Do we really have free will?
The first of the [i]5 great unsolved philosophical problems[/I] according to the Oxford University Press's blog. (blog.oup.com)
From a valid understanding of systems and the emergence of classes of systems, the answer is evident:
"Yes and no! If a decision is independent of the fundamental purpose of any company - to increase its wealth, of which the human asking the question is a component, the answer is yes, we have free will. However, if the decision has any possible influence on the company's purpose of increasing wealth, the option that offers the best chance to increase wealth must be chosen. Then, no free will exists. The only alternative to this option is to leave the company or to be forced to leave the company."
From a valid understanding of systems and the emergence of classes of systems, the answer is evident:
"Yes and no! If a decision is independent of the fundamental purpose of any company - to increase its wealth, of which the human asking the question is a component, the answer is yes, we have free will. However, if the decision has any possible influence on the company's purpose of increasing wealth, the option that offers the best chance to increase wealth must be chosen. Then, no free will exists. The only alternative to this option is to leave the company or to be forced to leave the company."
Comments (45)
Please, exactly what issue will be rendered complicated by one exercising free will?
So, you disagree with the aspects of existence, being and behaviour that I proposed - the aspect of increasing wealth? I propose that the increase in wealth is indeed an aspect of our existence, our being and our behaviour - it is an aspect that is indeed known to any and all man.
Not particularly, no. We're largely self-serving beings after all, sure. Otherwise, it's not likely we'd be here.
Another way of framing the topic, rather properly underscoring the dynamic, is to say it is technically possible in theory, but not applicable due to the nature of human manifestation. We don't have control of whether or not we are born healthy, enfeebled, prone to anger, really laid back, smart, dumb, poor memory, great memory, poor sight, great sight, etc. Neither do we have any control over the events and information that we go through or are exposed to, particularly at a young age. All these things contribute to the type of person, or rather what type and state of mind we will have or end up having. These things also define not only what our perceived "hand" that has been dealt in life is but also what we perceive as not only the best options and possible actions or outcomes but the only ones at that.
We are free to move about and navigate the maze that is our life, sure, but it remains a maze that has been created, or at least influenced, by just about every single person living or dead. Every person on Earth has shaped and continues to shape this maze for us, every single person except ourselves.
A reasoned choice is the product of reasoning: the product of (knowledge of) past events and individual predilections: both of which can be traced to causes outside of the self.
Determinism is a red herring here, because IME no one can give an account of how free will would work and make sense even in a non deterministic universe.
If some people's notion of free will is incoherent, one option is to advocate for dispensing with the notion altogether. Another one is the seek to capture the right but inchoate ideas that animate it. The idea of free will clearly is conceptually related to the idea of determinism, on one side, and to the idea of personal responsibility, on the other side. Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett have argued over which one of those two attitudeseliminativist or revisionist, roughlyis warranted. Sam Harris has complained that although some compatibilist conceptions of free will may be more plausible (although he also thinks it's still incoherent), arguing that people are reasonable to believe that they have free will on that ground is cheating because he thinks the idea of compatibilist free will is, at best a trivial notion, and it doesn't match the unreasonable idea that ordinary people really entertain when they think about free will. This is the point of their (Harris and Dennett's) debate about "Madagascar". The core of the disagreement seems to be whether straightening up the popular and intuitive concept of free will amounts to a minor revision (which I think it does, like Dennett,) or to a wholesale replacement (like Harris thinks it does).
Dennett, also shows, I believe, why Harris's eliminativist position isn't tenable and may be motivated by his own misconceptions about free will, which he tends to project onto others. (The charge can be levied against some professional philosopher too, like Galen Strawson). That's because even Harris clearly sees the tight connection between the concept of free will, as confused as some people's conceptions of it may be, and the concepts of personal and moral responsibility. So, relinquishing the concept altogether, rather than straightening it up or disentangling it from misleading connotations, yields a denial that people are personally and/or morally responsible for what it is that they have done, which is a bullet that Harris is happy to bite, although he tends forgets that he has done so whenever the topic veers away from the philosophical context.
Is this why you think that the concept of free will is incoherent? Why?
True, but I think it's a bit misguided, or maybe gets us off on the wrong foot. (I mean their descriptions, not that you are misguided)
For example, Sam Harris, Stephen Law, Alex O' Conner etc will say that they don't believe that there is free will -- tacitly agreeing that "free will" has been well-defined as something which could potentially exist in some reality.
But their reasons for thinking it free will not exist are more fundamental than just talking about Determinism. They talk about where the will comes from, and that random events could not be called free will.
Therefore I think they would struggle to describe any universe that would have this concept. And, furthermore, the scrutiny should then be placed on the concept itself; basically questioning the premise that I just mentioned -- that free will is a meaningful concept that could exist.
Its quite simple, in my understanding, and is discovered in the answer to the question who or what controls my actions?
In other words, its a matter of sourcehood and identity. If something other than me controls my actions, then I do not have free will. If I control my actions, then I have free will.
In the debate so far, determinists and those who otherwise deny free will have never found any other source of the control of our actions, and the identity of that outside controller remains a mystery to them. And until that occurs, one ought to side with the existence of free will.
Apologies -- I've repeated my position on this so many times, on so many forums that I can forget the need to explain myself on a different site.
1. The concept usually gets framed first around Determinism. The reasoning is that, if the universe is Deterministic I might think I chose coffee or tea, but actually that choice was predictable from the big bang. I only had the illusion of choice.
Fine.
2. Then, when it's pointed out that the universe may well not be determinstic, thanks to quantum indeterminancy, this is usually handwaved away. How can randomness be called choice?
3. But to me, (1) and (2) combined leave a bad smell. In (1) it seemed that the issue was with our decisions being predictable, being integrated in the causal chain of events. When the suggestion (2) arrives that this may not be the case, apparently it's still insufficient to have free will.
So, to me, at this point we should be asking What exactly do we mean by free will, and is it something which could even potentially exist?
4. And basically I've never heard a satisfactory answer to (3). No-one can seem to breakdown how a "true" free will decision would be made, or what it even really means.
The popular "Could have chosen differently" is quite a woolly definition. Every reasoned action I've made in my life I did for reasons, that I could have told you at the time. And some of those reasons were more important to me than others. When we talk about "could have chosen differently" what do we mean in this picture -- that I could have been aware of different things, or would value different things more highly? But these things can also be traced to events / properties external to me.
I rather think you should begin by asking the bolded question. You may even find that the question of determinism vs indeterminism isn't as relevant to free will as all that, belying your first and second points. In any case, these first two points prompt the conclusion that free will is impossible, not that it is meaningless.
Quoting Mijin
You seem to be conflating the two main criteria of free will: alternative possibilities and agency (ownership of decisions). In any case, I think you are right to question the meaning of at least the first of these (you should also question the second). They aren't necessarily as straightforward and literal as they may first appear.
NB: I wouldn't normally derail a thread like this, but seeing that this is yet another pathetic attempt at self-promotion by one of our resident crackpots, I have no regrets.
I am not even certain that we should be talking about revision here. That Harris's concept of free will is out of touch with its common meaning is obvious. It is less obvious in the case of Dennett. The trouble is that when people are confronted head-on with the question of what free will is, their conceptualizations may not align with how they actually understand and use the concept. I think the project should begin with the study of the meaning or meanings (qua use), and only then can we proceed to critique and revision.
I agree on pretty much all counts. "Free will" as such doesn't have much of an ordinary use, though, outside of legal contexts. It has a semi-technical use in scientific contexts where people purport to deny its existence, mostly (as in, say, neuroscience or classical behaviorism). The use in legal contexts is sensitive to the practical requirements of common law where warranted ascriptions of personal responsibility and questions of deterrence and extenuating circumstances are at issue that tend to be freer of muddled misconceptions.
Anthony Kenny does a very good job in his little book "Freewill and Responsibility" of clarifying the concept in its relations to various categories of mens rea (from strict liabilities, through negligence or recklessness, to specific intent.) This yields a sort of thick compatibilist notion that goes beyond mere freedom from "external" circumstances and extends outside of legal contexts to those of warranted reactive attitudes like praise and blame. In those more ordinary contexts, the question seldom arise of one having acted "of their own free will." We rather ask more ordinary questions like, "could they have done better?" or "is their action excusable?" Something like the Kantian dictum "must implies can" finds its ordinary applications.
In good systems fashion, we are generally constrained and so our freedoms are suitably particularised. There is some collective direction to which our individual choices are entrained.
So a corporation requires its workforce to be aligned with its goals and to make their choices accordingly. Workers can do whatever they like to the degree it fits that larger outcome.
But a corporation is not a particularly good model of a natural system. It is by design rather narrowly focused on a profit optimisation goal. And so workers are equally constrained in their scope of creative freedom.
A university might be a better model of the kind of society we desire. There we would expect considerable academic freedom. But also these days, a rather corporate concern about achieving a university ranking score and student population.
So from a systems perspective, free will is not a difficult issue. Global constraints are what we expect. Local degrees of freedom are also what we expect. What binds the two sides of the equation is how well the whole can shapes its parts, and how good a job those parts do in sustaining the whole.
Any social system is intentional. Its very structure expresses its general goal. But that intentionality is divided between the constraints the system seeks to impose globally and the freedom its parts have to keep the whole structure flying along to where it wants to go.
My position is exactly that we should start with asking what we mean by the concept, and that determinism / indeterminism is a red herring -- see my first post in this thread. I was just explaining the steps by which I (and others) got there.
Quoting SophistiCat
True, but it bears the burden of showing it's meaningful.
Let me be clear: there are plenty of things we don't understand, or even are entirely speculative, but are perfectly valid concepts.
Free will has not even attained that level yet though. It's self inconsistent, at least in the formulations that I've seen. A reasoned choice that can't be traced to reasons.
Quoting SophistiCat
Is that at me? WTH?
We can indeed model the world as being deterministic, everything having a cause and effect, like the Einstein's block universe. But as you said, this is irrelevant for us as we are part of this reality, this universe, and cannot escape it, jump out of it.
For example, there are no other possibilities that either @Mijin responds to this comment mine or he does not. That's determinism, unavoidable yet not at all useful as we would first assume.
Do we then have total free will? Again this is idea as a model of reality is similarly not so useful as we could first think of this. What we do on this planet hardly matters in the big picture, assuming if you think about galaxies and billions of years.
Everything is actually about the questions you make. The questions define what is an useful model of reality and what isn't. Thus then to argue is some model is right while others are wrong doesn't at all understand this.
Free of spacetime locality (naturata)? No.
Free of situational constraints/conflicts? No.
Free of ecological-embodied execution? No.
Free of involuntary (selfish) desires/biases? No.
Free of unintended consequences (risks)? No.
Free of responsibility for uncoerced re/actions? No.
Free of coercion by other agents? TBD.
[quote=Arthur Schopenhauer]Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills.[/quote]
:fire:
2. Everything has a cause.
3. Free will is incoherent.
4. We don't have free will.
5. We are caused and we cause.
3, 4, and 5 seem to follow from 1 and 2.
Are 1 and 2 true?
1 seems to be assumed true, a definition to be accepted as true for the sake of the deduction. Without proof or demonstration. What about 2? Is this another assumed to be true premise? If not, how does one prove everything has a cause?
This looks like religious dogma to be accepted without question, and see what consequences it has on ones life after indoctrination.
I don't really understand why you think that. Let me be clear in turn that I think that this is a tenable position (that free will may not be a valid concept, or at least that it has serious problems), but it needs to be supported with honest work. You cannot come to this conclusion simply by picking on some clearly untenable conceptualizations (see, for instance, post above). "Free will" is a thing, so to say - the concept has been in use for a long time, not only in exalted domains of philosophy and theology, but also in common parlance and in specialized secular domains, such as law. Do philosophical accounts of free will that you criticize accurately capture the concept of free will? This question needs to be answered before making sweeping conclusions.
Quoting Mijin
Sorry, my reference to derailment was, of course, with respect to the OP. You are as guilty of it as I am, but I am not blaming you in this case (just don't do that to my topics :joke:)
These exact words may not be used all that commonly in ordinary language, but I think that cognate concepts of freedom and responsibility pervade all our interactions. After all, what does freedom imply? Freedom to act as you will. And how can there be responsibility without freedom?
Quoting Pierre-Normand
Interesting, thanks.
I agree, that's also what I meant to convey. But also, the rarity of the use of the exact phrase "free will" in ordinary contexts encourages its use as a semi-technical psychological concept that divorces it from those contexts and hence encourages people to view it a designating a mysterious power or property of the human mind. I do not mean, though, to imply that problems surrounding the notion are mere pseudo-problems that are easily resolved. What they do require though, is the sort of non-revisionary connective analysis that Peter Strawson recommended, which consist in illuminating a concept not through breaking it down in simpler constituents, or in terms of regimented definitions, but rather in locating them carefully in the neighborhood of internally related concepts (e.g. responsibility, excuses, capability, intentions, reasons for acting, purpose, reactive attitudes, etc.)
I gave my reasoning -- that I've never heard a formulation of free will that wasn't meaningless or self-inconsistent.
If you believe that there are definitions of free will that clearly define something that could potentially exist in a hypothetical universe, I'm open to hearing it. I just never have.Quoting SophistiCat
Lots of people believe a thing does not make it rational though; concepts and arguments need to stand on their own merits.
Besides, it's not like I'm the sole dissenting voice; there are plenty of philosophers and theologians that believe there's no free will. And I would argue their position is in fact that the concept itself is incoherent even if they don't seem to appreciate it themselves. Now, hear me out, because I know the obvious retort is that I am claiming to know their minds, I am not.
What I mean is, many philosophers, like those I mentioned upthread, will not merely say that there is no free will but that there cannot be free will. The only difference between them and people taking my position, is that by them keeping the focus on our universe, rather than considering whether this concept can be realized in any universe, they don't fully appreciate that the problem is with the concept itself.
I'm a bit curious about the process whereby you are able to look at the concept itself and deem it incoherent. Do you pluck it directly from Plato's Heaven and put it under a microscope? Rather than arguing that you've never heard a formulation of the concept that isn't meaningless or inconsistent (which is not really an argument but more of a gesture of exasperation), it could be more fruitful to focus on particular conceptions that have been articulated by either believers (e.g. libertarians or compatibilists) or non-believers (e.g. hard-determinists) and indicate why it is that you think their conceptions are defective.
Libertarians dont need self-creation from scratch. They typically allow acting in or out of character; and on Robert Kanes view, some self-forming actions (SFAs) help explain diachronic authorship without magic. The challenge they face is Kanes Intelligibility Question: how indeterminism at the moment of choice contributes control rather than luck.
Schopenhauer, by contrast, is compatibilist: in time, motives necessitate actions given a fixed empirical character, while freedom belongs only to the timeless intelligible character. That lets him evade the intelligibility problem, but it raises a different one, responsibility for one's character, which he purports to address by ascribing it to the noumenal self. I find Kants two-standpoints strategy (and his distinction between the empirical and intelligible characters of causality) in the Third Antinomy more convincing on that score.
"Freedom" belonging to "timeless intelligible character" is itself an unintelligible notion as far as I can tell. That said, I'm open to having it explained to me in terms that make intuitive sense. I also see Kant's conceptual distinction between empirical and intelligible causality as being without any real substance. Perhaps I don't get it, but from my perspective causation is an inference to explain what is observed (the empirical), and is intelligible only as such.
The idea that we, as things in themselves might have, from that perspective, a radical freedom just seems like a fudge, even though, although not having studied Kant intensively and knowing that he had made that very argument, but simply extrapolating from the idea of the noumenal, I once imagined the argument and used it myself.
Once I thought more about it and let go of the emotional need to believe in free will I came to see it as fatally underdetermined. For a start I would need to be fully consciously aware of and in control of that purported freedom for it to really count as such.
It seems to always be the case that when I state my opinion that free will is incoherent, the response is always, essentially, how dare you. No-one ever seems to respond with a coherent definition, or give a description of how it could function in a hypothetical universe.
But anyway, to respond to your points, I have given examples of formulations, like "could have chosen differently", and explained why I think they're meaningless. So I did do the thing you're suggesting.
If you know of better definitions, let's hear them, I'm here for it. In the meantime, yes my opinion is that it's incoherent, not just because all the formulations I have heard have been, but because I've heard all of the most popular ones.
So, there is a clear and massive difference between raising your leg and a doctor tapping your knee with a hammer, and then the leg going up as a reflex.
One we control easily, the other we can't control - it just happens.
If that distinction is taken to be true as it should, because it's so trivial, then you can begin amping up this example to other cases (but not all).
Turning a right instead of left is the difference between living a normal life or being a paraplegic for the rest of it as another car slams into yours.
Going to that trip may be the difference between a relaxing vacation or getting a promotion at work. And you can expand this in all ways. I can continue writing, or I can stop. I can't do both at the same time, that much is evident.
But yeah, that you can do something because it is in your power and that you do something because you can't control it, is the difference between free will and necessity.
I appreciate this and I apologise if my comment may have been a little curt. I may have been projecting a bit since exasperation sometimes is my own attitude when I see people appearing unwilling or unable to unpack their presuppositions about the nature of the persons or selves that allegedly have or lack "free will." (and it's often within such conceptions of the self that much of the philosophical meat is concealed.)
I don't think, in general, philosophical discussions should start with providing rigorous definitions, though. That's because the meanings and connotations of the terms that figure in any purported definition often are equally as contentious as the concept we attempt to define. So, it's often better not to reinvent the wheel and rather gesture towards the conceptual clarifications and framings of the problems as they've already been in the process of being articulated (in the literature or in discussions already under way) and start with that (e.g. point out considerations that have been ignored or shared presuppositions between other participants that one finds questionable).
A appreciate that as well and I tend to agree as regards the purported meaning of "could have done otherwise" (sometimes analysed in the context of the PAP principle"principle of alternative possibilities, " after Harry Frankfurt, in the literature.) But surely, you must grand that ordinary uses of the phrase, like "I didn't stop by the corner store to buy milk after work (and hence couldn't have chosen differently) because it was closed" are meaningful? I think beginning with ordinary uses, properly contextualized, often already goes a long way towards dispelling common philosophical confusions.
Thanks and reading back my own post, I will say the same. My posts are often more acerbic / confrontational really than they need to be and I appreciate you cooling the temperature.
Quoting Pierre-Normand
I do agree that that description is meaningful.
I'll try to clarify my position.
I believe that we make choices, but those choices are the product of our knowledge and predilections.
If you could rewind time to the moment I made the biggest mistake of my life, and you "rewind" my memories back to that state, then I'll do the same thing for the same reasons.
Some might balk at calling this "choice" then, but I think this is the *only* thing we can mean by choice. What's a choice that *isn't* the product of knowledge and predilection, what would that even mean?
In a universe is magic, souls and indeterminacy, how do the fairy folk decide between coffee or tea?
Suppose someone makes the decision to turn left rather than turn right. On the one hand their decision may have been determined by forces outside their control. On the other hand they may have made the decision regardless of forces outside their control using their personal free will. The insurmountable problem remains that it is impossible for anyone to know, either the person themselves or an outside observer, whether that decision had been determined or freely made. And if that is the case, that it is impossible to know whether a person's decisions are determined or freely made, the existence or not of free will remain a topic with no possibility of resolution.
If Determinism is the case, the decision has been determined prior to the moment of action, and if free will is the case, the decision is made at the moment of action. We can see a cue approaching a snooker ball, and it makes sense that the moving cue causes the snooker ball to move, But the snooker ball does not move because the cue is approaching the snooker ball, it moves because of the moment of contact between cue and snooker ball. For both free will and determinism, it is within an instantaneous moment in time that the future is determined.
As we can never know what is happening within the mind at an instant in time, knowing a physical state of affairs at an instant in time gives us no information as to how that physical system will change with time. Knowing what is tells us nothing about what will be, whether this is about the mind or a physical state of affairs. And if we cannot know what will be, it logically follows that we are also unable to know the cause of what will be, meaning that we are unable to know whether the cause of what will be has been free will or prior determination.
Because of this problem with our fundamental inability to know what is happening within a moment in time, we have a fundamental inability to know whether an action is that of free will or prior determination. Free will is a problem beyond any conceivable solution.
The idea that free will requires this sort of "rewind" possibility and that if we reset the whole universe to that moment (including your brain and memories) you could have chosen otherwise is what I've called "rollback incompatibilism" in a paper I wrote a few years ago. I think it's false, but it does seem to be a shared presupposition between libertarians who insist it's required and possible and hard determinists who insist it's required and impossible.
One problem with the "rewind" way of thinking is that it encourages us to look at ourselves from a kind of God's-eye, external standpoint, as if what mattered for free will were whether a particular event in the causal chain could have gone differently, holding everything else fixed. Both those who look backward for freedom conditions (as in Galen Strawson's "you didn't make yourself" Basic Argument) and those who look forward to the good consequences of holding people responsible (as in Derk Pereboom's deterrence/incitement account that views ascriptions of personal responsibility to be justified on merely instrumental grounds) tend to treat actions just as causal links in that empirical chain.
On my view, such moves sideline what is distinctive about practical reason. Our practices of holding ourselves and others responsible (blame, resentment, gratitude, guilt, pride, but also simple second-person demands like "How could you do that?") are not merely external levers we pull to shape behaviour from the outside. They are also things that we ourselves can recognize as warranted or unwarranted.
When I acknowledge that someone's blame is fitting, or feel shame or regret where I should, I'm not just being moved into acting better in the future (though I may be). I'm recognizing that, in this case, I was or wasn't properly responsive to the demands of reason. When I say that I could have done better, I don't mean that I lacked the general ability and opportunity to do better. What rather accounts for my not having done better is my failure (which I am responsible for) to have been suitably sensitive to the reasons I had to do better. I am responsible for my failure to actualize an ability that I had. "Could have done otherwise," in such contexts, signifies the presence of the general practical reasoning ability even in cases where it isn't being properly exercised.
What makes a reason good is not the prior causes that led me to appreciate it, but its place in that normative space: how it bears on what I am committed to, on what counts as doing justice to the situation. So insofar as what makes me act (in the relevant, intelligible sense) is my recognition of the goodness of those reasons, prior causes are not what explain my acting as I do, even though they of course enable it. That is where I'd locate freedom and responsibility, rather than in the possibility of getting a different outcome on a cosmic rewind scenario.
Kant in the CPR argues his thesis (A444) that there is one causality in accordance with the laws of nature and another causality of transcendental freedom.
He argues that not all causality can be in accordance with the laws of nature. As for each physical state there must be a prior physical state causing it. It would follow that there cannot have been a beginning, which is in contradiction with our understanding.
But as we experience a unity of experience from past to present, there must be a causality within our transcendental freedom, meaning that this causality must be separate from the causality that is in accordance with the laws of nature.
However, by the same argument, for each physical state there must be a physical state following it. It would follow that there will not be an end, which is not in contradiction with our understanding.
If we are able to understand a world with no end, we should be able to understand a world with no beginning. We may live in a world of infinite time. This overcomes his thesis that not all causality can be in accordance with the laws of nature.
If Kants argument that not all causality can be in accordance with the laws of nature is negated, this removes the necessity of a transcendental freedom separate to the laws of nature.This takes us back to all causality being within the laws of nature.
If "free will" means that our will operates independently of the laws of nature (wholly or partly), then it's impossible to know that.
I would go further than just calling it false, I think it's nonsensical. Rewind time and things are either going to be the same, or different for things like quantum indeterminancy (which we don't consider to be a reasoned choice). If there's a third way that could make sense, no-one seems to know what it is.
And this rewind possibility is the standard framing. I've watched or taken part in countless online and in-person debates where the whole premise was this (false) dichotomy of "Determinism vs free will" and usually a subtext of "Could we have chosen differently?"
Quoting Pierre-Normand
I think there's room for a lot of nuance on the concept of blame, but broadly I disagree.
I doubt that blame makes sense from a god's eye view, that is, with perfect knowledge. And I think this whether or not my decisions are predictable.
But I'll start with the nuances.
Firstly, as a practical matter, we have to hold people accountable for their actions. Both because we don't have perfect knowledge (and in terms of predicting actions, we likely never will) and we're limited in what we could do anyway. So it's necessary to praise and encourage the good, and condemn the bad, as part of just having a society.
(I would still say though that justice systems should be primarily based on rehabilitation, deterrence and public protection and not punishment. Because the notion of punishing evil is vulnerable to us finding genes, or neuropathologies highly correlated with violence say.)
Secondly, in terms of what you're saying about not living up to our potential, I get why it feels like that: I look at many dumb things I've done in my life that way. But it's usually the result of having greater knowledge and awareness now, often due to seeing the results of past dumb behaviours.
There's a strong correlation between impulsive behaviours and youth -- does that mean young people aren't their true self? Someone who died at 25 was never their true self?
But anyway, in general, I don't think blame works in the abstract. If God asks me why I did X, I can always give an explanation and it was down to what I understood at the time, and just the way I was wired (e.g. disliking pain, being attracted to women etc). All things God is at least as culpable as me for.
A cue hits a snooker ball. The subsequent movement of the snooker ball, left, forwards, right, is determined at the moment of impact. No free will is involved and no moral responsibility is involved.
We know that we have one euro in our hand and see a charity box. Our decision i) to put the euro in the charity box ii) not to put the euro in the charity box is made at the moment of knowing we have one euro in our hand and seeing the charity box. But we are also aware of the bigger picture which affects our decision, such as do we need the money to buy food or do we trust the charity to spend the money wisely.
In one sense we are free to put or not put the euro in the charity box, but on the other hand our decision is also determined by the bigger picture, a more complex context. Unlike a machine, we are conscious of our choice, we have intentionality about our choice. For Dennett, this consciousness of our choice, our intentionality about our choice, is how moral responsibility is introduced, thereby enabling a compatibility between the exercise of free will in a particular situation that is also in part determined by knowing the bigger picture.
We may be conscious of our choice, and may have intentionality towards our choice, but how can it be argued that this of necessity means that we have a moral responsibility for our choice? What is the relationship between making a decision and being conscious of this decision? Why should it be that being conscious of a decision makes us morally responsible for that decision? This would infer that all unconscious decisions are morally neutral. What is there about being conscious of our actions that makes us morally responsible for our actions?
What is the temporal relation between our action and our consciousness of that action?
If our consciousness of an action is subsequent to the action, and we are only morally responsible for an action when we are conscious of making that action, then this would negate any moral responsibility for our actions.
Suppose our consciousness of an action precedes the action. But in what way should being conscious of something require us to be morally responsible for that something. Generally, this is not the case. Being conscious of a sunset does not make me morally responsible for that sunset. Being conscious of a thief stealing a phone does not make me morally responsible for the theft. Why should consciousness of an act require a moral responsibility for that act?
Suppose our consciousness of our action is contemporaneous with the action. In this event, if the consciousness has not caused the action, then this consciousness cannot be responsible for the action, whether physically or morally. An apple may be green in colour and sweet to the taste, but these properties are independent of each other. The property of greenness is not responsible for the property of sweetness and vice versa. Similarly, I may be conscious of a choice, and I may act on this choice, but these facts may be independent of each other. The fact of being conscious of a choice may not require being responsible for the fact of acting on this choice.
There is a problem with Compatibilism, the idea that free will can coexist with determinism. What exactly is the temporal relationship between the consciousness of a choice required by free will and the act of a choice required by determinism?
Or not. I'm often under the infuence of smells everytime I observe myself actioning a decision I had apparently made.
Asserting the second one is a reasonable thing to say on face value alone is question begging. Everyone certainly experiences freewill and acts like other people do as well. What other argument is it expected that contradicting every lived experience isn't problematic?
I believe you're referring to the PAP: Principle of Alternative Possibilities, which suggests a rewind could have produced a different choice.
But LFW does not necessarily require that. One could agree that the rewind can't produce another choice, but if the choice is not the product of natural determinism- it is still a product of free will.
This is the view of molinists; it entails a means of rationalizing free will with God's foreknowledge of choices you will make. William Lane Craig (a molinist) explicitly rejects the PAP on these grounds, while still insisting that choices are freely willed. This is not, of course, a good reason to believe in LFW; rather, it's a rationalization of LFW (assumed to exist in order to justify accountability to God) with divine foreknowledge.
I'm an atheist, so I reject the molinist rationalization, but it does make a bit of sense to decouple LFW from the PAP.