Free Will

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Snoopy

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(courtesy of Wikipedia)...

Free will is the belief in the ability of an agent to make choices, free from certain constraints.

So first question that arises:

Does one believe in the existence of an agent?

Moving on to constraints of choices: the possible constraint of major historical importance has been determinism.

Determinism states that for everything that happens there are conditions such that, given them, nothing else could happen.

In contrast, indeterminism states that events are not caused deterministically and must involve chance.

So next question: Do you ascribe to either position? - if so no belief in free will arises.

Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are compatible ideas and can be logically consistent.

Libertarianism (metaphysical, as opposed to the use in politics) is an incompatibilist position, i.e. agents have free will and this is logically inconsistent with a deterministic view of reality. Therefore determinism is false.

Final question:  Do you ascribe to either position? - if so a belief in free will arises.

Or if you wish to put it another way (if you accept agenthood):

Do you believe in free will?

If yes, is this because you believe it is compatible with determinism (you are a compatibilist) or because you believe it is incompatible with determinism (which is false) - (you are a metaphysical libertarian).

If you do not believe in free will is it because causality arising from prior conditions means what happens must happen (you are a determinist) or because you do not believe because of chance (you are an indeterminist).
 
also from wiki:

agency is the capacity of an agent (a person or other entity) to act in a world. In philosophy, the agency is considered as belonging to that agent even if that agent represents a fictitious character, or some other non-existent entity.​

Philosophically speaking then, agency is the capacity to act in a world. This would mean that there can be agency without a single static agent.

(Even Mara has been said to leap from place to place, or from being to being.)
 
I have suggested before that the phrase 'Free Will' is defined inadequately.
To me the idea is simple and should be 'freedom from the Will of another' - "Freedom of Will" . . . but that's just the Luciferian in Me I guess.
 
Etu Malku said:
I have suggested before that the phrase 'Free Will' is defined inadequately.
To me the idea is simple and should be 'freedom from the Will of another' - "Freedom of Will" . . . but that's just the Luciferian in Me I guess.
Click to expand...

ankh-djed-was? (in that order?)
 
I like "freedom from the will of another". But is this all you mean by it? If you were alone on a desert island (no other wills around), would you not chop down trees, weave vines, and build a raft? Would that be an exercise of free will?
 
radarmark said:
I like "freedom from the will of another". But is this all you mean by it? If you were alone on a desert island (no other wills around), would you not chop down trees, weave vines, and build a raft? Would that be an exercise of free will?
Click to expand...
If I were on a desert island and believed in the Abrahamic god, I would still be under His Will.

See, I don't associate 'making choices' to meaning 'free will' . . . I associate the reason behind the choices with Freedom of Will.
 
Not a really big difference here. If one still believed in a personal or Abrahamic G!d (how many of us really do?) you would dtill be under his will. The reason behind the reason is Freedom of Will, the act (coice or physical action) is a manifestation of that Will. Sound about right?
 
radarmark said:
I like "freedom from the will of another". But is this all you mean by it? If you were alone on a desert island (no other wills around), would you not chop down trees, weave vines, and build a raft? Would that be an exercise of free will?
Click to expand...

Ha! I'd been thinking of being alone in a forest and supposedly exercising free will. I wonder if Etu uses the term in regard to locus of control being held within oneself, rather than the usual dictionary definitions around choice.
 
Etu Malku said:
If I were on a desert island and believed in the Abrahamic god, I would still be under His Will.

See, I don't associate 'making choices' to meaning 'free will' . . . I associate the reason behind the choices with Freedom of Will.
Click to expand...


So do you believe atheists have free will (by your definition) and theists don't?
 
And what about pantheists (like daoists, kinda) and panentheists (like ch'an, kinda) and agnostics (like me, kinda)? Good catch, snoopy!
 
Snoopy said:
So do you believe atheists have free will (by your definition) and theists don't?
Click to expand...
If they are truly Atheists and hold no dogmatic residue then, yes I would consider them Free of Will.
 
seattlegal said:
Philosophically speaking then, agency is the capacity to act in a world. This would mean that there can be agency without a single static agent.
Click to expand...

Indeed; I think you are pointing towards the philosophy of Nāgārjuna as typically expounded in the Mūlamadhyamaka-kārikā, yes?
 
Snoopy said:
Indeed; I think you are pointing towards the philosophy of Nāgārjuna as typically expounded in the Mūlamadhyamaka-kārikā, yes?
Click to expand...

I was actually thinking about this passage from the Water-Snake Simile:

"And how is a monk a noble one with banner lowered, burden placed down, unfettered? There is the case where a monk's conceit 'I am' is abandoned, its root destroyed, made like a palmyra stump, deprived of the conditions of development, not destined for future arising. This is how a monk is a noble one with banner lowered, burden placed down, unfettered.
"And when the devas, together with Indra, the Brahmas, & Pajapati, search for the monk whose mind is thus released, they cannot find that 'The consciousness of the one truly gone (tathagata) [11] is dependent on this.' Why is that? The one truly gone is untraceable even in the here & now. [12]​
I'll go read the Nagarjuna reference as soon as I'm out of hormonal hell--he's quite misogynist. :eek:

<edit to add> Oh heck, I'll just go read it now.
 
Here, have some chocolate...

<rustling of wrapper>

I didn't have a chapter in mind, simply the verb without the subject, but yes as usual you've hit the nail on the head. :p

I remember the misogyny you quoted, I've really stuck to the MMK as his meisterwerk. :)
 
Neuroscientific studies are having an impact on our conception of free will.

Neuroscience of free will - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

'Relevant findings include the pioneering study by Benjamin Libet; these studies were able to detect activity related to a decision to move, and the activity appears to be occurring briefly before people become conscious of it. Other studies try to predict a human action several seconds early (with greater than chance accuracy). 

These various findings seem to confirm that at least some actions are initiated and processed unconsciously at first, and only after enter consciousness.

A person's brain seems to commit to certain decisions before the person becomes aware of having made them. 

In many senses the field remains highly controversial and there is no consensus among researchers about the significance of findings, their meaning, or what conclusions may be drawn.'
 
Neuroscience is great, but it is so new. I did a paper on the neuroscience of risk management for INCOSE (systems engineering). Bottom line: even all those well-trained mathematicians at MIT and CalTech revert to very primative analysis. The real analysis seems to be (from the fMRI scans) = Sigma (std dev)/mu (mean). Even if they know and practicve all the complicated probability formulas.
 
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