Is free will real?

[robvalue]

It's a fucking convincing illusion though, it had me fooled for some 20 years.

[Whateverist]

I'm so glad to be free of free will. Like you it took me years to see it. Now I just relax and enjoy the actions of my body. Never quite know what it will do next.

Of course sometimes I wonder. Am I free to enjoy the ride or do I simply have no other choice?

[robvalue]

It really is weird. More and more I do actually feel like an observer. I feel like I watch myself do things, and listen to myself talk. I sit and wait for thoughts to pop into my head.

[Whateverist]

Sometimes I practice just noticing my thoughts without engaging them. I like it when one of them is all "but the house really is on fire". Yeah, right.

[robvalue]

Sometimes I wish my thoughts would just get lost. They immediately jump all over everything, analysing every detail, pointing out every mistake, and I haven't asked them to do shit. Chill out, me!

[Neo-Scholastic]

I define free will as this: a person has free will to the extent that he is a cause of which actualities will manifest within the range of potentials of his or her field of influence.

That said, the compatibilist position is incoherent because it rest on three conflicting and/or unsupported premises: 1) physical reality is causally closed, 2) people, things, and ideas can be identified within causal chain & 3) a constant and meaningful harmony holds between someone’s subjective mental states their objective behavior.
Premise 1 is indispensable to the compatibilist position.

But premise 1 conflicts with premise 2. If everything is a continuous chain of material operations then there is no non-question begging way to define the start and end points of deliberations and actions.

Premise 1 also conflicts with premise 3. Physical causal closure either makes subjective experience an inert epiphenomena or physical processes are overdetermined. Thus there is no sufficient reason that can account for the relationship between mental states and behavior.

[Mudhammam]

I define free will as this: a person has free will to the extent that he is a cause of which actualities will manifest within the range of potentials of his or her field of influence.

That said, the compatibilist position is incoherent because it rest on three conflicting and/or unsupported premises: 1) physical reality is causally closed, 2) people, things, and ideas can be identified within causal chain & 3) a constant and meaningful harmony holds between someone’s subjective mental states their objective behavior.
Premise 1 is indispensable to the compatibilist position.

But premise 1 conflicts with premise 2. If everything is a continuous chain of material operations then there is no non-question begging way to define the start and end points of deliberations and actions.

Premise 1 also conflicts with premise 3. Physical causal closure either makes subjective experience an inert epiphenomena or physical processes are overdetermined. Thus there is no sufficient reason that can account for the relationship between mental states and behavior.

"He is a cause." Yes but not an uncaused cause. His personality, which will determine his action, is conditioned. Your formulation of Premise 1) appears to me either redundant or irrelevant. 2) is demonstrable by observation, that is, through studying behavior, instincts, and motives. 3) is unclear. Often harmony and meaning between mental states and subsequent actions is neither constant nor clear. But I do agree with Chad, that compatibilism is ultimately inconsistent, though it fares better and can at least be made intelligible, unlike libertarian free will.

[Whateverist]

You know, I've not taken a position and I've yet to have my operator's license revoked for any of the volitional acts I perform or the subject states I experience. (Don't spread this around.)

[Mystic]

Without free-will, there is no such thing as praise. Without free-will, you can't even thank your parents.

[Mudhammam]

Without free-will, there is no such thing as praise. Without free-will, you can't even thank your parents.

Sure, you can. Human beings love to over-simply, in fact, we must, because our brains didn't evolve to consider the infinitely complex factors surrounding every event that occurs. And that's all that free will really amounts to, an oversimplification of a complex process that involves little conscious decision-making.