Free will Argument against Divine Providence

[bennyboy]

The fact you are ignoring is that it is NOT being defined against its salient features. Those salient defining features are very much intact. Free-will is not defined as "not-determinism". The determinism vs free-will question is not a part of the definition.

Simply put, you are putting the cart before the horse here. You don't start by considering "free-will" as some absolute philosophical position which by its nature is incompatible with determinism. You don't start by assuming "free will means your will's freedom from determinism". That would be begging the question. Here you have defined free-will as something incompatible with determinism and thus conclude that it could not possibly be compatible with determinism.

If you honestly wish to consider the philosophical issue of free-will, then consider it on its own merits - without any reference to determinism. Figure out what the term "human will" means within the context of your chosen philosophical premises - whether it us substance dualism or monism. Figure out how it plays out and which aspects can be rationally considered free. And then try to decide whether this conceptualization of free-will is compatible/incompatible/partially compatible with determinism. Don't start by assuming that free-will by definition means not-determined will and then go from there.

Historically, there are three kinds of non-freedom that I can think of: 1) fate (which implies acceptance of a mythology); 2) physical (or at least causal) determinism; 3) God/gods, specifically a Jewish God who allows free will, and which represent from the human perspective a (partly, at least) random influence.

In order to make the God argument, we have to prove God; that's a non-starter for me (even though it's kind of the OP). Fate also implies acceptance of unseen beings-- historically the Fate sisters.

So we're left with the idea of causal determinism. If the will is free, it is free from causal determinism. And since physical monists (at least here) assert that such a monism is wholly deterministic, then free will implies dualism. As for the idea that free will is an experience of part of brain function-- no. Will is an agency for motivated action, and no experience can be called that. If that is reality, then the reality is that there is no will, not that the will is compatible with brain function determinism.

So there is really only one context in which free will can sensibly considered: mind/matter dualism. If such dualism is false, there is no will to prove or disprove, or to investigate.