Rex, You're mention of whose definition was closer to that of the common person intrigued me. I decided to look up what some dictionaries said on the matter:
From: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/free+will dictionary.com –noun 1. free and independent choice; voluntary decision: You took on the responsibility of your own free will. 2. Philosophy. the doctrine that the conduct of human beings expresses personal choice and is not simply determined by physical or divine forces. world english dictionary —n 3. a. the apparent human ability to make choices that are not externally determined b. Compare determinism the doctrine that such human freedom of choice is not illusory c. (as modifier): a free-will decision 4. the ability to make a choice without coercion: he left of his own free will: I did not influence him cultural dictionary: 5. The ability to choose, think, and act voluntarily. For many philosophers, to believe in free will is to believe that human beings can be the authors of their own actions and to reject the idea that human actions are determined by external conditions or fate. (See determinism, fatalism, and predestination.) Brittanica: 6. in humans, the power or capacity to choose among alternatives or to act in certain situations independently of natural, social, or divine restraints. Free will is denied by those who espouse any of various forms of determinism. Arguments for free will are based on the subjective experience of freedom, on sentiments of guilt, on revealed religion, and on the universal supposition of responsibility for personal actions that underlies the concepts of law, reward, punishment, and incentive. In theology, the existence of free will must be reconciled with God's omniscience and goodness (in allowing man to choose badly), and with divine grace, which allegedly is necessary for any meritorious act. A prominent feature of modern Existentialism is the concept of a radical, perpetual, and frequently agonizing freedom of choice. Jean-Paul Sartre, for example, speaks of the individual "condemned to be free" even though his situation may be wholly determined. ------------------------------ I personally find many of the above definitions to be inconsistent, but do you agree that definitions 1 and 4 refer to something that is real? I think most on this list would agree that definition 2 is inconsistent, since it seems to posit will contains an unpredictable element outside of physics or arithmetical truth. None of the definitions above seem to explicitly mention compatibilism, but neither definition 1 nor 4 is incompatible with determinism in my opinion. The idea of predestination and predetermination is in itself interesting, because it implies it is possible to know what you would do before you ever did it, but how could any entity determine what you would do without actually seeing what you in fact do? If it is not possible to have such foreknowledge, it rescues free will since what you ultimately decide cannot be predicted, determined, or known without invoking you to make the decision. It is unknowable to any entity how some equation or formula unfolds without actually unfolding it. It is like knowing what the 16th number in the Fibonacci sequence is without first having to determine what the 15th and 14th were. By the same extension, one can't know what you will do without stepping through the process of your brain and seeing what your brain decides to do (according to its will). Also, when you asked: "If no conscious experiences are ruled out by arithmetical truth...then what good does it do to posit it as a factor in producing conscious experience?" It reminded me of something David Deutsch said in Fabric of Reality about impossible experiences. An example he gave was the conscious experience of factoring a prime number. To use your example, you could say: seeing a square circle. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
