get a badge.

(May 28, 2015 at 7:02 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: Accuracy in the scientific sense.  I'm primarily concerned with explaining metaphysical details with naturalistic explanations.

The thing with naturalistic explanations is that they can only point to causes of various levels of proximity, but can never point to ultimate causes. For example, if you ask why I have a mind, it's simple enough to say that it's a byproduct of the brain. If I disbelieve you, you can smack me in the head in a baseball bat, and it will be clear that my mind is no longer functioning. But that's like saying "If I pull away this magnet, the magnetic field isn't there anymore. Therefore the reason magnetic fields exist is that's what magnets do." That's true, but it's no really the right kind of answer.

It seems to me that all naturalistic explanations have a simple ontology-- they end at a statement of brute fact. But "The Big Bang diddit" isn't really much more satisfying than "Goddidit," in my opinion.

At any given moment, any of us could get up and drop our next deuce on the floor. I'm confident that most of us won't for a myriad of reasons. My problem with the determinist position is that the existence of toilets and the practice of putting shit where we usually do is all due to sequential particle interactions set in motion in the very young universe.

The problem arises when someone drops a turd on the floor after 40 years of using a toilet. A determinist must then assert that this behavior was also unavoidable because of a 13B year old chain of particle interaction. I am okay with counterintuitive conclusions; however, determinism lacks demonstration. Also, if everything is determined then the claim is un falsifiable.

Despite claiming a scientific basis by pointing to our increasing knowledge of QM, determinists cannot connect the dots to mind meaning it's pure speculation. For me, the position has only a moderately more stable foundation than the claim that everything is ordered by an old white dude with a beard in the sky.

I'd like to add to this a point about the evolutionary narrative. For selection to work, a trait, or at least a trait precursor, must exist in an individual in order to be tested statistically against the environment.

So let's go to the beinning of mind, and ask a question-- is there a minimal "spark" which constitutes mind? Some will argue that there's a smooth transition between dumb matter and thinking systems, but I think tha's a semantic cop-out-- either there is a subjective perspective, no matter how simple, or there isn't one. That means that while the NATURE of mind may have evolved with the complexity of organic brains, the EXISTENCE of mind was necessarily spontaneous.

What does this mean for the idea that the mind is a product of matter? In evolutionary terms, that first existence of mind must have been exactly simultaneous with the first existence of the structure supporting it: for if the system preceded the effect, then you'd have to posit some kind of magic light switch whereby a system capable of mind didn't actually have a mind-- and then it did.

So it must be said not that the brain evolved, and that mind is a byproduct of the brain, but that mind and brain must have co-evolved. In other words, there has never been a living thing, with a functioning nervous system, in which some degree of mind wasn't one of the determiners of subsequent evolutionary events. So this preference of looking at physical structures as dominant, and mind as a byproduct, isn't really correct: mind is ubiquitous in the evolution of all living systems including that of the brain-- this is the opposite of "byproduct."