Free will/evil/punishment

[Mudhammam]

How would I know what your will was, or what you took your will to be.  How?  I've seen many an idea of will tossed around here.  Would you prefer that I -imagined your position for you and then argued against it-..........jackass.

It's a bit difficult giving you the benefit of doubt considering our recent exchanges but it seems like someone interested in another's position will *first* read what they say and *then* ask for clarification on a specific point that they feel has been inadequately addressed... rather than resorting to simple-minded shrugs and name-calling.

There we go.  See.....elaboration was required and extremely helpful, because your idea of free will and mine are identical........except that I don't think it's free at all...and even after saying that... I'm not sure you and I actually disagree on the issue.  You've put a subset of internal things in one box, and called the rest "other".  The question asked is whether or not all of those things belong in the same box.  Your categories are helpful in trying to understand your framework...but they do not advance an answer to that question.  I certainly don't see how I could rescue it from bondage -by applying the label of "other" to a category I have invented in order to accommodate it.....

It seems to me that both of us feel that a certain amount of things can be crossed off the list.  What remains, what we do when we make decisions, whatever that is..is "free will" to both of us.  Yeah?  

The difference between compatibilists and determinists, as I see it, is purely semantical... which is why I find your insistence on further demonstration in the present context, well, confused. But nonetheless I'll try to clarify. A person who acts on his will, without coercion, is in my view acting freely. You will probably assert that the genetic and environmental factors that shape a person's will are coercive but I rather find it more useful to draw a distinction between influences and compulsions, the latter negating free will in the sense that a person has no choice, real or imaginary, whereas the former allows for a decision to be made in accordance with the reasons and desires that the person themselves find most pleasant. Take the terrorist who shot up the church in South Carolina, for example. We can diagnose him with mental illness and explain his behaviors as a result of his personal history, all of which is legitimate in tracing causes back to their roots. That doesn't change the fact that he acted of his own volition---no one strapped a bomb to his chest and forced him to behave in the way that he did. Like Schopenhauer said, "I can do what I will: I can, if I will, give everything I have to the poor and thus become poor myself—if I will! But I cannot will this, because the opposing motives have much too much power over me for me to be able to. On the other hand, if I had a different character, even to the extent that I were a saint, then I would be able to will it. But then I could not keep from willing it, and hence I would have to do so." He willed it, and as a result, acted upon it. He did not choose to will what he willed, but he chose to do what he willed, as in nobody else coerced him to do it. Perhaps you think that he could not have chosen otherwise, that the spindles of necessity do not allow for real possibility; I would only be inclined to agree if it was granted that he had no notion of right and wrong, but I think even the most hardened sociopaths usually have something of a conscience, however distorted it may be. That's the nature of rationality, which separates us from brutes, even if it only exists in some minds to a depressingly small degree. And though some proclaim knowledge to be power, what they really mean is freedom.