(July 30, 2016 at 9:42 pm)Jehanne Wrote:(July 30, 2016 at 9:09 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Sure it's free. Nobody is either compelling me or preventing me from expressing my will according to my nature as a person.
Can you comprehend living in a world without language? Imagine that you could vocalize yet you could not speak, that you could hear but yet could not listen, that you could see yet you could not read or sign. Can you imagine living your life in such a world? I can't. But, yet, this is a world in which many individuals, normal today, will find themselves living in come tomorrow due to a condition called Broca's aphasia. Would you be able to express yourself if a stroke or traumatic injury occurred to your brain? Probably not, at least not to the degree that you can now. Point is that your mental state would be altered due to a change in your brain's state, which means that if "free will" exists than it must be an emergent property of your brain.
This list is nearly endless here; I could go on but I'll stop.
Sure, no human brain, no human free will. The point is one is free to make choices, as in without coercion from others or without complete control from outside factors. The will itself, even if determined by genes and environment, may play a role in the causal chain as well.
And sometimes, though we have a will, the will is not always comfortably free. You might be forced to make a certain choice by someone else, so in such case, the will cannot reasonably be deemed free.
