Posted: Mar 22, 2010 12:15 am
Loren Michael wrote:How is any of that not simply acting randomly? Or are you defining free will as acting randomly?
Define "random" (it´s something you can open big cans of worms about). But yes, not being predictable is precisely what free will boils down to and the argument laid out by shows that the universe allows unpredictability and that evolution is very likely to produce organisms that employ the unpredictability of some natural processes particularly on a subatomic scale to be unpredictabie on a macroscopic scale.
The "big" issues surrounding free will tend to come about by half-assed approaches, generally assuming both monism and dualism or assuming free will and no free will. Questions like "Should we punish a muderer if his brain actually did it?" are nonsensical because they assume contradictory positions to begin with (in this case that the murder had no free will, but we do when we decide whether to punish or not).