"freedom is predicated of persons, not faculties. In other words, the agent is free, not his will. A person's will is determined by his character and desires." - Arcanus
"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 cognitive 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 cognitive 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." - Arcanus
"Free will is not being defined differently so much as properly, foremost by the rejection of "free will" as a misnomer because the will is not free. I once shared your confusion because, perhaps like you, I persisted in the notion that the will is free, but it was a confusion that disappeared when I let go of that idea, substituting it with "free agency" instead. But I had to be shown the incoherence of "free will"—how it creates a dissonance in our intuitions and is violently inconsistent with a biblical world view—before I was able to drop it and pursue a more coherent view. Indeterminism or "free will" simply does not work. But neither does determinism, which, when held consistently, results in the nihilistic repudiation of truth, knowledge, science, etc. Evidently the truth was somewhere in between. Ergo, compatibilism. It is coherent and consistent biblically, logically, intuitively, and scientifically." - Arcnus
from this thread: http://atheistforums.org/thread-2044-pag...ight=agent
"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 cognitive 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 cognitive 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." - Arcanus
"Free will is not being defined differently so much as properly, foremost by the rejection of "free will" as a misnomer because the will is not free. I once shared your confusion because, perhaps like you, I persisted in the notion that the will is free, but it was a confusion that disappeared when I let go of that idea, substituting it with "free agency" instead. But I had to be shown the incoherence of "free will"—how it creates a dissonance in our intuitions and is violently inconsistent with a biblical world view—before I was able to drop it and pursue a more coherent view. Indeterminism or "free will" simply does not work. But neither does determinism, which, when held consistently, results in the nihilistic repudiation of truth, knowledge, science, etc. Evidently the truth was somewhere in between. Ergo, compatibilism. It is coherent and consistent biblically, logically, intuitively, and scientifically." - Arcnus
from this thread: http://atheistforums.org/thread-2044-pag...ight=agent
