(July 29, 2016 at 4:07 pm)quip Wrote: Any action you propose to take remains contingent upon a near infinite set of circumstances. The very capacity to exist, to facilitate a conscious will itself was brought about by action of your biological parents (beyond your control/influence). Likewise all willed action hitherto; conditions anterior to your decision to enjoy ice cream exist far beyond your past experiences of it. This can hardly be considered "free" ....perhaps only in the limited, proximate sense.As I said, free will is the expression of the personhood-- including memories and feelings. DNA, life history and hormones are all included in personhood, and do not need to be free in order to establish free will. It's obvious that anything with a nature will act according to that nature, and unless one is eternally unchanging, that nature will itself be a product of some kind of causal chain.
Even in Christianity, we couldn't have a free will separated from causality-- God caused us to exist, and we were given a certain nature, and we act on it.
So there's no kind of free will other than the "limited, proximate" kind we're talking about-- that there is no impediment or compulsion which prevents us from manifesting the intent of the person in the world around us.