RE: Do you believe in free will?
March 15, 2012 at 4:09 am
(This post was last modified: March 15, 2012 at 4:24 am by Angrboda.)
Yes, you almost got it right! Eliminative materialists like Churchland and myself do subtract the self, placing it into the realm of "possibly non-existent folk psychological concepts". That is exactly my point, as I was noting that compatibilists, whom you appear to dislike as much as I do, are positing that there is an internal thingie, a self, which is the locus of control. My point was that until the compatibilists can demonstrate a self such that their statement that "it" is in control and not merely another link in the causal chain, they have no argument. If the "self" is a folk psychological concept with no empirical substance, then "the self" isn't in control of anything and therefore the compatibilist position is incoherent.