Usually when we talk about free will we’re concerned with the relationship between our will and our actions. It would be quite strange to suggest that a paraplegic has free will over his legs simply because he can will his legs to move. The fact that his will does not control his legs is what it means for him to lack free will in this area.
Or if something like psychophysical parallelism is true then any correlation between me willing my legs to move and my legs actually moving (as causally determined by antecedent physical events) is just that — correlation — and so many would say that we don’t have free will (even if we can “freely” will, as you mean by it). Much like there’s really no connection between me willing my heart to beat and my heart beating.
Okay, so we’ll start again.
I am saying that this argument is sound:
“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
Therefore, A can be causally responsible for B even if A did not will or intend for B to happen
This is most obvious when A and B are something like “the wind” and “the chair to fall over” respectively. Having A be a human organism doesn’t change the truth values of (1) and (2).
Either you agree with (1) and (2) or you don’t. If you agree with them then you must agree with (3).
It’s the same issue. The paraplegic has no voluntary control over his legs. Using your own idioms, no one would say, “The paraplegic has will over his legs but he does not have free will over his legs.” The paraplegic can “will” his legs to move, and he can freely “will” his legs to move. Your theory is incorrect which says he can do one but not the other. Free will does not mean efficacious will.
Yes, and we usually say that we have free will only if we can control our behaviour. If we can’t control our behaviour then we don’t have free will even if we can “freely will”. A causally inert will (e.g. psychophysical parallelism) is probably something that both the compatibilist and incompatibilist will accept entails that we don’t have free will.
So the causal connection between one’s will and one’s behaviour is a necessary component of free will, even if incompatibilists claim that it isn’t sufficient.
At least with respect to (2), my initial objections are:
We can have free will even if moral nihilism is true
Even if we have libertarian free will, some of the things we choose to do are morally neutral (e.g. choosing to have jam on my toast rather than marmite)
The problem of free will within physicalism is twofold: 1) There is only one option at any given point in time, so how could you do otherwise? and 2) Accepting that options are real, how does a deterministic thing like the brain choose one option over another?
You don’t seem to be following. “Voluntary control” is a synonym for will-based control. The point is that your strong distinction between “my will” and “my free will” is non-existent. To say that someone has willed something is to say that they have done it freely. In the cases we are discussing, “free” adds emphasis; it does not qualitatively change anything.
When you say that the paraplegic can will his leg to move but he does not have free will over the movement of his leg, you are moving the goalposts. You have switched the object of the act from, “attempting to make the leg move,” to, “moving the leg,” and then you claim that the difference is will vs. free will. It’s not. The difference is the object. The paraplegic’s “will” and his “free will” are exactly the same once we recognize that there are two objects. The paraplegic can “freely will” to “attempt to make the leg move,” and he cannot “will” to “move the leg.” There is no relevant difference. Both will and free will are able with respect to the potential movement of the leg and unable with respect to the actual movement of the leg.
The reason this matters is because you are trying to salvage your strange idea that “the will” is an event even though “free will” is a faculty.
Because responsibility, as it’s understood in the moral domain, is the kind of responsibility entailed by freedom of the will. If you change “responsibility” to mean something like efficient cause, then you aren’t addressing volition.
You have free will if you could be held morally responsible. Whether you are or not is another matter.
I don’t disagree. My point is that if you shift the meaning of responsibility so that it precludes moral responsibility, you aren’t talking about freedom of the will.
I disagree. I think randomness is very much not determinism. However, I don’t think randomness is any kind of free will worth bragging about. Flip a coin every time you need to make a decision? Roll the dice?
As I said way above, I think free will means freedom from laws of physics. The laws of physics did not, and never will, cause there to be, to use Paul Davies’ example from The Demon in the Machine, the amount - the growing amount - of plutonium on Earth. any other number of examples will do. Stop signs, automobiles, fire hydrants, on and on. Something is in play other than the laws of physics. We imagine things, then we make them. We can’t violate the laws of physics, but we use them as we choose.
That’s what I think free will is.
But I still don’t know if we’re free from non-physical determinism.
He doesn’t understand the philosophical difference between will and desire. Just because someone can desire something to happen doesn’t mean that someone can will something to happen. Everyone understands “you cannot will yourself to fly”, but @Michael pretends the meaning is different.
If by “power to choose” you mean “could have done otherwise” then I disagree.
If by “power to choose” you mean “power to decide”, meaning “power to control” meaning “power to cause”, then I agree; but “power to cause” does not require “could have done otherwise” — it only requires that I did what I did because I willed it to happen, which is compatible with physicalism and determinism.
If moral nihilism is true then you can’t be held morally responsible even if you have free will, because there’s no such thing as moral responsibility.
Defining free will in such a way that it depends on some kind of moral realism is even less sensible than defining free will as a counterfactual, I think.
Like another poster you’re conflating moral responsibility and causal responsibility. Free will only requires that I am causally responsibile for my behaviour. Whether or not this causal responsibility entails moral responsibility is a separate issue, and depends on unrelated matters (e.g. which metaethics is correct; realism or nihilism or other).
Ants might, depending on how complex their brains are. Pool cues don’t because they don’t have a brain, and I quite clearly said before that willing one’s foot to move is a particular kind of brain activity.
I’m not saying that the wind has free will. I’m saying that the wind can be causally responsible for something even though it doesn’t will it to happen, because you were saying that I can only be causally responsible for something if I do will to happen.
The paraplegic desiring his foot to move and him willing his foot to move are not the same thing. When he wills his foot to move he’s actually trying to move his foot. It’s a different kind of brain activity — one that were it not for his broken spine would have caused his foot to move.
Yes, which requires that one’s will controls one’s foot; that one’s foot moves because one wills it. The “willing it” is something that happens in the brain, and then the foot moving is something that happens after the aforementioned “willing it” sends a signal down the spine to the muscles in the foot. If the spine is broken and the signal fails to reach the muscles in the foot then there’s no will-based control (and so no free will) but there is still the will.