Free Will Debate

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Im not sure I understand?  The question is whether the thing being observed is a or b.  We tend to allow that the instruments we use have no free will whatsoever.  A machine designed to detect free will would not need free will to do so,  but it not having free will doesn’t speak to whether or not we, or more broadly what it’s observing, do.

Maybe I’m just easy this way- but if person a contends that we have free will and use it to x…and when we go looking it turns out to be involuntary, I’d call the issue settled.

That’s the point - you can’t tell if an action is involuntary or not. I’m talking about ostensibly ‘free’ actions (no one seriously contends that an involuntary heartbeat negates freewill).

Limiting the discussion to events that are actually germane to the topic, let’s say that on a particular day at a particular time, you go to the market for orange juice. There are two OJ options available, and you choose B.

How do you determine if your trip to that shop, on that day, at that time, and the return  home with that juice were actually free choices, or just the universe continuing to unfold in a deterministic fashion? These might certainly feel like free choices, but that feeling might simply be what you were always going to feel in that set of circumstances. There simply doesn’t seem to be a way to investigate it.

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It may indeed be fatalism. But - again - how can we determine that ANY actions are self-caused?

Boru