Do you believe in free will?

[Edwardo Piet]

Yeah, free will seems to depend on dualism i agree. Back onto Compatibilism vs Hard incompatibilism, what in your opinion are good arguments in favor of the latter?

Well, I very much love Daniel Dennett's analogy with "magic". I just go the other path to him.

He says how, the only magic that is real, that can actually be done, is not real magic, it is a bunch of tricks. The only "Free Will" that is actually real isn't true "absolute" free will, it's a cheap substitute. Daniel Dennet, in his own words (a bit paraphrased by me perhaps) says "You should take the cheap substitute, it's pretty good", I would myself but I feel it is misleading because despite the fact I think we have freedom, I do not see how it is the will that is free. So I am not willing to go with pseudo-free will because I don't think it actually has anything to do with the will being free and I'm worried people might misunderstand or misrepresent my position if I accept compatabilism.

Basically, if I see that the will is completely contingent and dependent on other things, then it is in no way actually free! So, like "Magic", it's not actually magic, it's a bunch of tricks - it's a different meaning entirely! We'd have to redefine will, "Will" would have to mean a completely different thing if we are to call it truly free... just as "Magic" in the sense of a bunch of tricks is completely different to actual wizardly and miracle working. The key difference being that magic already has two different definitions. And I don't see why the hell we should redefine "Will". I take "Will" to mean what it normally means, and "free" to mean what it normally means and I don't then see the two as compatible.

---

[...] However free will seems absolutely obvious to me and I don't see how we can explain it away therefore I conclude that the naturalistic world view is incorrect because it fails to properly explain the data of our existence and can't account for free will which seems quite undeniable.

Your personal credulity on the matter (e.g."It just makes sense to me") or your incredulity over the idea of there being no free will (e.g."I just can't see it happening") is no argument for the truth of free will.

I don't think the arguments provided really do anything to do away with free will.

Well, what problems do you have with them?

Isn't this like saying well you were beat by your parents therefore you beat your kids and there's nothing you can do about it because that is the way you are.

No, that would be fatalism.

It's more like saying: At the exact moment you are beating your kids or being beaten by your parents (or doing anything else whatsoever) you are, by definition, doing just that, so you can't at that exact moment do otherwise. Because to do otherwise, you would have to, at that exact moment, be otherwise, and it's not possible at any exact moment to be different to how you are at that exact moment. Because how you are at that exact moment you, by definition, are at that exact moment so you can't be anything else (at that exact moment) because then you wouldn't be what you are at that exact moment.

Or, to try and be more pithy, and to put it another way: At any given moment it isn't possible to do otherwise because then we are talking about an entirely different moment, because you yourself are part of the moment itself.

Also see my signature.