It’s coherent to me. I understand the difference between me willing my left foot to move and me willing my right foot to move, and I recognize the occasions in which my body has moved as I willed it and occasions in which it hasn’t.
I think you’re conflating two different things:
I am willing my foot to move
Me willing my foot to move has caused my foot to move
It’s possible for (1) to be true but (2) to be false. Whether or not (2) is true is certainly an open question, and there are some studies to suggest that some common cause is responsible for both (1) and my foot moving. But at least to me (1) is uncontroversially true.
And I’m not saying that (2) is true. I’m only saying that a) if (2) is true then we have free will and b) it’s possible for (2) to be true.
That my body and brain can do things that I haven’t willed (or contrary to my will) does not entail that I can’t will it to do things. Nobody (not even the free will libertarian) will claim that if we have free will then our bodies can only do what we will. Some things are out of our control even if determinism is false.
No I’m not. The reason the person would not be held morally responsible is because they would not be held causally responsible. That’s what an “accident” means. It means that the agent was not causally responsible. The act did not flow from their agency or will.
“A is causally responsible for B” is just a fancy way of saying “A caused B”. I can cause things to happen that I didn’t intend or will, like knocking over a vase. The bubonic plague was causally responsible for many deaths.
What you should say is, “…then I am not exercising my will.” There is no distinction between will and free will on this point. It isn’t as if accidents flow from the will but not the free will. They do not flow from the will at all, and that is why one is not held “causally” or morally responsible for such things.
To say that someone is responsible for something is to say that they caused it, where “they” is intrinsically bound up with their will.
Correct. Free will is a faculty or power, not an event (as you said earlier). “My will” is a faculty. It is not “Event B.”
Sure there is. I can will my ears to move but they don’t, and so I don’t have the “freedom” to move my ears at will.
No it doesn’t. If I push a mystery button and in doing so cause a bomb to explode then I caused the bomb to explode, even though I didn’t will any bomb to explode.
There’s a difference between willing my foot to move and having free will. The former is a neurological event, and if this neurological event succeeds in causing my foot to move then I have the faculty of free will.
Is there any sense in which your will is free? I mean your will, itself, free from being casually determined, the way it casually determines what the body does?
You are saying that you are able to use your will to try to cause your ears to move without at the same time using your free will to try to cause your ears to move. Do you really think this makes any sense? The subject here is “will” vs. “free will.”
(Equivocating between “willing my ears to move” and “moving my ears at will” is another sophistry.)
This has nothing to do with the point at stake, namely that your distinction between the will and the free will does not hold in the cases you examine.
Regarding the bomb, I said, “To say that someone is responsible for something is to say that they caused it.” Your misrepresentation has me saying, “To say that someone caused something is to say that they were responsible for it.” That’s a strawman.
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(But note that if we were to dig into this it would be plausible for someone to say, “They pushed the button,” without saying, “They detonated the bomb,” because the “they” refers to two slightly different things in each case (given their ignorance of what the button does). In the first case “they” includes their will, which is usual. In the second case “they” excludes their will, which is unusual but not altogether uncommon.)
Earlier you said “My will” is an event. Now you have said it is a power. Which is it? You can’t have it both ways, and you can’t keep ignoring the point in question.
I am willing my ears to move, but despite my best efforts they’re not moving. Or, I’m willing my hands to stop shaking, but despite my best efforts they continue. The will is there, but it fails to achieve the intended result.
Whereas if I will my foot to move, and in doing so it does, I have exercised free will; my body has moved as I have willed it, and because I have willed it.
I am saying:
“A is causally responsible for B” means “A caused B”
A can cause B even if A did not will or intend for B to happen
In your previous comment you argued that (2) is false, but this is wrong; (2) is true. I can cause and have caused lots of things that I neither willed nor intended to happen.
No, I’m saying “my will” is an event and “free will” is a faculty. As above, these are two different things.
You can claim that “vibrating with nature” is coherent for you, that doesn’t mean it’s coherent.
No you don’t. That’s like saying “I recognize when I can heal my body with positive thoughts”.
If you confuse your thoughts with reality, that’s called a delusion.
No I’m not.
I am telling you those words don’t mean anything. It’s ipse dixit.
This is called introspective fallacy. There’s a difference between “I think X is true” and “X is true”, even when X itself is a mental event.
You think you willed your foot to move at t=0 because you experienced a thought at t=200 about moving your foot. You are confusing your feeling of a will with an actual will.
Just because you say “I willed my foot to move” that doesn’t mean that you did. Just like if you say “I healed my body with positive thoughts”, that doesn’t mean that you did.
Again, I see no reason why, in the first case, we shouldn’t say that you are freely willing your ears to move. You have exercised your free will in both scenarios. It’s not as if the free will is only engaged when the act achieves success.
Okay. As I said, this strong distinction between “will” and “free will” is not in accord with language use. Further “my will” is simply not an event or a verb. It is a faculty. Dictionaries will attest to this.
Again, this is a misrepresentation, but I added a spoiler in my last post which explains some of the details.
If my will is a physical thing (e.g. brain activity), then like every other physical thing in the universe it is causally determined by antecedent events.
Therefore, if I have a will and if this will is not causally determined by antecedent events then my will is some non-physical thing.
So I’m not saying that non-physical things can’t be causally determined (that would be to affirm the consequent). Rather, I’m only saying that the will being non-physical is the only potential way to avoid it being causally determined.
So on it goes. Foot moving, or not; volition, will, etc. Regardless of the jury’s verdict on which argument has the most weight, we all carry on as we always have. Our behavior isn’t determined by a belief in free will or determinism.
A reason why the case of free will/determinism is never settled (as far as I ‘know’), is that so much of our brain’s activity is outside of our consciousness. I do not know how the various parts of my brain put together this sentence. We know more about our brains than we did 50/100/1000 years ago, and we will probably know more in the future. We will still carry on in the same way.
Our capacity to understand the myriad ways in which the environment affects our behavior is another reason why the case is not / will not be settled. It isn’t that we do not or can not have free will, it is that we can’t demonstrate its boundaries.