(February 29, 2016 at 10:19 am)bennyboy Wrote:(February 29, 2016 at 9:46 am)Mathilda Wrote: I don't think free will can even be defined. It's a useless nebulous concept unless used in relation to something else. As I said, free from what?
You'd first have to define free will before stating whether or not it violates any physical laws.
That's seems a little rude, since in the exact post previous to Jehanne's, I literally just defined free will, and said what it was free from.
Didn't intend to be rude. Apologies to whoever you thought that I was rude to.
(February 28, 2016 at 7:37 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Free will is the unfettered ability to act according to one's nature in a given circumstance.
Good point but 'unfettered' still does not suggest as to what could possibly be doing the fettering. And leaves 'nature' open to equivocation by theists.
While I generally agree with your definition it's not what people like Jehanne are talking about with regards to free will but yet refuse to define. Your definition is useful in scope of say a court room where you say that you signed a contract under your own free will and did not have a gun to your head. A context which Jehanne and theists generally use it is out of scope for this definition of free will.
I'd argue that anything more than this is out of scope for the concept of free will. Because you could argue for example that signing a contract while having a gun to your head was still made freely because you responding to your in-born survival instinct. Yet that would not be useful.
