Free Will

[Angrboda]

It's true that being able to predict future events in no way implies that we are causing those future events, but it is a necessary condition of our will being fully determined that we should be able, in principle, predict future events from past circumstances. If our will is not determined, then this does not hold.

It occurs to me that the condition of being apprised of the opportunities available to us is an important aspect of whether we feel our choices are free or not. In some circumstances, we can determine ahead of time what the results of our action will be. Suppose that I am at the counter of an ice cream parlor. I know that if I choose a chocolate flavored ice cream cone, I will be satisfied with the experience, because I really like chocolate. But suppose they are out of chocolate that day, and I'm faced with an array of flavors that I've never tried before. It would seem that I am free to choose any of them, with an equal expectation of satisfaction. It would appear that the degree of freedom that I feel with regard to my choice is in some sense related to how well I can predict the outcome of that choice, and that in turn is a result of my being ignorant about the various opportunities from which I am choosing. Is there some threshold of ignorance beyond which, if I'm unaware of the likely outcomes, my choice stops being involuntary in the sense previously described and shades into becoming a free and voluntary choice? Is our feeling of freedom a consequence of our inability to predict outcomes? That would put an entirely different spin on the value of such freedom.