Posted: Aug 26, 2017 9:33 am
romansh wrote:scott1328 wrote: To me it is about prediction, oppurtunities, evaluation of oppurtunities, and consequences. To me, free will cannot exist unless cuase and effect are in full operation. Otherwise prediction of likely outcomes and consequences are impossible.
What degree of unpredictability does one need to exhibit for free will to seem a reasonable proposition?
You should ask scott about how predictable people need to be to be candidates for free will agents.
It seems to me predictability could be almost anything and make no difference to ideas of free will as long as what agents notice about what they think they will do correlates more strongly with their actions than chance. That gives the impression that intentional thought is itself a cause of actions, which is the core idea of [free] will.
I don't have an answer except to say that the more predictable from prior conditions an agent is the less free they are. I think you will agree that is people are 100% predictable from prior conditions they are fully coerced in their actions and can be said to have no free will in the usual sense.
We can make a special case where some of those conditions are in the brains of the agents and say that that is part of the agent making a choice, but that's a bit arbitrary.
I don't