Posted: Oct 07, 2017 12:26 pm
GrahamH wrote:John Platko wrote:
By freely choosing to act, not making myself act. There may even be an element of surprise in the choice I freely make. (although I'm feeling like I'm going a bit out on a limb now)
What are the alternatives, that someone else made you act or that circumstances compelled you or that your action was just a random surprise?
Coercion isn't freedom.And we can rule out random surprise - I'm not free if I turn my will over to dice.
If free will means anything at all it surely means that I make myself do things.
Have you considered the possibility that making yourself do things is like making you the warden of your own prison. Where's the freedom in that?
I think there must be a minor semantic confusion there. I cant see how you could support free will and yet say that you did not make your arm move in deciding to lift your arm. If your arm lifted and it seemed to you that you did not make it move willfully you would probably get yourself checked out by a doctor and wouldn't be parading our wandering arm as an example of free will.
If my arm made habit of moving when I wasn't willing it to move, I would have myself checked out by a doctor.
Sometimes I will what I do, but sometimes, for hardware and/or software reasons, I do not. And I have observed that I can choose to increase my free will or just go with the flow of particles.
This is not a hard concept to grasp. When addicted to heroin, I'm hardly free to go about my day without a needle. Even my local law enforcement recognizes that and they endeavor to help rather than lock up people in such a situation. Addicts are free will comprised and we need to help them recover in the same way we help someone who is immune compromised recover.
"warden of your own prison"? Is that "will power"?
More likely the result of lack of will power. I'm always amazed at the number of ways we humans can find to unfree ourselves.