If free will was not real

[Edwardo Piet]

*breathy voice*

You like phenomenology...how's about we get modal, you sapiosexual beast.

Fuck yeah!

Maybe "could have done otherwise" means there's a possible world in which the divergent course of action occurred, and by taking note of it we modify our motivational framework to initiate values relevant to the divergent course of action in the actual world.

It certainly could mean that... that's the sense Dan Dennett uses...

However people don't mean this. That would mean when people tell me "Well it should have occured to you!" their point is "Hey! If you lived in a different universe you would live in a different universe!" -- but this is not their point! They actually think I can force myself into a particular possible world, they're not merely saying "Hey! Another possible world is possible!" they're saying "You chose the wrong possible world!"

(Okay, laypeople obviously don't mean this. I just wanted an excuse to involve modal logic in the discussion. And maybe an informed compatibilist could mean this).

Yummy. That works. It was sexy. It reminds me of me but I think you're more intelligent than I. Which again, feels good in my balls.

Sure...but the causal chain regresses back some 14 billion years at least.

Indeed it does.

We can stop at salient links in the chain and talk about them as causes. In that sense, agents are the cause of their actions.

We could but the buck never stops. We can stop their if we want to call normal human willpower "free will" sure. That version of free will certainly exits if we want to call that free will... but the free will most people believe in goes beyond that so if we tell people free will is real we also have to take care to let them know what it is. I find it less confusing to them if we just say it isn't real. That has more emotional impact I think. And emotional impact means they've learned something.

They just aren't monads originating actions independent of the rest of the universe.

Rawr! You said monads! Gottfried would be proud.

Agree 100%. And that kind of thinking is not only false but pernicious. It leads people to take their own fortunate circumstances for granted and blame less fortunate people for their circumstances; or less fortunate people blame themselves, and just make things worse.

This is the most interesting thing you've said to me because this not only further confirms to me that our disagreement is indeed nothing but semantics and a different approach... but we both feel the same way about the damage that the incorrect belief of free will that most people believe in does.

Our approach is different, you take the Dennett approach: "Free will is real but it just isn't what you think it is." Since I take the approach "Free will isn't real but you don''t need free will and you don't have to lapse into fatalism. There is no reason to do that. You have free agency. You are a free agent with normal human willpower and although you are not philosophically responsible for your actions you ought to hold yourself to be a responsible human adult and discarding free will will give you a greater understanding of yourself (and your self) and paradoxically give you more freedom therefore."

The risk for me is that I find even after I have defined compatabilist free will to someone they still very easily start thinking that although they have free will in a deterministic world because compatabilist free will is completely different -- they very easily also start thinking and behaving as if this freedom extends to the illogical contra-causal sense of 'could have done otherwise' provided their will is not under coeertion. People conflate definitions all the time and this is a problem I think. Rather than separate out different definitions and analyse them people are generally more intuitive than myself but less analytical (generally) so in my experience most people are master equivocators. Rather than analysing different senses of a concept they synthesise them. They have strong common sense but they lapse into equivocation.

I am a slow learner. Most people quickly grasp the 'gist' but then they conflate things. I'm slow but deep. Yes in that sense also [emoji6]

Of course there are many people more anaytical than I. But I am certainly an analyser and I consider myself somewhat a specialist when it comes to spotting the equivocation fallacy.

I'm cooking some tasty burgers for lunch. Got any mayonnaise?

Always. You know I'd love to provide [emoji6]