I think you might want to read through that again.
Most recently he put it as “causally determined by antecedent events.”
I have, it’s quite clear. You are conflating (1) and (2) when you object to (2). (2) is an independent premise, and is true even if (1) is false.
So I think you might want to read through that again.
This problem is often posed as a false dichotomy – either I have free will or I don’t. But what is this “I” that either has free will or doesn’t?
It’s not only Buddhism that raises this question. Hume famously raised it too. And Michael Gazzaniga’s work (with epileptic patients recovering from Roger Sperry’s experimental split-brain procedures) allowed him to discern a mode of behavior he called “the interpreter.” This is a brain function that confabulates stories making the concept of self the central character in the story, in the interest of making sense of the world and in the interest of social cohesion.
I don’t doubt that true novelty is constantly seeping into the cosmos. This much was highlighted by the work of Werner Heisenberg in 1925. I think, though, that this is a necessary but insufficient condition for libertarian free will.
If we take into consideration the now widely accepted work of Heinz-Dieter Zeh on quantum mechanical decoherence, then the entire human organism is a classical object just like any other classical object. It has no special role in “collapsing the wave function” as some have proposed. But it is special in its ability to ask questions about the cosmos and to actively seek answers. And the answers that it finds are ultimately grounded in the genuine novelty that is seeping into the cosmos at the quantum scale.
This is where John Wheeler’s “it-from-bit” scenario enters the fray, painting a whole new backdrop for the free will debate. It may not provide an ultimately satisfying answer to the question – Wheeler was very good at addressing a problem from all its different angles, and not shying away from angles that were socially or professionally counterproductive – but it does present the problem on a much wider canvas than the superficial false dichotomy.
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Well, anyway. If your will is determined, you don’t have free will.
Then you are objecting to (1), not to (2). You deny that “I have free will” means “my will is causally responsible for my actions”. Perhaps instead you will say that “I have free will” means “I could have done otherwise”?
What I’m saying is that if your will is determined, you don’t have free will. I don’t think that’s controversial.
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It’s not controversial to reject compatibilism, but asserting that compatibilism is false isn’t a good-faith response to my argument that it’s true, and nor does it suffice as a refutation of (2) — because (2) can be true even if we don’t have free will.
Honestly, I don’t know what’s going on with your argument. I thought you were asserting both 1 and 2. Now I have no idea.
I wouldn’t call that ‘external factors’ necessarily. Internal factors are part of that. In a purely local sense, regardless of what may have happened previously, your current actions would be controlled by your brain - an Internal factor - even if it’s strictly true that the structure of your brain is the causal consequence of stuff that happened before.
But that’s kind of true no matter what, isn’t it? Like even if dualism is true and we have souls, well presumably our souls didn’t make themselves, so the structure of our souls was not self-determined but determined by some preceding state of affairs.
It is controversial. Controversial certainly doesnt’ mean it’s WRONG, but it’s definitely controversial. Last time I looked, a plurality of professional philosophers are some type of compatibilist, so it’s definitely controversial to just contradict them all.
edit: source for “plurality” claim above: https://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl
If physicalism is true then:
- The term “my will” refers to physical event B
- Physical event B is causally responsible for physical event C
- Physical event B is causally determined by physical event A
- Therefore, physical event B is causally responsible for physical event C even though it is causally determined by physical event A
- Therefore, my will is causally responsible for physical event C even though it is causally determined by physical event A
- “I have free will” means “my will is causally responsible for physical event C”.
- Therefore, I have free will even though it is causally determined by physical event A
Note that (5) says nothing about free will. It is simply a consequence of (1), (2), and (3). It is true even if (7) is false. But if (5) is true and (7) is false then (6) must be false.
Frank is correct. Here is your argument:
- “I have free will” means “My will is causally responsible for my actions”
- My will can be causally responsible for my actions even if my will is causally determined by antecedent events
- Therefore, I can have free will even if my will is causally determined by antecedent events
The point is that (2) is false and therefore (3) does not follow. The simplest way to see that (2) is false is to draw up the argument where events antecedent to your birth causally necessitate your current actions, and to note that, given this information, it is absurd to claim that your will is responsible for your current actions. (I gave such an argument here.)
See above. When you say “it is absurd to claim that your will is responsible for your current actions” you are re-introducing a non-physical conception of the will that is incompatible with physicalism.
If physicalism is true then my will is just another physical event, and is as capable of being causally responsible for bodily movement as any other physical event.
This is not even coherent. The word “will” does not refer to an event.
A mechanism is a causally open system. It doesn’t initiate any activities, it just processes its input. I think we all agree that mechanisms don’t make decisions and they aren’t volitional by any stretch of the imagination.
Volition seems to require self-determination, which implies the concept of purpose, whether that comes with human consciousness or not.
I admit I’ve never really understood compatibilism. It doesn’t seem to stand up to logic. Maybe it’s just a way of talking about things?
I guess it’s off topic, but in the Christian tradition, stemming from Platonism, your soul isn’t created. It arises from eternity and is on a journey back to eternity.
If physicalism is true then “willing my foot to move” refers to a particular kind of brain activity. If this brain activity is causally responsible for my foot moving then me willing my foot to move is causally responsible for my foot moving.
That’s most certainly a common viewpoint on it, and I don’t begrudge anyone for coming to that conclusion. For the longest while, it made no sense to me as well. One day something shifted my perspective and now it’s the one that makes the most sense.
The will is a faculty, not an event. Your claim that “my will” is an event is uncontroversially incorrect.
- If Michael is correct, then the human will is itself an event.
- But the human will is not an event.
- Therefore, Michael is incorrect.
This is more than sufficient to dismiss your position.
If physicalism is true then willing my foot to move is a physical event; it’s the appropriate neurons in my brain interacting with one another.