But the point is that no decisions are being made. No choice is being exercised - no outcome other than that which is, could have been. You’re not doing anything that makes you ‘you’ - you’re just following the script - you’re an automaton.
You’re slightly misunderstanding my thrust - I’m not pushing for spiritual dualities to be accepted, I’m merely saying that I don’t see how true free will could exist - if it does exist - without them.
I would say so.
If we say the opposite of free will in a person is coercion (not necessarily bad coercion, just defined as other forces affecting you), then really to have free will would be a pretty bad thing. I mean, free will means you get to decide what to do, absent those coercions; but those coercions can include good things. Imagine seeing a family member being hurt; you could pose free will as an ability of the self, in which case you aren’t or are less affected by their pain and so might not help; or, even worse, as one that encompasses those factors but that can be ignored, leading you to want to help but still choose not to.
But the script is me! There’s nothing external going on here; I am a big black box just like everyone else; I survey the universe around me, hear things, see things, learn things; and then on the output side I make decisions and take actions and do things. That’s the ‘Engine’, which acts just like it has free will, makes decisions autonomously, the whole bit.
Then, inside the black box, what you have is a brain that does everything electrochemically, and a self-awareness of the fact that these decisions and actions are not just farted out of me from nothing, but rather are the considered result of my thoughts - my brain activity. Based on this, it’s fairly clear that my actions are the result of my brain, and my brain is me. If there’s any division at all it’s a hardware/software issue, but until we learn to copy or simulate the software elsewhere, that distinction is of little importance; I am my brain. The fact that we have some idea how it works doesn’t change that I have as much self-volition as anyone else.
You say “You’re not doing anything that makes you ‘you’ - you’re just following the script - you’re an automaton.”? I say, “Everything I’m doing demonstrates what I am; my actions are calculated based on my self, even if that self is deterministic and ‘scripted’ based on the uncounted multitude of varying inputs and states it deals with. I’m one hell of an awesome automoton!” 
Which definition of free will are you using again? Cause I can’t think of any that you can get with a spritual duality that you can’t get by being an autonomous meat machine. I mean, the ‘spirit’ thing has to have a mechanism by which it does its thinking too, doesn’t it? There are no black boxes without inner workings. And no inner workings that I know of give better free will than a brain does.
Speaking analogically, what you’re describing sounds a lot like evolution (in that evolution is neither directed nor is it random). Darwin’s great feat was to describe the mechanism of natural selection; a mechanism that is not contingent upon supernatural control nor subjective choice (excluding some choices we humans make such as mates), yet also not entirely random. Might there be a similar mechanism that could allow for free will?
One thing that I think is being overlooked (in some responses) is the fact that we are embodied. It doesn’t really make sense, a la DesCartes, to talk about “the will” separate from our physical existence – unless one begs the question and posits a non-physical entity or “susbstance”. On the other hand, our bodies are not (totally) separate from their environment – not only are they acted upon externally, but internal “parts” (for lack of a better word) are not always best described as a monolithic entity (“I” or “me”), nor do the parts always act in unison.
I haven’t put very much thought into this analogy, so there may be something glaring (or even many somethings) that I’m overlooking. (It also seems like Dennett’s schtick, but I don’t recall him explicitly doing it.) One place it might fail (that is, maintain the analogy but do nothing to support “free will”) is if one claims that evolution is deterministic. Somehow, on initial consideration, that strikes me as an odd claim to make. At any rate, I wanted to post the idea to see if it got any reactions while I put some thought into it…
I think there is an alternative, but it’s not a very pleasant alternative.
The third possibility is that we have a part of ourselves that is both totally unconnected to any outside causes, but also not truly random. This self, then, would have an unchanging, fixed agenda, that (because generally no person would define themselves as being seperate from their likes and dislikes) is very much not what we would call “I”. That which we would call “I” would be controlled by this piece of our self, which is affected not at all by outside factors, and is essentially factory set. Our free will would be the same from the day we’re born to the day we die - as it is unaffected by outside causes, we would always make exactly the same decisions regardless of the situation - and it would make decisions without regard for what “we” want.
Plus we then have the problem of; what determines the factory setting? Which brings us back to randomness or causation.
What’s unpleasant about this? Your ‘agenda’, if such exists, isn’t a separate, secret thing from you, instead it’s part of you. You won’t be disagreeing with it; you’ll prefer it. By definition.
It’s amazing how freaked out some of you are by the idea that you might have a mind that can be comprehended and described in parts. It’s your mind, people. It’s not out to get you.
And, as far as I can tell, the closet we have to this sort of thing are factors where the “factory setting” is determined by evolution - avoid pain, get hungry, crave air. Beyond those sorts of things, I’ve seen no indication whatsoever of unchanging preferences -remember, you’re talking about unchanging from cradle to grave, here.
Clearly, we have a bunch of purely internal preferences and considerations (this is what I call internal “state”). However it seems unlikely that there’s much that’s hardcoded beyond things that can be traced directly to biological factors like pain and adrenaline.
No. The free will in this case would be the self-sufficient cause. It would not itself have causes to which it is subservient. That’s what freewill feels like it ought to be - that we are making the decisions, not that we are made to make them. Uncaused doesn’t have to mean random or irrational here.
But please note, I’m not arguing to defend this, merely trying to understand and discuss it.
So…it’s magic then? Some tiny spark with no internal parts, nothing about it which can be described in simpler detail at all, yet which singlehandedly produces extremely complicated behavior that is clearly integrating with your mind and body and processing volumes of information…with nothing inside it to do the processing?
Sorry, no. Every black box has internal workings, and the most complex of behaviors have simpler mechanisms underlying them. That it feels like your mind should be magical and special and intrisically complicated has no bearing on the reality of the situation; it just doesn’t make sense as a practical matter, even conceptually.
Humanity has a history of trying to grasp things as whole, entire, concepts, since it works well for us to do that. And really, there’s nothing wrong with that as a general-purpose way of doing things. However, the fact that we prefer to assess things in that manner doesn’t compell reality from being composed of smaller and smaller building blocks, and it behooves us at some point to admit that, yes, that’s how things tend to work. Even if we generally carry on thinking of them as higher-level concepts for most purposes anyway.
(And, if not ‘random’, what does ‘uncaused’ mean? If it’s ‘self-caused’, that does nothing but push us to look at the internal mechanism of the something to determine the internal causes. Whether you like there being internal mechanisms or not.)
Not so.
Think of it like this. You, or what you’d say was you, has likes and dislikes, right? You have family and friends that you love. You want to keep your body in good working order. You have a job that you might like or dislike, but you do it to get money to live on. At the most basic of levels, you might have a favourite colour.
A free will that is unconnected to outside factors means it would be making decisions entirely unconcerned with these things. If it’s agenda were the same as your agenda, then clearly it has also been affected by those factors, right? If it hasn’t, then you’d go around making decisions without regard for your family, health, or job. You’d choose to paint your house pink.
I don’t believe this state exists either - like I said, if the options are (and as far as I can see, they are only these) random decisions, caused decisions, or decisions made by this differently-agenda’d self, then i’m pretty much on the caused decisions part. But if we rule out randomness (and I think we’re pretty safe to, barring huge coincedences which admittedly are still possible), then either our choices are influenced by outside sources, or they are not influenced. I’m simply pointing out that we really wouldn’t want it to be the latter.
Um, okay then. I think it’s really obvious that no such ‘malevolent outside critter which tends to possess the average person and make them paint their house pink even as they wrestle against the movement of their own hand and scream and cry to be relased’ thing exists. I mean, really sure. If it did exist, surely somebody would have noticed and mentioned something about it by now.
I was just translating the concept into the nearest analogue that I could think of which had, say, any chance whatsoever of being the case. Clearly this was a misintertpretation on my part and I apologise.
Oh, same here. It’s silly. I was just pointing out as another potential option, and attemping to show it to be pretty much worse and pretty clearly not the case. I’m pretty bad about phrasing things well so no worries. 
But to discuss it is to argue, because (IMO) the concept cannot be understood due to its internal incoherence. If you try to imagine an autonomous will, you are imagining a substance or object which can–without being acted on–spontaneously initiate a causal chain. And furthermore, though this thing is not subject to prior determination, and it doesn’t have a fixed nature which would determine or necessitate its particular choices, its choices are not random, but are the kinds of things for which we can be held responsible. That, I would argue, doesn’t make any sense of any kind. So you can’t understand it or discuss it.
I agree you are positing your conclusion there, and disagree with your implied definition of ‘free will’ as ‘random action’.
I would define an act of free will as one that is chosen after evaluating (or not) past experience and projecting future consequences; one in which the primary ‘cause(s)’ is chosen.
I don’t understand the agreed assumption that determinism (or, for that matter, an omnipotent and/or omniscient god) must preclude free will. Proofs seem to require unproven assumptions.
But how am I operating from this framework? I described above how one can deliberate and decide without thinking one has free will. I do think all my actions and mental states are determined by heredity and environment, but even having that belief before my mind isn’t stopping me from typing this post and carrying on an argument.
Such a “non-physical entity” sounds like what many religious and philosophical traditions refer to as the soul. Do we have souls, in such a sense? (Or, perhaps more precisely, are we souls, who have bodies?) If the answer is yes, then it is the soul that has the free will and makes the choices. Which sounds like what is being described by S & I:
It makes more sense to me than it does to you, apparently. I can at least imagine an uncaused cause, an undetermined determiner. I’m not going so far as to argue for its existence here, but I can imagine it existing. I don’t think it’s inherently impossible, just incompatible with some other beliefs you hold about how the world works.
Maybe I can also imagine an uncaused cause, something that acts without any necessitation or determinism either by prior causes or its own nature. I just can’t imagine such a thing acting *deliberately * or intelligently.
What I mean is that I didn’t come here to try to prove or argue for the existence of a nonmaterial soul - I think some people are under the impression I did.
Why not? Is it because you think deliberation and intelligence are/can only be effects of other causes?
No, but intelligent action has determinants. For example, if you want to start a fire and believe that striking a match will accomplish this and believe you have a matchbook in your pocket, then these factors will act as determinants of your action. Libertarians are very evasive in talking about how an action is supposed to be undetermined; but clearly, in this case, your beliefs and your goals/wants are the determinants for your intelligent, goal-directed behavior.
Most folks consider humans to have free will, rocks and simple animals like fungi and bacteria to not have free will.
Since most here are pretty scientifically minded - consider what exactly is different in the progression from basic chemistry to simple organic molecules like sugar, to the eerily turing-machine-like self copying DNA moelcules, to simple life, multi-celled life, and life that can “think”.
My stance is that the difference is a matter of scale only, there’s no more free will involved in the fluctuating sodium ion potentials in my synapses (“my thoughts”) responding to my surroundings than there is when salt dissolves in water. Generally few would argue that computers have free will because the mechanisms are well known and fairly reliable, yet there’s not much real difference between the action of logic gates and neurons.
This realization used to frighten me deeply, and I suspect it does for many people. It’s hard to accept that the entity I call me is just the universe perversely observing itself.
However, I’ve come to think it’s absolutely awe-inspiringly beautiful.
That the universe in state X is the inevitable outcome of the previous state has extremely deep ramifications - it implies that time doesn’t really exist, and that we’re not really alive.
Given the state and the rules, it should be possible to calculate any future state and to probabilistically determine past ones. Imagine riding along on a superposition of sine waves. I’m sure it’d seem like a fun and unpredictable roller coaster until one has the ability to “step outside” and see the whole function for what it is, stretching off to +/-infinity. Or until we developed big enough brains and the ability to communicate fast enough to observe and dissect its relatively straightforward periodicity.