No, all I have seen is rather a lot of “answering the question you wished you had been asked”.
You have asserted that science is about observing regularities. I’ve illustrated why this is, at best, an incredibly misleading characterisation, since what scientists actually do is use (causal) models to make verified inferences.
Not only does this support causality, it is the only way any account can ever have empirical support.
In response you’ve flailed about with various long screeds, but none of them address this point at all, and the new one is no exception, once again avoiding the word inference in favor of characterizing science as just noticing the sun rising each day.
During this journey we’ve been on together, I have expressed agreement at various things you’ve said. I apologized at one point when I thought my language had become too mean. And I have conceded some things (I don’t recall if I conceded anything to you or to others, but regardless, it’s an indication that I’m not here to “win”, I am here to have a civilized discourse).
I am not the one being unreasonable here.
It wouldn’t matter if the chain of wills were infinite, or had 10 links, or 2. The amount of evidence and explanatory power would be the same. The infinite stack has only been invoked to handwave the lack of any account of where the will would come from.
Referring again to the scientific model that I alluded to, what inferences does a free will account allow us to make?
You’re happy with that definition of “free will”?
It was meant rhetorically – an oxymoron to illustrate how silly the concept of free will is.
And yet, you’re resorting to the same old tricks in this post. Let’s briefly recap. You’ve made two separate claims (albeit without clearly distinguishing between them):
Causality is a prerequisite to our ability to make any predictions at all.
Because our models feature causal relation, we may infer the existence of causal relations in the world.
I’ve used several examples to show why either is wrong, or at least, fails to support the thesis you’re arguing for. The possibility of making predictions in systems that are wholly statistical, without any causal mediation at all, debunks (1), while (2) is essentially the fallacy of affirming the consequent: because causal mediation would lead to the regularities we’re observing (P → Q), our observation of regularities (Q) allows us to conclude that there is causal mediation (therefore P). A model running on gears and wires may reproduce the motion of the planets, but this doesn’t entail that the planets move on gears and wires. It does, however, allow us to predict that motion.
In response, you could’ve engaged with any of these points, and the dozen or so others I raised in the hopes of finding something that would be more palatable to you. But you elected not to (which probably shouldn’t puzzle me that much, since there simply is nothing you could offer in response that defends your points); rather, you misrepresent my position in the hopes of setting up a strawman to easily knock down (I have never claimed that science is all about observing regularities), despite the fact I had already tried to correct you on that point, repeat the same debunked position again, and then fire off that last desperate arrow in your quiver, to try and ridicule my arguments by appealing to emotive language, whether calling it ‘flailing around’ or ‘sad’ or ‘absurd’ or ‘embarrassing’.
There’s one last thing I’m curious about, though. I mean, I get not being particularly moved by the words of a random guy on the internet. But what about all the quotes I’ve dug up, none of which you ever bothered replying to? What do you think Russell had in mind when he wrote that there are no such things as causes? That the word isn’t even present in modern scientific theories anymore?
I mean, I’m not trying to make an argument from authority here. But not even feeling moved to reply, to just dismiss the view of one of the greatest philosophers of the last century, one of the founding fathers of the analytic tradition that’s at the root of your own materialist world view? Isn’t there at least some curiosity on your part? No bit of you that goes, humm, that Russell was a smart guy, maybe he has some reason for what he says?
Again—of course Russell (and Hume, and all those guys) may be wrong. But I mean, if all the traffic comes headlong at you, lights flashing and horns blaring, doesn’t there ever come a moment for you where you consider the possibility that it might not be everybody else who’s going the wrong way?
Anyway, I don’t know why you act the way you do. Perhaps the idea that you have some agency in your life, that it’s not just all playing out the way it always had to play out, is just disturbing to you. Perhaps you find comfort in the fact that those who do you wrong couldn’t have done otherwise, as Einstein did. Perhaps you’re just expressing your honest belief and best arguments in the pursuit of honest debate. Or perhaps you just enjoy fucking with me (in which case, I’m sorry your life doesn’t offer you any better sources of entertainment).
But the moral of the story is, I don’t need to know why you behave the way you do to predict that the regularity is going to hold. So unless that prediction is falsified, that’ll be it for me.
You accuse me of dodging your question while not answering mine.
How is it that causal models can make correct inferences about systems? e.g. How did the big bang model predict the CMB if all it is is an observation of a “regularity”?
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Remember, we’re talking causality in this context, not Determinism. I haven’t claimed that determinism is a prerequisite for empirical claims.
I have zero care about who said what. I am only interested in arguments and evidence.
And the word “cause” very obviously can be found in thousands of scientific models.
However, as I said upthread, in science we don’t make claims about reality, we can only refine our models and gain ever more confidence and predictive power. So that’s why we don’t like to use the word “cause” in descriptions: it seems too certain. The models themselves however, are causal.
This is the precise opposite of what I have been saying since my first post.
It’s typical for proponents of the free will concept* to accuse non-proponents of this position. But it’s depressing that you would still say that after such a long back and forth.
No, I absolutely believe I have agency. My conscious thoughts are real. They just happen to also be the product of my personality and my environment. I freely chose to drink a cup of coffee. However, I chose to drink coffee because I like the taste, and I didn’t choose to like the taste.
* And again, I am defining a free will proponent as someone who thinks the concept itself is meaningful, such that the statement “I have free will” can have a true or false value.
I neither think it’s true nor false, it’s undefined because the concept is incoherent.
OK. I guess we do need to find some way to wind all this down.
Finally let’s say this: You accuse me of “fucking with you” or whatever, and cannot understand why I am “behaving this way”. It’s a shame that you feel that way. I would encourage you to read back your own posts because, while I times I have got frustrated, I think your language has been a lot more bellicose than mine.
I think one difference between is I have no axe to grind here: If you were able to define free will and give an argument for its existence, that would be great for me; I would have learned something, which is wonderful. I’m not wed to any particular position.
But I get the impression that you are very invested in this. And a challenge to the concept of free will itself is unthinkable, even offensive.
Ok. I guess it seems like we have a very different view of this discussion. So let’s try to find some points of alignment.
See, from my perspective, virtually all I’ve said in the last round of posts was an attempt to answer this question—or more accurately, an attempt to explaining how it is that regularities allow prediction, without that entailing anything regarding the question of why those regularities exist. But all that I got from you in response was either complete silence regarding the many examples and arguments I gave, or just a snide dismissal. So I don’t really know what kind of answer you expect, as you haven’t me given anything to work with, to maybe try and reformulate bits that weren’t clear to you, leaving me to take stabs in the dark.
Again, take the example of the cellular automaton Rule 110. Observing it for some amount of time, we’ll be able to figure out certain regularities. One of these is that the configuration \blacksquare\square\blacksquare leads to the state \blacksquare for the middle cell in the next row.
Using these rules, we can predict the future evolution for the CA. Given the current state of each cell, we can derive the state of each cell in the next evolution step. That’s how prediction works: we have a regularity, which we presume continues to hold (the only reasonable assumption), and so on that basis, we make predictions.
What isn’t being appealed to in this is the notion of causality. Causality is a necessary connection between cause and effect; but we know nothing about the necessity of the CA evolution. Again, it could be that it’s simulated by a program that follows these rules for a million steps, then changes the rules. Merely observing the output does not allow us to exclude this option, hence, we can’t claim to know that the connection between the current and the future state is a necessary one. Hence, we know nothing about causality.
But we don’t have to, in order to make predictions. All we need is a way to describe the behavior, as so far observed. Then, we can build a model—which is a system showing the same behavior. Then, by observing the behavior of the model (in, perhaps, a virtual form, given by some lines of code or derivations on paper), we make predictions for the behavior of the system we’re modeling. But even if, in the model, we have causal mediation, that doesn’t license us to conclude that there is causal mediation—necessary connections between cause and effect—in the system modeled. To do so is just to mistake the map for the territory.
So that’s how the CMB was predicted from the Big Bang theory. We observed the expansion of the universe. Based on this, we proposed a rule, namely, that this expansion does extend beyond our current domain of observation. This allows us to conclude that in the past, things were closer together, and in the future, they must be farther apart; which then allowed us to conclude that the universe must have been hotter in the past, which allowed us to determine the residual radiation from that time. And lo and behold, this radiation was observed.
That is, we have an observation of a regularity: with increasing t, the distance between the galaxies increases. We can create a model for that regularity—some relationship between the time and the distance. We can then solve for that distance at different times. Nowhere do we have to appeal to the notion of ‘cause’. Causality only enters the picture if we ask ourselves why that regularity exists. But we never have to do this—and this is a good thing. It’s what makes scientific modeling so powerful. It’s what allows us to abstract away from the particulars of any given case, and obtain general rules.
Perhaps the following point due to Leibniz helps make this more clear. Suppose you have a page that has been splattered with ink from a quill. There is always a curve that goes through all of these random points, and thus, always a ‘law’ that explains their distribution. But clearly, in most cases, this will be a highly complex thing, and won’t really be any more illuminating than just describing the position of every drop of ink.
Leibniz then proposes that there is a law to the distribution of data only if the resulting curve is of considerably less complexity than just giving the distribution of ink blots. This entails that they aren’t distributed randomly; there is some regularity to their placement. Prediction then works simply by proposing that this curve continues do describe further data. If it does, then we’ve got a successful (i.e. not yet falisified) theory; if not, it goes to the dustbin of failed hypotheses. But about what causes those ink blots, we haven’t had to think at all.
A famous prediction of this kind is that of the spectral lines of hydrogen. The mathematician Jakob Balmer studied the data obtained by the measurement of their frequency, and found that he could fit it with a simple mathematical formula. Based on it, he predicted that there should be a further line; a prediction which was soon verified. But he had no notion regarding what might be the cause of the spectral lines. Working in 1885, Bohr’s atom, the idea of discrete energy levels, and even the discovery of the electron were still decades in the future. His prediction was possible only because the notion of causality is inessential to prediction.
Exactly. And systems whose elements obey random dynamics do not feature causal mediation. Remember, causality is a relation of necessitation; but random events aren’t necessitated by anything. So the fact that we can make predictions based on random behavior, which we routinely do, e.g. in thermodynamics (and which, as argued above, may be possible for every natural law we know) entails that causality isn’t necessary for prediction. As discussed above, the spectrum of the CMB is just such a prediction: its fundamental assumption is the random distribution of photons among available energy levels.
This I don’t quite understand. You’ve been arguing that the success of scientific modeling allows us to infer the reality of causal mediation. Indeed, you’ve argued that only with causal mediation, such modeling is possibe at all. Yet, you’re saying that ‘we don’t make claims about reality’ in science. So what is it—do our models allow us to conclude that there is causation, or don’t they? Does our scientific success depend on their being causality (a claim about reality), or doesn’t it?
You’re misinterpreting an admittedly somewhat obscure joke. I gave different hypotheses for the behavior you show in this thread—in which your answers are due to some external agency as in a block universe or a Malebranchian one, in which they’re due to ‘causal mediation’—you reacting honestly and to the best of your abilities to my posts—and in which they’re random, just for the purpose of winding me up. Each give rise to the regularity I see within your posts. I don’t know which, if any obtains, but I don’t have to—all I have to do to make a prediction is to generalize from the regularity. You see, just like I’ve been arguing all the time. That’s it, that’s the joke. Not great, I know.
I admit my language was, on occasion, somewhat pointed. But it’s not your language I find puzzling. It’s your continued failure to engage with the examples and arguments I gave, coupled with repeating the same points that they were intended to challenge. I mean, I obviously don’t expect you to respond, line by line, to every single one of my posts. I also don’t expect you to be convinced by my arguments. But, I think, in a debate, if one’s point is challenged, one either takes accepts that challenge, which can be done in silence (nobody expects anybody to publicly renounce their views), or offers a counterpoint and remains unconvinced. But to just carry on as if the point had never been raised, the example never been proposed, well, then why engage in debate at all?
Well, I’ve proposed a model of how free will might work to you:
It didn’t merit a response. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Again, this is something I find puzzling. I’ve been careful, again and again, to point out that I’m not in this thread to argue for the existence of free will. My point here is that the typical arguments against it are insufficient. I’ve even told you (though, again, apparently not to much effect) that I don’t really have any strong belief either way—to the best of my ability to tell:
Sure—I might be mistaken about my own motivations. I readily acknowledge that. But in the past, I’ve been convinced there was no free will, and now, I don’t think there’s a way to settle the matter, and as far as I can tell, one’s as good as the other for me.
I would not regard the “more accurately” here as answering the question, but avoiding it.
I specifically asked about inferences – how we use models to make entirely novel claims. There’s no reason why this should work from just “observing regularities”.
You repeatedly have tried to reframe it instead as being about (extrapolation-based) predictions which is a much easier point to respond to, but not what was asked.
(And before you say it, yes, I said earlier that we use models to make inferences and predictions, and that’s true of course. But it’s the former that is the more critical thing for this discussion, and so what I asked you about).
That’s not necessarily true. I think you’re essentially defining “random” as “uncaused”, so just assuming the conclusion.
Scientific models allow us to gain confidence in a particular explanation / understanding – they do not make absolute claims. So yes, technically speaking we shouldn’t claim to know that there is cause and effect. Like we also shouldn’t claim to know that the earth is an oblate spheroid, or that ice is frozen water.
The confidence level for things like this though is as close to “certain” as humans can get about anything empirical though.
It’s not a definition. I don’t know how to begin even evaluating the meaning of that, let alone propose ways we can verify if it is true or not.
OK, well I would urge you to consider another option – that free will is ill-defined, and not even something we can say exists or not. That was my only point in this thread, and I don’t think you’ve really engaged with it.
A clear definition and evidence would clear things up immediately but you are unable or unwilling to provide one, and yet, also unwilling to acknowledge that it’s ill-defined at this time. What’s the problem here?
And I’ve given you explicit examples where an underlying model with random dynamics, in the complete absence of causality, can be used to make valid inferences. That you ignore them doesn’t change the facts.
You’ve repeatedly claimed that the fact that we can make predictions about the world implies that we have knowledge of cause and effect.
This is what I was reacting to: that cause and effect is necessary for our ability to make any sort of predictions. It’s not. What comes next in this sequence: ABABA…?
You can make a prediction. There’s one that’s obviously the best, given the data so far. You need not assume anything about A causing B, or the means by which the sequence was generated to make that prediction. Again, that fact is a strength of science: without it, we couldn’t make any general predictions at all.
OK, that you’ll have to explain. When is something necessitated—i. e. guaranteed to happen—yet random—i. e. the question of whether it happens open?
And I know that you’re not one to pay much mind to what the experts on this topic say (which strikes me as a curious lack of intellectual curiosity, given your stated interest in learning something new, but nevermind), but I recently remembered the way Searle puts the point in ‘Mind: A Brief Introduction’, in the chapter on mental causation:
But, says Hume, when we begin to look at actual cases, we find that we cannot perceive any necessary connection. We observe that, for example, when I flip the light switch, the light goes on, and if I flip it again it goes off. I think there is a causal connection between flipping the switch A and the light going on B, but in fact all I can really observe is A followed by B. […] Suppose I said that the necessary connection between flipping the switch and the light going on is the passage of electricity through the wire C, and I found some method of observing that, say through a metering device. But that would not help. For now I would have the flipping of the switch, the passage of the electricity, and the light going on, the sequence ACB. But I still would have no necessary connections between these three events. And if I found one, if I found apparent necessary connections between the switch A, the electricity C, and the light B, in the form of, let us say, the closing of the circuitry D, or the activation of the molecules in the tungsten filament E, these would still not be necessary connections. I would then have a sequence of five events, ADCEB, and these would require necessary connections between each. Hume’s first skeptical result is there is no necessary connection between the so-called cause and the so-called effect.
This is the way in which the infinite regress, as I’ve tried to explain, also lurks in every alleged connection of cause and effect. But that’s not all there’s to it. Hume distinguished between causation and causality, which isn’t too relevant for our purposes, we can lump them under ‘causality’ tout court as we’ve been doing so far. Then:
if we examine these two principles, the principle of causation and the principle of causality, we find a peculiar feature. They do not seem to be provable. They are not true by definition. That is, they are not analytic truths. So they must be synthetic empirical truths. But now, and this is the real cruncher of Hume’s argument, there is no way that we could establish them by empirical methods, because any attempt to establish anything by empirical methods presupposes exactly these two principles.
This then leads to Hume’s ‘constant conjunction’ account of causality:
When we were looking around for necessary connection, we did not find necessary connection in addition to priority and contiguity, but we did find another relation: the constant conjunction of resembling instances. We discovered that the thing we call the cause is always followed by the thing we call the effect. It is this “felt determination of the mind” to pass from the perception of the causes to the lively expectations of the effect, and from the idea of the cause to the idea of the effect, that gives us the illusion that there is something in nature in addition to priority, contiguity, and constant conjunction. This felt determination of the mind gives us the conviction that there are necessary connections in nature. But that conviction is nothing but an illusion. The only reality is the reality of priority, contiguity, and constant conjunction. Causation on Hume’s account is literally just one damn thing after another. The only point is that there is a regularity in the way one thing follows another, and this regularity gives us the illusion that there is something more. But the necessary connection we think exists in nature is entirely an illusion in the mind. The only reality is regularity.
So again, this isn’t just an obscure side-point. It’s a widely accepted view of the knowability of how stuff happens. And it’s accepted for good reason. And it is, in no way, shape, or form, a threat to our ability to do science. Because all science needs is constant conjunction. That’s what’s expressed in a scientific law: that this constant conjunction will continue to hold. A law about the sequence I gave above might be, ‘every time A occurs, it is followed by B; and every time B occurs, it is followed by A’.
A scientific model is then anything in which this law holds true—but why it holds true, whether for reasons of causal mediation or of statistical regularity, doesn’t matter. In particular, why the model obeys the law doesn’t tell us why the world obeys the law—because at any point, the world might not continue to obey the law, and the model thus cease to be a good model. That isn’t any more special than that a Newtonian model ceases to describe motion well at relativistic speeds: that the model performed well in the past doesn’t entail it will perform well in all future cases.
As I said, that’s what I used to believe, before I realized that the arguments purporting to establish this are simply insufficient.
Again, it’s perfectly clear to both of us what we’re talking about here. You couldn’t say that free will is, for instance, ‘an undetermined determination’ without understanding that it’s something that happens without being determined by prior events, yet being definite in a sense that precludes it being random. That’s enough understanding for the present discussion. Free will is when I choose a peanut butter sandwich, and the choice wasn’t set by the initial conditions of the universe, and it’s not random, and I’m the originator of that choice. You know this perfectly well. All the clamoring for a ‘definition’ is just a smoke screen.
Consider again the case of knowledge. Knowledge, before Gettier, used to be defined as ‘justified true belief’. After Gettier, philosophers have come up with definitions of knowledge containing dozens of clauses. Does any of that mean that it’s not perfectly clear what I’m talking about when I say, ‘I know the current president of the US is Joe Biden’?
What about a clear definition without evidence? Why is evidence necessary to define free will? Are you saying any concept without evidence is necessarily “incoherent”?
I don’t believe any abstract concepts are supported by evidence. Numbers for example have no evidence of their existence. Are numbers incoherent?
No, let me clarify:
My position is that “free will” is completely incoherent. It doesn’t mean anything.
A person who disagrees with me should either have a definition in mind, or, alternatively, can point to some phenomenon, some empirical data that right now seems inconsistent with existing models.
Either is enough to make a start at a counter argument.
Firstly, since “free will” hasn’t been defined adequately, we don’t even know if it’s an empirical claim or something wholly abstract, so who’s to say whether there should be empirical evidence?
Secondly, I would say that most people *do* in fact lean towards believing it’s an empirical claim. Remember the philosophical question is “Do we have free will?” so the actual fact of whether free will exists or not is the thing that most people debate when talking about this topic.
It’s a misguided question IMHO, because it assumes the concept makes sense, but there’s no doubt that’s the most common framing.
Finally, even if it’s abstract, there is still a need to define it and say how it is aiding our understanding. Saying it’s abstract isn’t a joker card we get to play that means it automatically wins the coherency game.
In another topic I strove to define free agency as a category of event causation which is neither deterministic nor random nor a combination of those two. I would personally define free will as possession and direction of free agency.
You seem to imply, again, that both a clear definition and evidence are required.
This is either equivocation on the word “empirical”, or a false choice in the first instance. If an empirical claim is one based on empirical evidence, there are other categories of claims besides evidence-based claims and wholly abstract claims. Russell’s teapot comes to mind.
If an empirical claim is any claim concerning something that exists, then even my conception of free will above - which admits no evidence of existence, only evidence of nonexistence by predicting human behavior - qualifies as an empirical claim. And for Platonists such as myself, every abstract concept “exists”, and thus wholly abstract and empirical are not mutually exclusive categories.
Yeah…that’s horrible though isn’t it. It’s defining something in terms of what it isn’t.
Anyway, let me be clear that I do think we make choices; I think that our conscious minds make a decision based on our memories, understanding and personal character and that’s as “free” as any entity can possibly be in any reality, whether deterministic or not.
So I guess if I really wanted to prop up the free will concept, then I could try to define it that way and then say it exists. And if everyone agreed with me on that definition, my entire beef is gone.
But no such agreement is likely and IMO “free will” will always be a confused mess, where people debate a supposed problem of our reality that in fact is a problem merely with the confused definition mixed with several misconceptions.
I said it very clearly in a single sentence: either a clear definition or empirical data.
The bit you’re quoting was in response to your notion that “free will” is just an abstract concept, not an empirical claim. But you don’t get to say that and it’s automatically true: I disagree, and think most uses of free will seem to imply it’s an empirical claim e.g. “There’s no free will if the universe is deterministic” implies that it is a phenomenon that does or does not exist based on some quality of our physical universe.
Anyway, for a fourth time: I am not saying that we necessarily need empirical data and a clear definition, I’m saying let’s see either. Both would be ideal, but let’s start with one.
You should try and define it that way. I believe it was you who once said, for most definitions of free will, it either trivially exists or trivially does not exist; the entire debate is over the definition.
Since then you seem to have changed your point of view and now say, because people cannot agree on a definition, the concept is incoherent. But I think if you ask any individual who has given the subject some attention, you can draw out a perfectly coherent conception of free will, and decide for yourself whether it exists, or whether you care if it exists.
If an empirical claim is any claim concerning something that exists, then even my conception of free will above - which admits no evidence of existence, only evidence of nonexistence by predicting human behavior - qualifies as an empirical claim. I would personally agree with the statement “There’s no free will if the universe is deterministic”, for my definition of free will.
And for Platonists such as myself, every abstract concept “exists”, and thus wholly abstract and empirical are not mutually exclusive categories.
In science, empirical claims are claims about observable, shareable phenomena.
In epistemology, they aren’t necessarily.
So we need to know what we all mean by “empirical” (and that’s leaving the ticking timebomb of “exists” well outside the bunker)
Does everyone have to agree with you? Or just your current interlocutors? Because that’s more-or-less my concept of free will (with the addition that our decisions also depend on things like hormone levels which I don’t think come under “personal character” but aren’t external agency either)
A significant proportion of all discussions; let’s say 30-40%.
Because, look at it like this:
Imagine I was saying that “vital force” was ill-defined. And let’s say someone says “Vital force to me means metabolism. You agree that metabolism exists, don’t you?”
And the answer is of course “yes” , but there’s a problem with me retracting the original claim and saying loud and proud that “vital force” exists if 90% of discussions about it on t’internet are how vital force proves that living things cannot be entirely chemical i.e. most people have a different concept in mind.
So, to be precise, the request for a definition is really for a definition in the context of the typical free will debate. Like e.g. Max_S saying that free will is incompatible with determinism.
Otherwise we can just define “free will” to mean “a bag of potatoes”, and trivially win the debate of free will being well-defined and shown to exist.
I think that can be achieved by starting discussions off with hard term definitions, but possibly not.
I’m kind of bolshy, and just wander into these threads assuming people are talking about Dennett-style free-will-as-autonomy and proceeding from there (until they bust my bubble by advocating dualism or similar)
Yeah I think that’s a strange practice though. Because the vast majority of debates on free will are whether it exists and whether it can exist if the universe is Deterministic. So clearly the majority of people are not assuming a Dennett-style autonomous agent free will, and assuming that they are could only lead to misunderstandings.
In my personal experience, every debate I have been to on free will has been presented as a false dilemma between 1) Free will exists and our decisions come from outside of physical laws / the universe is not Deterministic and 2) Free will doesn’t exist so life is Fatalistic and even if you think you chose to drink tea, really that was decided in the Big Bang.
And of course you’ll note many in this thread have assumed such a framing.
That’s why I find all this quite frustrating. The discussion over whether Determinism is compatible is a red herring because really it’s the concept of free will itself that’s the problem, and most people not having a clear definition in mind, unlike you.
But that dilemma holds for my definitions of free will and decision. I never said they hold for yours, only mine. With my definitions of free will, decision, and choice, lack of free will necessarily implies lack of choice.
And so far I don’t think you have argued that my definition of free will is incoherent or unclear.
Within this thread, I pointed out that your definition was just what free will *isn’t*, which isn’t a good way to define anything.
In the other, linked thread, you gave a longer explanation of what free will means to you, and I have taken part in that thread and explained why I don’t think it’s coherent. There’s no need to relitigate it here.
The problem IMO is that you’ve accepted the premise of Western culture on this; that free will is meaningful, and, on its face, incompatible with Determinism.
Accepting that premise, you then are in the unenviable position of needing to actually make sense of the thing. When at best it’s a nebulous concept based on the feeling that our thoughts are external to the physical world.
I defined free agency as a process which can never be known to be deterministic or probabilistic. I only arrived at that definition through a process of elimination.
In the topic you didn’t explain or argue that the concept is incoherent, you concluded that it has no explanatory power.
Within this thread, your summary of free will was based on defining what it isn’t.
I don’t think you’ve defined it better in any other thread, but if you have a succinct definition in mind, why not humor us and copy it here?
Again, I didn’t want to relitigate that here; we can always just resume the discussion in the other thread.
For the sake of this thread though, one of the critical points of contention was about “could have chosen differently” and how IMO you were unable to clarify what that meant. Now, you are free to disagree with me on that of course, and feel that it was sufficiently defined. However. you don’t get to say I had no issue with the coherency of the idea because I plainly did.