Oh no not another free will thread.

[Edwardo Piet]

Classic.

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I heard an analogy a little while ago, just to add something to think about in the conversation.

A voting machine is rigged, so that no matter who is voted for, the machine will record Trump. A person goes into the booth, and votes for Trump. Now there was no possible way, that they could have voted otherwise (remember the machine is rigged). Did the persons inability to vote otherwise, effect their free will choice to choose Trump?

The solution to the enigma is in your very words.  The person did not in fact 'vote' as to vote requires actually registering that vote, unless we are to make the term meaningless.  That would be like saying that if a brick wall existed between you and I, and I reached out my hand and struck the wall, that I nonetheless touched you simply because I had the intention of touching you.  If the machine did not accurately tally the person's intention, then they did not cast a vote.  The machine did.

And in any case, I can't see any of that escaping Strawson's succinct argument. The idea that "could have done otherwise" not requiring ultimate responsibility is just plain silly. Maybe it will hold for compatabilist accounts of non-ultimate responsiblity, but only a true fatalist would deny those accounts anyway. It's just misleading at best to call that "free will" when most people believe free will is a lot more than that.

I'm partly by the key being in RR's words when RR said "A person goes into the booth and votes for Trump". Surely that would mean they did register? Maybe I'm not 'picturing' it right. I take it the idea is that they vote for Trump but they would have been forced to vote for Trump regardless, they couldn't have done otherwise, but still, they happen to have wanted to anyway so it doesn't matter, they don't need to do otherwise.

My response to that is simply that that only gives us compatabilist free will, which I don't deny anyway. I just think it's silly to call that "free will". I think it's like calling the universe "God". Compatabilism is like pantheism to me. And when Dennett says "You're a compatabilist in all but name!" to an incompatabilist that's as silly as a naturalistic pantheist exclaiming to an atheist "You're a pantheist in all but name!". Well yeah, but then that means your label is vacuous. That's your fault there. ("You" meaning Dennett/the compatabilist/the pantheist in this analogy).