Do you believe in free will?

[NoMoreFaith]

Well without knowing what definition you guys have already established I guess I could give a simple version of what I believe.

Its best, because while I call myself a hard determinist, does not mean I accord to every thinker on the matter. To discuss, as genkaus proves with clear "compatibilism but not really", we need a clear understanding of your thinking, not just the accepted norm for a label of thinking.

The brain is physical. The mind is mental. The agent of self is a mental attribute. Free will is also a mental attribute. I believe will is not forced or predetermined by cusal chains outside of any influence. These abstracts or insubstantials hold no material space as the brain does, therefore they're seperate from the material. Therefore I believe that there are more than determined and material things that exist in reality. I believe reality exists in in more than just material substance.

If this is accepted, would you also say that a hallucination has substance separate from reality? It holds no material space, so is separate from the material, therefore has a reality of its own.
Does a hallucination create its own separate existence through the mind?

If you guys could perhaps restate what you've already defined and I'll assume that somewhere in there it's been a whole buch of materialists talking about freewill.

Or the lack of it. I can't say there is much consensus on the issue.

My point of view, thou Genkaus believes it is loaded through a assumption of determinism, which was an aspect of disagreement. I am still considering how much merit that argument has.

Let's play God and pause time for one second;

The universe can only be changed in a limited number of ways.
1) Changing the current or past state of the universe in this instant we have paused.
2) Changing the fundamental laws of the universe that dictate how the universe progresses from one instant to another.

In my view, changing 1 or 2 requires supernatural means (potentially technology sufficiently advanced as to appear magical).

You were created by the causal events of the universe leading up to this point. You lack the ability to change either premise 1 or 2 of the universe therefore you lack the ability to change the future of the universe.

In order to prove free will, I believe that either a supernatural 3rd cause (which I dismiss) or a problem with the 2 assumptions I have made about causal events.

Otherwise, I define free will as the freedom to act without certain types of constraint. My argument is that the constraints are complete and total.

Every natural system, ever investigated, whether weather systems, or the nervous system, to our concept of self, has always been proven to be determined and it is egotistical to believe we have a special ability to remove ourselves from the standard causal chain by which the universe moves from one instant to another.

Changing the future in the quoted argument of mine, is a little inaccurate, as has been pointed out, but rather we are not free to exempt ourselves from the natural progression of universal causation.

What we believe to be free will is the conscious justification for our decisions that are already made by the combination of a million factors.

Rather unkindly, Free Will is the name we give to our inability to comprehend even a hundredth part of the factors behind each and every decision, right down to a facial tick.

Thats more or less my position.