Free will Argument against Divine Providence

[bennyboy]

Either we are determined or we are not (or partly, which I dealt with above).... and our own self-determination (meaning self-motivation) has to, ultimately, be motivated (determined) unconsciously from somewhere. I hope that you understand. I don't know how you define "free will" but I'm talking about the (non-political) libertarian sense of free will, google it.

Here's what I do understand. In many ways, free-will is similar to the idea of god. People have a vague idea about what it means and based on that idea, they decide whether or not to believe in its existence. All the specifications and rationalizations are then based upon this belief. And that is why many people end up defending or criticizing a concept of free-will that didn't make any sense in the first place.

The first thing to be answered while considering free-will is what is it that your will is supposed to be free from? Your belief or non-belief in it should be based on the answer to this question.

Within libertarian metaphysics, the answer to this would be causality/determinism. In your words, if an agent's will is ultimately indeterminable - i.e. if we are ultimately undetermined, then our will is free from causality and therefore we have free-will. Whether or not our will is "ultimately self-determined" is not a consideration here.

Your idea of free-will seems to be that it is supposed to be free from everything but the self. In your view, it seems that if a person's will is contingent upon anything other than his self - whether fully determined or undetermined - then the will is not free. So, for you, "ultimate determination" is irrelevant unless it involves the self.

And these are two different conceptualizations of free-will. In my opinion, both definitions, upon closer inspection, render the concept of free-will, superfluous and pointless. However, given the basic difference of definition, your criticism of free-will does not apply to the libertarian view of it.

I'd say free will is the freedom to act on ideas, principles, etc.-- in other words, to process the universe through your own unique symbolism, and to impose that symbolism ON the universe to some degree.

This implies the reality of a self somehow distinct from the rest of the universe (which we obviously all accept since we're talking about people in exactly this way). My problem with determinists is that they constantly mix coneptual realities (for example, about people, feelings, etc.) with objective realities (physics and chemistry). There's no bennyboy in physics or chemistry; the physical reality is just a bunch of particles vibrating in space, and energy flowing through various channels and routes. Particles do this EVERYWHERE, and energy does this EVERYWHERE; bennyboy is an arbitrary concept.