I want to play.

[Moreno]

Moreno wrote"

I believe I have free will but many others may not.

Freedom is often mistaken as free will. Our will has the ability to decide, but it is not free, which means, we cannot weigh two diametrically opposed alternatives without strong feeling or concern for the outcome.

That's precisely what some of the ones who don't have free will say. I can't blame them. They have to say it. And it has to seem to make sense to them. It's got that 'feels right' quale attached.

[Orbie]

The reason that the two are confused are not necessarily because the people that confuse them have necessarily no freedom of will, but it is because a will is an excercise of power. In the case where will is to attain freedom of choice, it will be able to excercise it's power, toward a freedom to choose.

Examples are the semantic arguments:

"I will to do this". Or", I will not do this". Why someone asks? " I will to do it, but I will be stopped". So do you have free will, if you will something but can't do that something? Am I free in the sense of wanting to do it, knowing I can't?

I think the only type of argument when we can entail a freedom to impose our will, is if it's said "I will to do this, and I kmow I can do it. No one can stop me.". So free will is not free until it is excercised into a position where I can do what I want to do by the imposition of my will.

Will to power implies a will to have a power to affect change. The will is not free until it can have the power to do it. After it's done, the will has effectively caused to use power to attain whatever it wanted.

Prior to that, the will is just an idea, such as" I have the will power to do it. ". Having the will to do something, doesent mean it is free to use it. Hence the confusion, in my opinion.

A presumption of a freedom of will, is a hypothetically formal statement. It's preformance depends on overcoming the constraints to freedom.

Moreno, we use the word free will, in that conjunction, and this is why we are lead down to the confusion.

[Moreno]

Moreno, we use the word free will, in that conjunction, and this is why we are lead down to the confusion.

I agree, there is a lot of equivocation/confusion around the term. But really, I was following the subject of the thread and playing. I like jabbing at determinists given some of the access to knowledge issues immediately raised when one claims one is determined (along with everything/one else). An organism workign from the assumption that it is utterly determined, must be rather agnostic about all of its own conclusions, even about what seems obvious to it, including that generalizations about determinism and free will 'make sense'. Could just be a compelling quale. IOW the ontological claim, since it must include the claimant, creates epistemological challenges (in the extreme) for the claimant. Note: this does not mean they are wrong, it's just that a clear implication should be their own very strong doubt that they can, for example, evaluate their own arguments. The last time I brought this up I was labeled a person who believes in free will. Which is a confused conclusion. I mention this last pre-emptively.

[reason4emotion]

.

[Orbie]

Freedom is never defined as having unlimited power, uncontrolled or unrestricted by law, nevertheless, it is a state in which the cognitive-volitive faculty does exist.

True, granted. But the, how is it defined? The problem is, freedom in-its-self is just an empty vessel (form) into which the substance of definition is to be poured. That substance is defined by it's function. What is the function of freedom? It is to afford the maximum number of people the ability to excercise their will, in order for them to be able to live a happy and unhindered life.

[Orbie]

Freedom is never defined as having unlimited power, uncontrolled or unrestricted by law, nevertheless, it is a state in which the cognitive-volitive faculty does exist.

True, granted. But the, how is it defined? The problem is, freedom in-its-self is just an empty vessel (form) into which the substance of definition is to be poured. That substance is defined by it's function. What is the function of freedom? It is to afford the maximum number of people the ability to excercise their will, in order for them to be able to live a happy and unhindered life.

Later: it's odd. But it's as if I gave myself the right answer, as if you were talking through me.
Thanks for that.

[Orbie]

Moreno, we use the word free will, in that conjunction, and this is why we are lead down to the confusion.

I agree, there is a lot of equivocation/confusion around the term. But really, I was following the subject of the thread and playing. I like jabbing at determinists given some of the access to knowledge issues immediately raised when one claims one is determined (along with everything/one else). An organism workign from the assumption that it is utterly determined, must be rather agnostic about all of its own conclusions, even about what seems obvious to it, including that generalizations about determinism and free will 'make sense'. Could just be a compelling quale. IOW the ontological claim, since it must include the claimant, creates epistemological challenges (in the extreme) for the claimant. Note: this does not mean they are wrong, it's just that a clear implication should be their own very strong doubt that they can, for example, evaluate their own arguments. The last time I brought this up I was labeled a person who believes in free will. Which is a confused conclusion. I mention this last pre-emptively.

So you are taking a non positional position for arguments' sake, in order to not to be labeled? I think that' an agnostic, neutral position that's a fair one to take.

[Ecmandu]

Freewill is defined by atheists as creating all of the constituents of your thoughts and experiences. And the argument against is that you need to think and experience before you create these constituents, therefor the strong definition of free will is impossible or incoherent for all possible beings, this argument can be amplified by the concept of informed consent.

[Ecmandu]

Freewill is defined by atheists as creating all of the constituents of your thoughts and experiences. And the argument against is that you need to think and experience before you create these constituents, therefor the strong definition of free will is impossible or incoherent for all possible beings, this argument can be amplified by the concept of informed consent.

Basically, Uccisore, in terms of logic as I know it, you'd abysmally lose this debate ... In order to create the constituents of ALL of our own thoughts and experiences with COMPLETE informed consent... We'd have to live before we lived into infinite regress so we couldn't even start - you'd lose the debate Uccisore.

[Ultimate Philosophy 1001]

Free will is not real.

But before we prove that it is not real, we must first define what is freedom?

And before that we must define what is human.

And before that we must define what is robot.

So, what is robot? How does a robot exist? A robot is not of what it is not. Therefore, a robot is defined by it's bounds, what parts move with the robot, in accordance with it's gears. Parts not connected to the robot's gears or frame are said not to be part of the robot, because a robot is not what it is not.

So what is a human? A human is not what it is not. We can say that other people, are not us, because they are not connected to our gears. We can move our hands with our mental gears, but we cannot move their hands with our mental gears except through advanced telekenesis. The distinction becomes blurry...since things exist inside our minds, in fact they can be said to be part of us and connected to our gears. So other people are not seperate from us, however they are distinct from us...that is, they are part of us but perceived as merely an attachment, and can be viewed only from an external perspective. However, us, ourselves, we can view ourselves through an internal perspective, through our own eyes.

So now you begin to understand...if other people are not seperate than us, if they are a part of us, connected to our gears, then they are under the same chain of causality as us. Now you begin to see the equation...that the illusion of freewill is directly related to the square of distance to the first person narrative. We can no more control our own arms than anyone elses arms! But since we are so close to our first person narrative, we feel the illusion of control, because our thoughts and actions have no delay, they are direct effects, and there are no hidden complex chains of subtle butterfly effects!

So we must explore what is freedom? First the rational one must admit that a human being is no different than a robot, and even with magical or quantum properties it would still be no different than a robot. So if the human being is no different than a robot, it is a robot. So say you build a lego robot and how would you determine if that robot had freedom? So freedom is the ability for the robot to function as it's programmer intended. If you stick glue in a robot or put a rock in the gear you are taking that robot's freedom away, because that robot is no longer able to make the choices and choose the paths it's programming intended for it to make.

So freewill says that it is a robot which has transcended it's own robot nature, that it can make choices from nothing, out of thin air. This is hogwash. You can teach a robot, you can reprogram it, you can program it to make decisions that are totally random decisions with no preset routines, you can even teach it to learn on its own, but neither robot nor human, nor human nor robot, will ever have a such thing as free will. It is a physically impossible thing.

[Ecmandu]

Trixie , that is an incredibly long post of nonsense ...

"Free" will is being able to create the constituents of your own thoughts and experiences with informed consent . Of course, since you must have thoughts and experiences to create thoughts and experiences, by this generally agreed definition, it is impossible or not actual.