(April 18, 2016 at 7:24 pm)Evie Wrote: It is an indicator of freedom but it doesn't apply to the willpower. And responsibility is relevant to the topic of free will once the true conclusion that the will itself is not free is reached, which is true because to redefine "free will" itself in such a way that we can merely label it as free is not the same thing as proving that it's actually free. "free" and "will" already have perfectly good definitions and both exist but not together because the will/willpower isn't free.Why doesn't it apply to willpower? It sounds like special pleading to me. Have you explained elsewhere why willpower is a special case?
Quote:Exactly. And people often don't, they just throw the word "God" around expecting people to know what they talk about and many people will assume it means the standard definition even when they just mean the universe. Same goes with "free will", it's equally misleading but far more morally significant when someone misleads matters by throwing "free will" around when all they mean is "will" and redefine it in such a way that they are redefining "will" itself to mean "free will" because the compatablist sense of "free will" is no different to merely "will" and any sense of freedom that is possible within determinism and compatabilism is so trivially true that it was never under question anyway, it's a dodge, a mistep, an equivocation and an easy answer superficially but a complete non-answer to a deeper question.
That's what I thought as well until I started reader further into this topic. Just like you, I underestimated most philosophers when it came to this topic and mistakenly thought they haven't thought deeply enough about it. Turns out I was the one redefining free will to mean something it literally does not mean, and you are doing that here as well.
