Free Will

[Pyrrho]

Whether materialism is correct or not makes no difference.  If substance dualism is correct, you still have a hand that you did not choose to have (unless you happen to have no hands, but then we can just change the example; the point will still be the same), and it is still connected to your mind such that you are unlikely to want to stick your hand in a fire, due to the nature of your hand and the nature of the connection between your hand and your mind.  The only difference is the idea about what the mind is, that it is immaterial rather than some processes in a brain.  But that makes absolutely no difference for the pain of sticking your hand in the fire, the consequences to your hand for sticking it in a fire, etc.  You still did not choose to have the hand, and the connection of the hand to your mind, and that you have a hand with a connection to your mind is why you don't want to stick it in a fire.  In other words, either way, what you will can be traced to something that you did not choose.

Well, I'm not so sure I agree that materialism makes absolutely no difference. First, of course there are personal character traits that are preselected independent of will, and secondly, yes, these characteristics apply pressures of varying degrees on any given individual choice one makes. Most of us, after all, aren't going to have the strength of will to pull a  Scaevola. My criteria for free will, if it is to mean anything, is that a person has the genuine ability to choose alternative possibilities. In a materialistic universe, which seems to allow for nothing beyond determination or randomness, and most scientists think it is only the former that is relevant to any discussion about decision-making, I cannot conceive how it could be that free will exists. If the will is immaterial, however, then I think it opens up the possibility that even given two scenarios in which the exact same circumstances are present, whatever the sufficient causes may be, a particular action on the part of the will needn't necessarily follow. It could be the case that from a desire to preserve their so-called freedom of the will a person disregards the physical discomfort that ensues when flame meets flesh and they choose not to react. We can always look for further causes in such an act and say that these antecedents are responsible for the person's willingness to endure the pain, but it still doesn't establish that the choice was necessary. If it wasn't necessary, then it was determined by the will alone. And as I said, if the will is but a material composition of causes/effects or impulses that spontaneously generate from indeterminate states, this makes all the difference for what freedom means.

Like Irrational says, I think you still have the same problems.  With a material world, it is theoretically possible that the current beliefs about how things work are wrong.  And I do not see any relevant options that are added by the mind being immaterial.

You state:

"My criteria for free will, if it is to mean anything, is that a person has the genuine ability to choose alternative possibilities."

I don't know what you mean.  Clearly, a person cannot simultaneously do two mutually exclusive actions (e.g., go to the store while at the same time staying away from the store).  What the person will do is either go to the store at a given time or not.  How will you test your idea that one "has the genuine ability to choose alternative possibilities"?  What would be different in the world that we can observe if that claim is true, versus an otherwise identical world in which that claim is false?

It seems to me that there is no test, no way of distinguishing between having that "genuine ability" and not having it.  Not only not an actual test, but no theoretical test either.  So it seems to me to be mere empty words, devoid of any real meaning.

(The distinction between an actual test and a theoretical test can be clarified with an example.  Right now, we cannot test the idea that on a planet in Alpha Centauri, there is a teapot on its north pole.  [I trust you notice the nod to Russell.]  We cannot presently go there to test that idea, so we have no real test that we can make.  But a theoretical test is easy enough to imagine, where we build a spaceship that takes us there and we go look.)


As for the example of Gaius Mucius Scaevola, if the story is true and not mere myth, the extraordinary circumstances may be said to be important in causing the action.  He evidently thought he was going to die anyway, and very possibly in an unpleasant way.  His apparent options at that point are to either die bravely, or die cowardly.  Since he is very interested in helping his side win (or he would not be there at all), being brave furthers that goal, as it is more likely to strike fear into the enemy, or at least make the enemy consider that the fighting is going to be extremely difficult if they proceed, given how brave the one example is.  So the story has some degree of plausibility to it.