Do you believe in free will?

[NoMoreFaith]

This is the definition I've been using all along. If you wish to change it now, don't lay the absence of consensus on my door.

In the context of Gods omniscience sure. You're trying too hard to prove a point that doesn't exist.
Not sure what your point is supposed to be other than to attempt to claim I have changed my definition. The only difference is using the compulsion to choose (coercion) and causation (the factors that compel). They both lead to the same thing.

I am making the point that the discussion revolves around individual interpretation of the terms. There is the stanford one I quoted, your compatibilist one, my determinist one, your reference point seems to create the definition, which I find interesting.

And as I've been repeating time and again - "he" is not something separate or independent from the natural processes of his mind. "He" is those processes and therefore the choice is being made by "him".

I've never said differently. I completely agree, the self is nothing more than the sum of the whole. A Wholly determined one at that. I think you have me confused with someone who argues against that idea.
The only area I differ is the illusion of choice. I believe every choice is compelled, and just as a kicker, you are usually compelled to LIKE it.

It hasn't been established as such.

Don't be so sure. The subconscious mind does a variety of extremely fucked up things, that your conscious brain doesn't even register. Optical illusions are a good example combined with visual stimuli.

You're
When you aim for a career growth, you don't make instinctual choices and start justifying after the fact that they are all leading towards your intended goal.

On the small scale you do. I suspect as neuroscience becomes more confident, that we'll find that long range planning is equally as fictitious as short range planning.

Honestly I don't know, my opinions about what is likely to be found are clear, but we don't know yet.

Or when you cook, you don't automatically throw together whatever ingredients fall in your way and then claim that the final dish was what you were planning all along.

Seriously? This is the crocoduck defence in free will form.

Quite simply, you don't cook by saying "I want Pie" and Pie shall appear. You start with the concept of "Pie" and store the goal in your memory, you then take small steps which lead to a whole. You refer to your memory with lots of small scale individual decisions influenced by the memory for each tiny step of the cooking process. Until you have achieved your goal. Each part of this constructed in the subconscious then filtered through the conscious to rationalise. Your conscious mind lags behind milliseconds behind each individual step towards the overall goal of PIE.

Like evolution, you can only create complex thoughts, by combining memory and lots of minute decisions.

Or when you go to a restaurant, you don't grab your wallet, check your cash, lock your apartment, catch a cab, tell him where to go and get a table - doing all this on autopilot and then justifying it to yourself.

Quack Quack Snap said Mr Crocoduck.

The obvious fallacy of your argument is that you don't start justifying each decision upon completion of the whole task. You justify even minute decision an instant after the decision is already made.

To use a better example. How do you WALK.

How many thousands of adjustments are made in order for you to walk. You can't just start moving your legs and hope for the best. It require a thousand different tiny commands at a subconscious level to achieve the goal the body is looking for.

Its all very well saying "I shall walk to McDonalds", a decision formed from hunger responses, memory and instinct, is then rationalised in thought. But without a million tiny decisions, there is not one big decision, and Big decision, I would include choosing to cycle or walk.. thousands, maybe millions of microdecisions made to get to that point. Like evolution, the decision does not suddenly appear like your crocoduck, it is the sum part of a millions of tiny decisions.

Unlike evolution, all these small actions are leading towards one single purpose - all of them the result of the same motivation for that purpose. The purpose isn't assigned after all the actions have been taken.

The point is, that your motivation is certain and inevitable in a given situation. Of course their consistent. But ignoring the causation of motivation is your fundamental error in reasoning.

Why would ignoring causation of motivation be an error, once you have judged it irrelevant?

Where do I judge it as irrelevant. I see no place where I do. Rather the motivation is the creation of a million little decisions as explained and without your knowledge. It is no more relevant to freewill as any other causal step that moves the universe from an instant to another.

To state that there is no uncoerced action - means that any and every action you undertake, you did not want to undertake. Any causative factors in the picture would not make an action coerced if there is no conflict between will and action.

Really. And you claim that I misunderstand coercion?

Coercion is to be compelled into a choice. You are attaching an emotive statement that you are doing things you do not want to do, which is fine if you are talking about terrorists taking hostages!
That is COMPLETELY irrelevant to coercion in the sense of being compelled to take one alternative over another.

If you want consensus that we are not forced into doing things we do not want to do, you have it 110%.
Addiction comes in many forms and might fall into your version of coercion I imagine, but that is not the version of coercion discussed in terms of the free will discussion.

To bring it into context, not only are you coerced into making a decision by the chemicals, and firing of electrons, but you are also told you enjoy it.

Coercion and Compulsion are almost equivalent terms when discussing why we CHOOSE an action. You are not free from coercion, because you are COMPELLED to choose an action.

This clarifies a lot of the misunderstandings now.

It is not your agreement with hard-determinism that leads me to the conclusion, but your virulent disregard for any concept with the words "free" and "will" in it - without any actual consideration to what the concept actually signifies.

No. Just No. You assume that if you are not agreed with, that someone misunderstands the concept. Which is arrogant and faulty. Especially hot on the heels of a fundamental misunderstanding of what coercion of choice entails.

You do realize that Kant committed the very same fundamental error I've been talking about (considering the agent independent of material world) and considered causality to be the illusion?

I chose that quote specifically, because it highlights the barbarism of terms you are using to justify free will in a determined, and COERCED decision making process. Its the claim to have solved the problem, through nothing other than wordplay and readjustment of meanings.

Yes, but those little decisions are undertaken with that larger conscious decision in consideration - the large decision is not justified a-posteriori.

Think of a decision as an organic being. As a whole, it is complex and compelling, but under a microscope, consists entirely of little things that care not one jot for the overall organism, but working together for mutual benefit.

But until you present some evidence that the conscious ever directs the action itself without recourse to causation, I will remain a hard determinist.

Why would I present any evidence for such when that has never been my position.

You have stated that the motivation precedes the action, whereby, I am arguing that, counter-intuitive as it may be, this does not seem to be the case.
We agree in terms of things being caused, but there is a clear realm of disagreement in what this means.

I find the idea that you act before you think to be more revealing. I, however, try to think my actions through before acting them out. [/quote[

Decision to act. Not Action. Don't be foolish. You're smarter than that.

[quote='genkaus' pid='261549' dateline='1332798237']Do you still not see your problem? Compatibility (not compatibilism) does not require free-will to be proven by exceptions to determined response system - free-will is a part of what determines the response of the system.

Rather, you don't see the problem that it is mere assertion, rather than logically proven.

I don't claim to have proven my position either, just to be clear. But since we're in a stand-off of refusing to accept each others assertion, we are gridlocked.

I thought you started out with a pretty decent definition. I'm not sure where in between you lost your way.

Using Coercion in its sense of being forced into something you don't want to do rather than the compulsion to act fucked things up quite royally.

Much of your responses now are getting slightly offensive to be honest, such as the little dig that I "act before I think".

Maybe when we cool a little bit, we should have a more formal debate together, and we can agree on the correct usage of terms before hand. I feel most of our conversations have been wasted in us both (I've been guilty of it as well) misusing terms in the wrong places.