(July 5, 2016 at 3:18 pm)Alasdair Ham Wrote: A choice can be free in the compatabilist sense. Meaning the sense of free choice that no one denies we have anyway. The trivially true fact that some actions are voluntary and some are involuntary, that there's a difference between a choice with a gun to your head and a choice without a gun to your head. That definition of free choice no one denies and is trivially true. Trivial not because it's insignificant, but because it's extremely undeniably obvious.
That's how comptabilists dodge the real question. Whether a choice can be free in the sense of us being able to do otherwise -- In the sense of being able to determine our path, not by rules of determinism... is a logically incoherent concept because determinism implies a regress that prevents us from doing that, and indeterminism denies any kind of being able to determine our path at all.
So a choice an be free in the compatabilist soft deterministic sense. I'm a hard determinist because I think compatabilsit dodges the question.
Actually, to be more accurate I am a hard incompatabilist: although I believe in determinism as cause and effect and a determinined uinvierse makes sense to me... I consider free will of the incompatabilist sense impossible in an indeterministic universe too, for reasons described above. I'm not a soft determinist or compatabilist because I don't identify as someone who espouses for a trivially true definition of free will or free choice.
Defining the ideas relative to compatibilism or (in)determinism is over my head. Any chance you'd care to finish these sentences (or equivalent) for me:
A choice is...
A choice is a free choice if...
Thanks in advance.
