Determinism.....

[solarwave]

Describes his will? Sort of. Our conative faculties inform and influence our will, and the instantiation of our will is the volitional activity called choice.

Here, let me lay out my understanding on this. In order for choice to be meaningful and morally significant, it must be deliberate. To make a deliberate choice is to contemplate a set of options (e.g., chocolate or vanilla pudding) and to instantiate that which enjoys the greater degree of our desires (e.g., chocolate pudding), whether those desires are rational or emotional or some concert of both. If we evaluate this series closely, we realize that our choices are a function of our conative faculties; for example, the choice of chocolate pudding is a causal chain that is propagated and filtered through the motivational complex of our desires. This is why choices of the will always reveal the character of the person. The causal chain runs through the agent's conative faculties, not irrespective of them (libertarianism) but concordantly with them. Put in other words, the volitional activity of our will actively shapes this causal chain, as opposed to passively responding to a causal chain (determinism). We are not puppets. Nothing makes our choices for us. We make our own choices. Although our will is determined or "causally necessitated," it is so in the right way by forces internal to the choice-maker, not external. We know from the laws of nature that determinism is real, but we also know from the human experience that choice is real. Compatibilism is the theory that takes both seriously and articulates them as co-existent realities.

You know I really dont understand what you are saying. At times it seems like you agree we are free and at others you seem to say we are determined. Obviously it is because you agree with compatibilism, but compatibilism just seems like determinism with free will defined slightly differently to make it sound nice. Agree that we will always act in accordance with our will, so there will only be one option we will choose and that we are the cause of our own actions, but then in the second to last sentance you say determinism is real. So do you believe our lives couldn't ever have gone any differently, that our choices are in fact a combination of genetics and events happening to us, or that somehow there is a cross roads where a free mind can choose ether left or right? If not then how can we be morally responsible if we are a mere product of our birth and enviroment.

Heres my current problem; say I do a good thing. Why do I choose to do that rather than another thing. Is it a combination of nature and nurture, but if that is true it gives no area for a free will to act. If nature and nurture just give a tendency to act a certain way then it might be possible to act freely. But then why would a free will choose to act one way rather than another? If two people are given the same good opportunity to do why would one choose good and the other choose evil if 'nature and nurture' only gives a tendency towards good or evil, how can we make a free choice between the two. We can't have a natural virtue to do good since that is deterministic and it can't be random since random isn't free.

I seem to be finding more problems with freedom, can anyone explain.... if what I have said makes sense that is lol.