Most Humans Do NOT Have Completely Frree Will

[FebruaryOfReason]

[Ignorant]

The will is the part that has no freedom.

"Free Willpower" is an oxymoron.

The will is a force, it forces you. You can't motivate your will, your will motivates you.

If I may throw out an alternative (and old) conception of the will's freedom, consider this:

The will used to be considered the "rational appetite", i.e. that part/aspect/power/faculty/whatever of a person which "hungers" for being (in its own rational context, being as goodness). In this sense, as a rational faculty, the "direction/choice" of the will is "determined" by goodness in the abstract (i.e. the will cannot not seek goodness). In your words, "it forces you" to move according to the particular goodness it encounters in particular things.

All people are constantly surrounded by a field of particular things, each of which are more or less good when considered for different purposes and in different circumstances. There is no particular thing which can be considered good in every aspect and in every circumstance and for every purpose. If a person ever encountered such an imaginary thing, that person could not NOT choose and seek it, regardless of context and circumstance. 

If a human-will never encounters a particular thing that is good in every aspect for every purpose and in every circumstance, then no one particular thing "determines" the human-will. There is no one particular thing which the will cannot NOT force your towards. In that sense, the will is free. It will "force" you toward some things more than others depending on the circumstances.

The will is free in that it is not determined by any particular thing it encounters, but the things which it encounters exert an attractive force on the will. But what finally determines which thing the will ultimately seeks? The thing, or the person? If it's the thing, then the seeking is not free. If it is the person, then the seeking is more or less free depending on several things. But if it is the person, what determines for the will which thing to force the person to move toward?

[bennyboy]

I'd put it this way: three people are in a candy aisle. Will they all choose the same candy? No. Each will choose according to his nature and his condition at the time-- he will choose the candy that is best for him, or possibly even decide that it's best not to choose any candy at all. That's free will.

The free will argued against in this thread is a deliberately pointless one: that we should be free from our own nature, or else we are "compelled" by our brain, by our hormones, by our knowledge, etc. But those things are all OF the self, and asking that personal agency be separate from them is really to demand that agency be separated from the mechanism of agency.

[Edwardo Piet]

I'd put it this way: three people are in a candy aisle. Will they all choose the same candy? No. Each will choose according to his nature and his condition at the time[...]

Exactly, and one's nature is unchangeable. What you do is because of who you are and you can't change who you are. Exactly.

[GrandizerII]

I'd put it this way: three people are in a candy aisle. Will they all choose the same candy? No. Each will choose according to his nature and his condition at the time[...]

Exactly, and one's nature is unchangeable. What you do is because of who you are and  you can't change who you are. Exactly.

Yep, but this is not the real debate in academic philosophy. The debate is whether or not we should be considered to have free will if we can get to do what we will to do. In other words, why shouldn't we count this as having free will if such a conception of free will is more meaningful and closer in meaning to the words "free will" than that other nonsensical conception that doesn't signify free will but rather some logically incoherent characteristic or whatever that we can't make any sense of?

[ErGingerbreadMandude]

Another argument I've encountered goes like this:

Suppose you are given an apple, orange and grapes to choose from. Assume that you choose an apple.
Now if the above scenario is played over and over you will always pick the apple because the variables that made you choose the apple in the first place are unchanged.

This argument is circular reasoning at best. This argument begins with assuming the future is set and then concludes that the future is set. Although the argument may sound reasonable it can be easily dismissed because the scenario described can never actually take place. Why would you not believe in a concept because of a scenario that can never take place?

[Ignorant]

I think those thought experiments, while helpful in their own way, ultimately miss the thrust of the issue. In other words, does your account of human action reveal an acting agent, or passive behavior, or one or the other depending on the action considered? If there is an acting agent, in what sense is that agent "free" at all? If it is all merely passive behavior, then there is no sense in which it is free.

Merely saying that choices are made does not really show that those choices are free. How would you differentiate a free choice from a non-free choice? What is the criteria for freedom? Someone mentioned knowledge, and that seems to be the only thing approaching a rational account of it all. Anyone else think that knowledge about the action and the objects involved have something to do with freedom?

Maybe we should distinguish those sorts of questions from fate vs. "freedom" vs. compatibilism?

[Edwardo Piet]

@ Irrational

Well, the will isn't free. The concept of the will being free is nonsensical. Why should we try to redefine free will into something less nonsensical?

The danger is equivocation. If "free will" just means "unconcerned will" then the question "Does free will exist?" was pointless asking anyway because everyone already knows that our wills aren't always coerced -- compatabilism is a dodge that ignores the real issue which is that libertarian free will does not exist and yet so many people believe in it or at least behave as if it does... we hold people absolutely responsible because "they could have done otherwise" which is false, they couldn't of any free will of their own.

A move away from belief in free will leads to a move away from retribution and instead towards what really matters: Mitigating harm.

Also, dropping a belief in free will increases compassion.

Compatabilism is as nonsensical as pantheism. It's like "The existence of God is not the issue, the real issue is why should we define God as something nonsensical and not instead define God as simply the universe itself?"

It's stupid.

[Ignorant]

The will isn't free? What do you consider to be the will, and by what criteria do you judge that it is not free?

[Edwardo Piet]

"Will"= willpower.

Your willpower compels you. It is not free because it motivates you rather than you motivating it.

And ultimately other external factors cause the willpower to have power.