A scientific definition of the term 'free will'

[rousseau]

In a previous thread @Elixir and I mentioned the concept of 'free will' being a semantic construct, and I think I've figured out a good way to express this idea.

If the term 'free will' doesn't actually correspond to any real, objective thing or phenomena in the known universe then we can't not have it, and we can't have it either, because it's not a real thing. It's a human, imaginary semantic construct. A person can have brown hair, a heart, a car, because these things correspond to real aspects of the known universe. Where 'free will' is a completely imagined construct. You can't not have something that doesn't exist.

Basically, free will is an irrelevant way of describing or not describing human behavior. We need to rely on other constructs that actually exist.

So in this thread I challenge others to provide a scientific definition of what free will is and it's referent in the known universe. If we can't, then the entire conversation on free will makes no sense, because you can't not have something that doesn't exist.

 

[Jarhyn]

This a really reflects an argument Copernicus and I are having right now in the Sapolsky thread

To me part of the issue here is that the discussion specifically around "free" is very muddy.

Specifically we are both compatibilists, however he doesn't want to get into the nuts and bolts of treating Free Will with formal descriptive language that is isomorphic to reality, and instead to handle it with easy human terms.

I would caution you to be careful about what you mean by "exist" though.

You might actually be helped by trying to read through the few threads on the topic where this has been done.

Still, I am of the camp that says "free will is not about science. It is buried deeper in philosophy than science. Rather it is buried in MATH, a more general process, and specifically within systems theory and a bit of game theory: wills are algorithms."

Let's look at two "black boxes". These black boxes communicate with (fairly) plain English, albeit a version of English both black boxes agree upon, and for which every term is "complete", even if arbitrary, just to make things a bit easier to approach.

So if one box says "dog" or "chair", despite these being arbitrary classes, the other box has the same definition.

Anyway...

One box says to the other: "produce two wills satisfying the phrase 'a will to occupy our next few minutes'"

The second box says "two options: stand up off the floor, sit in the chair, be seated comfortably, pick up the book, read the book in comfort; stand up off the floor, play with the dog"

The first box says to itself "reading the book in comfort", and then says to the second "produce a will to stand up off the floor", to which the second responds "one option: place hands firmly on the floor and push down, extending your legs, be standing".

This process continues, or at least may continue either in parallel or series until the description of action is one written as precisely as a C program.

Then, the first box, now armed with a complete program, says to itself "execute this", and then a flurry of machine instructions pour out of it to some larger surrounding framework that executes the instructions and reports the result back to the first box.

As the execution of this process happens, something else in the environment happens and the chair is removed from the space by some other mechanism, not owing to any of the contents of the will or the actions of our "agency", the statements made by the first black box.

The machine says to the first black box "error: chair not found". The will is not free to progress to "read a book in comfort", and thus you could say of this systemic structure "the system lacked the freedom to read a book".

As the first black box discovers it was coerced by foul fate not to get its way,

Now, let's put some labels on these boxes, to describe and contextualize their function: we will name the first box "chooser" and the second box "imagination", the framework around them "the body", and the stuff outside containing things like 'chairs' and 'books' and dogs "the outside environment".

Now, let's say something is said by some other box somewhere out there in the environment. This is "two options: give me your wallet and live, give me nothing and be shot in the face." Owing to the particular quirk of the universe having what I would call "sufficient locality", there is something true and real that maybe said of the statement: "it came from 'the environment', not from 'imagination'".

The chooser must now make a different choice than the ones it was making before. It says to the 'imagination' present more options than 'give wallet -> live; keep wallet -> shot'"

The imagination now returns "Error, no valid internal options; two external options: (external) give wallet, live; (external) keep wallet, get shot in the face."

This in fact represents another aspect of freedom (or something constraining it at some given point in time), namely the quality of where the will came from, and this implies a hidden will within the system, which is being impeded: the will that wills are relatively internal.

Someone in the vernacular would say "the agent (the imagination, the chooser, and the body treated as a single entity inside their own box) lacks free will to do otherwise they are being coerced (defined by the existence of the (external) tag) to choose between money and life."

Again note here that I have not discussed anything that is not physically real to the system, nothing that is not an object, and nothing that is subjective; it is relative, but relativity is a feature of reality.

In more plain English: the agent decided of it's own free will between playing with the dog and sitting down to read a book; the agent decided of it's own free will specifically to sit down and read a book; the agent discovered it was not free to do so and was coerced by the environment to do something else; before it could do that, another agent within the environment coerced the agent to make a coerced decision; the agent decided of these coercive wills to live and hand over its wallet."

Since I think we can all agree "algorithms" are a thing well handled, that there is a "black box" that may be constructed that satisfies the requirements of "imagination", and because there is likewise such that satisfies "chooser", and "body", and "environment", that the "error" states are themselves based on real observations and ways systems may be configured that this translation of those concerns from the lower level language into vernacular is sound: that wills are algorithms and that freedoms of those wills relate to the entry of goal and error states of said wills.

"Free Will" is itself a misnomer because sometimes a system will have free will and sometimes it won't, and this relates specifically to the will within the system whose goal state is "freedom from error states", and "coercion" is by some measure that which forces the system into one of the (far from exhaustive) set of error states presented.

 

[Jarhyn]

I'll note that these terms are entirely agnostic as to how the system itself came to be as it is, what scribed the boundaries, what constructed the boxes. They could have been constructed 2 seconds before the discussion began by a software engineer in a completely virtual environment. There is nothing requiring any of it to be indeterministic; it is fully compatible with the idea that the chooser operates by some fixed process, OR the idea that the chooser contains a "true" RNG and rolls on it.

Really, this is a discussion that could be had in a vacuum about any manner of cellular automata, regardless of whether the whole system is deterministic or not.

 

[Elixir]

Basically, free will is an irrelevant way of describing or not describing human behavior. We need to rely on other constructs that actually exist.

IMO it’s an irrelevant way to describe humans’ subjective experience.

So in this thread I challenge others to provide a scientific definition of what free will is and it's referent in the known universe.

I can’t do it for free will, but I’ll take a crack at “expensive will”.
It refers to a nearly universal tendency of humans to want “more stuff” without regard to the need or utility of such stuff.

 

[rousseau]

This a really reflects an argument Copernicus and I are having right now in the Sapolsky thread

To me part of the issue here is that the discussion specifically around "free" is very muddy.

Specifically we are both compatibilists, however he doesn't want to get into the nuts and bolts of treating Free Will with formal descriptive language that is isomorphic to reality, and instead to handle it with easy human terms.

I would caution you to be careful about what you mean by "exist" though.

You might actually be helped by trying to read through the few threads on the topic where this has been done.

Still, I am of the camp that says "free will is not about science. It is buried deeper in philosophy than science. Rather it is buried in MATH, a more general process, and specifically within systems theory and a bit of game theory: wills are algorithms."

If we can I'm hoping to steer this conversation away from just more discussion on free will itself. The point here, that I don't want to lose sight of, is that 'free will' objectively can't be a property of humans, because it has no real existence. The term is entirely symbolic of some people's perception of how we do or do not operate, but it's presence, or lack thereof, can't actually be an objective property of our behavior or anything about us. It's a folk term.

If we want to try to apply physics concepts to people we can do that and see if they make sense, but the term 'free will' itself needs to be thrown in the trash, and people need to stop profiting off of books about it. If you want to understand how people actually operate, it doesn't tell us anything. It just distracts from telling us anything.

 

[The AntiChris]

The point here, that I don't want to lose sight of, is that 'free will' objectively can't be a property of humans, because it has no real existence.

Compatibilist free will is a (subjective) property of some human actions. It's not an objective physical property that can be studied scientifically.

 

[Jarhyn]

This a really reflects an argument Copernicus and I are having right now in the Sapolsky thread

To me part of the issue here is that the discussion specifically around "free" is very muddy.

Specifically we are both compatibilists, however he doesn't want to get into the nuts and bolts of treating Free Will with formal descriptive language that is isomorphic to reality, and instead to handle it with easy human terms.

I would caution you to be careful about what you mean by "exist" though.

You might actually be helped by trying to read through the few threads on the topic where this has been done.

Still, I am of the camp that says "free will is not about science. It is buried deeper in philosophy than science. Rather it is buried in MATH, a more general process, and specifically within systems theory and a bit of game theory: wills are algorithms."

If we can I'm hoping to steer this conversation away from just more discussion on free will itself. The point here, that I don't want to lose sight of, is that 'free will' objectively can't be a property of humans, because it has no real existence. The term is entirely symbolic of some people's perception of how we do or do not operate, but it's presence, or lack thereof, can't actually be an objective property of our behavior or anything about us. It's a folk term.

If we want to try to apply physics concepts to people we can do that and see if they make sense, but the term 'free will' itself needs to be thrown in the trash, and people need to stop profiting off of books about it. If you want to understand how people actually operate, it doesn't tell us anything. It just distracts from telling us anything.

If you want to start by assuming your conclusion, you will always reach your conclusion because you assumed it true in the first place.

I pointed out that free will DOES have real existence because algorithms have real existence, goals have real existence, and errors have real existence, and "free will" is just a contextualization of those very real things.

You ignored the entire post where I explained and discussed this and said "but we shouldn't start with discussing things that have real existence."

 

[Jarhyn]

The point here, that I don't want to lose sight of, is that 'free will' objectively can't be a property of humans, because it has no real existence.

Compatibilist free will is a (subjective) property of some human actions. It's not an objective physical property that can be studied scientifically.

I disagree. I did exactly the exercise in my above post. See my reply to Rousseau. It is relational but not "subjective".

 

[The AntiChris]

I disagree.

Yes, I know you do. We have very different notions of what is generally understood to be 'compatibilist free will'.

 

[bilby]

Basically, free will is an irrelevant way of describing or not describing human behavior. We need to rely on other constructs that actually exist.

IMO it’s an irrelevant way to describe humans’ subjective experience.

So in this thread I challenge others to provide a scientific definition of what free will is and it's referent in the known universe.

I can’t do it for free will, but I’ll take a crack at “expensive will”.
It refers to a nearly universal tendency of humans to want “more stuff” without regard to the need or utility of such stuff.

I don't think expensive will, as you define it here, really exists outside psychiatric cases. Extreme hoarders who live buried in trash, because they can't bear to let anything cease to be their posession, may have it*.

Mere greed doesn't really qualify; Billionaires may not buy a private jet because they need to get from LA to New York very quickly and at a moment's notice, so much as because they want to impress everyone with their lavish displays of wealth; But either way, their desire for more stuff has a non-trivial utility.

We have evolved to make use of the things we find, and to keep them for future use; And to respect those who are most successful in doing this.

That this leads to self-harming behaviours such as buying stuff we don't want, to impress folks we don't like, is not particularly surprising, nor is it particularly universal - lots of us eschew such displays, but by the nature of displays, those not making them are far less visible, so if you look around, it seems as though everyone but you is doing it.

But they really aren't.







* But if they do, they certainly won't let anyone take it away from them

 

[rousseau]

This a really reflects an argument Copernicus and I are having right now in the Sapolsky thread

To me part of the issue here is that the discussion specifically around "free" is very muddy.

Specifically we are both compatibilists, however he doesn't want to get into the nuts and bolts of treating Free Will with formal descriptive language that is isomorphic to reality, and instead to handle it with easy human terms.

I would caution you to be careful about what you mean by "exist" though.

You might actually be helped by trying to read through the few threads on the topic where this has been done.

Still, I am of the camp that says "free will is not about science. It is buried deeper in philosophy than science. Rather it is buried in MATH, a more general process, and specifically within systems theory and a bit of game theory: wills are algorithms."

If we can I'm hoping to steer this conversation away from just more discussion on free will itself. The point here, that I don't want to lose sight of, is that 'free will' objectively can't be a property of humans, because it has no real existence. The term is entirely symbolic of some people's perception of how we do or do not operate, but it's presence, or lack thereof, can't actually be an objective property of our behavior or anything about us. It's a folk term.

If we want to try to apply physics concepts to people we can do that and see if they make sense, but the term 'free will' itself needs to be thrown in the trash, and people need to stop profiting off of books about it. If you want to understand how people actually operate, it doesn't tell us anything. It just distracts from telling us anything.

If you want to start by assuming your conclusion, you will always reach your conclusion because you assumed it true in the first place.

I pointed out that free will DOES have real existence because algorithms have real existence, goals have real existence, and errors have real existence, and "free will" is just a contextualization of those very real things.

You ignored the entire post where I explained and discussed this and said "but we shouldn't start with discussing things that have real existence."

I get the meaning of your post, but I don't think you really need to use the term 'free will' to describe it, why not just explain human behavior as everything that came before that part of your post? And then get more intricate in that explanation, including aspects of our neurophysiology and endocrine system etc?

That's what I'm getting at. The term 'free will' isn't really needed. The conversation on human freedom has been framed with the term as a referent, and everything we describe is supposed to either prove or disprove it. Why not just explain human behavior and functioning without worrying about whether or not it qualifies as a unicorn (free will).

To me, actual freedom has more to do with limitations on our range of behavior, I think partly what you described (sorry, your post is way too long, and I don't have enough energy right now to read it closely).

 

[Jarhyn]

I disagree.

Yes, I know you do. We have very different notions of what is generally understood to be 'compatibilist free will'.

I also disagree with that. Rather, I think that the thing I understand to be compatibilist free will is in fact the same thing you think of, however I think about it in a much more general and much more formal way than you do.

A person who does addition in fourth grade and a mathematician are handling the same thing generally understood as "addition". Assuming that the mathematician is discussing "addition in N", they are both handling the same thing generally understood as "addition".

If you ask the mathematician about the fundamental description of what is happening, you will get what appears to be a very different notion of addition...

 

[Jarhyn]

This a really reflects an argument Copernicus and I are having right now in the Sapolsky thread

To me part of the issue here is that the discussion specifically around "free" is very muddy.

Specifically we are both compatibilists, however he doesn't want to get into the nuts and bolts of treating Free Will with formal descriptive language that is isomorphic to reality, and instead to handle it with easy human terms.

I would caution you to be careful about what you mean by "exist" though.

You might actually be helped by trying to read through the few threads on the topic where this has been done.

Still, I am of the camp that says "free will is not about science. It is buried deeper in philosophy than science. Rather it is buried in MATH, a more general process, and specifically within systems theory and a bit of game theory: wills are algorithms."

If we can I'm hoping to steer this conversation away from just more discussion on free will itself. The point here, that I don't want to lose sight of, is that 'free will' objectively can't be a property of humans, because it has no real existence. The term is entirely symbolic of some people's perception of how we do or do not operate, but it's presence, or lack thereof, can't actually be an objective property of our behavior or anything about us. It's a folk term.

If we want to try to apply physics concepts to people we can do that and see if they make sense, but the term 'free will' itself needs to be thrown in the trash, and people need to stop profiting off of books about it. If you want to understand how people actually operate, it doesn't tell us anything. It just distracts from telling us anything.

If you want to start by assuming your conclusion, you will always reach your conclusion because you assumed it true in the first place.

I pointed out that free will DOES have real existence because algorithms have real existence, goals have real existence, and errors have real existence, and "free will" is just a contextualization of those very real things.

You ignored the entire post where I explained and discussed this and said "but we shouldn't start with discussing things that have real existence."

I get the meaning of your post, but I don't think you really need to use the term 'free will' to describe it, why not just explain human behavior as everything that came before that part of your post? And then get more intricate in that explanation, including aspects of our neurophysiology and endocrine system etc?

That's what I'm getting at. The term 'free will' isn't really needed. The conversation on human freedom has been framed with the term as a referent, and everything we describe is supposed to either prove or disprove it. Why not just explain human behavior and functioning without worrying about whether or not it qualifies as a unicorn (free will).

To me, actual freedom has more to do with limitations on our range of behavior, I think partly what you described (sorry, your post is way too long, and I don't have enough energy right now to read it closely).

This goes into the heart of the argument I'm having with Copernicus in the other thread at this very moment: people have an Ordinary Language that they use to discuss things in Ordinary ways with Ordinary people.

Free will is, like it or not, just a set of Ordinary Language tokens that handles the concepts I've discussed.

I your complaint would be like a mathematician arguing that "subtract" is an unnecessary term, or "multiply" because they have (insert binary multiplication algorithm description here).

Not everyone is going to understand "algorithm" as a synonym for will. Not everyone is going to understand "freedom" and "constraint" in terms of "goal state" and "error state".

The thing is, there's a massive pile of literature and discussions on the topic that are already mostly right with respect to responsibility, which Copernicus in the other thread correctly noted in the other thread.

You don't get to decide really the terms other people will use to discuss the topic either.

It's just far easier to say "I had free will in the decision to X" than to say "my algorithm to render a decision as the result of internal processes had no errors, and created an algorithm pursuant to the goal 'to X', innan environment in which all the necessary requirements of fulfillment were met such that i did x".

 

[rousseau]

It's just far easier to say "I had free will in the decision to X" than to say "my algorithm to render a decision as the result of internal processes had no errors, and created an algorithm pursuant to the goal 'to X', innan environment in which all the necessary requirements of fulfillment were met such that i did x".

But even then, most people still don't use the term free will, they use 'free'. Our freedom to act is quite commonplace and obvious, and just taken for granted by everyone. And most people would probably define it not as 'having an algorithm', they would define it as 'not being restrained in some context'. So the common token is 'freedom', and the term free will just implies that I can exert myself freely.

It's a bunch of very smart philosophers wanting to sell books that have over-complicated the term free will. Sometimes we just need to go back to basics and look at the word with the fewest syllables.

free - not imprisoned or confined

If we want to scientifically define free will as 'I can exert myself freely' or 'I was exerting myself freely / without coercion', then I'm totally on board.

 

[Jarhyn]

But even then, most people still don't use the term free will, they use 'free'

Misnomers are an artifact of Ordinary Language. If your problem is with misnomers, you're in for a long slog.

Of course, in the foundational approach, "having satisfied the goal state of an algorithm." Means "being satisfied in the heuristic of rejecting constraint" which means "not being constrained".

Much like the 4th grader doing addition tables, though, having that ability to translate between these concepts is eventually going to become necessary when they graduate from thinking of math like a child and instead thinking of math like a mathematician who has something to prove.

If you want to define it scientifically, though, I would hazard that the only way is going to have to rest on the foundation rather than to assume it.

 

[The AntiChris]

I disagree.

Yes, I know you do. We have very different notions of what is generally understood to be 'compatibilist free will'.

I also disagree with that. Rather, I think that the thing I understand to be compatibilist free will is in fact the same thing you think of, however I think about it in a much more general and much more formal way than you do.

A person who does addition in fourth grade and a mathematician are handling the same thing generally understood as "addition". Assuming that the mathematician is discussing "addition in N", they are both handling the same thing generally understood as "addition".

If you ask the mathematician about the fundamental description of what is happening, you will get what appears to be a very different notion of addition...

I'm pretty sure we view compatibilist free will quite differently. Do you know of any philosophers who defend compatibilist free will in the same way you do? It might help me to understand your approach.

 

[rousseau]

But even then, most people still don't use the term free will, they use 'free'

Misnomers are an artifact of Ordinary Language. If your problem is with misnomers, you're in for a long slog.

Of course, in the foundational approach, "having satisfied the goal state of an algorithm." Means "being satisfied in the heuristic of rejecting constraint" which means "not being constrained".

Much like the 4th grader doing addition tables, though, having that ability to translate between these concepts is eventually going to become necessary when they graduate from thinking of math like a child and instead thinking of math like a mathematician who has something to prove.

If you want to define it scientifically, though, I would hazard that the only way is going to have to rest on the foundation rather than to assume it.

By assuming it do you mean assuming free will? If so, I'm not assuming it's existence, I'm assuming that it's semantic.

So you want to actually do the math and describe and explain human behavior, and put it in an academic textbook? Then just explain human functioning using scientific concepts. No need to call it anything.

Ordinary people can use the term 'free will', and just mean 'I'm not constrained by anything'. And underneath that there is a scientific reality. But there is no need to call the scientific reality itself 'free will', it's just how we function, and our being free to function that way without constraint is the semantic 'free will'.

But philosophers tend to treat the term as something else entirely, as an actual, objective artifact and benchmark, which it is not.

 

[Jarhyn]

I disagree.

Yes, I know you do. We have very different notions of what is generally understood to be 'compatibilist free will'.

I also disagree with that. Rather, I think that the thing I understand to be compatibilist free will is in fact the same thing you think of, however I think about it in a much more general and much more formal way than you do.

A person who does addition in fourth grade and a mathematician are handling the same thing generally understood as "addition". Assuming that the mathematician is discussing "addition in N", they are both handling the same thing generally understood as "addition".

If you ask the mathematician about the fundamental description of what is happening, you will get what appears to be a very different notion of addition...

I'm pretty sure we view compatibilist free will quite differently. Do you know of any philosophers who defend compatibilist free will in the same way you do? It might help me to understand your approach.

Not a clue. I'm an autistic wonk. Of course we "view" it differently, but I have some faith we are "viewing" the same thing from different perspectives.

I'm not sure a "philosopher" trained on "philosophy" would have the perspective for it (without also having the experience of learning software engineering and ML)

By assuming it do you mean assuming free will

I mean assuming that your language has a foundation at all.

My point is that the term IS an actual benchmark discussing something real, for all the term itself is a misnomer, and understanding what the term references is about understanding the most vital goal (and the adjoining will) an agent has with respect to its own individuality, the heuristic that actually determines whether something is aligned to "the interests of the self".

 

[southernhybrid]

I have no idea exactly what this thread is supposed to be about since it seems to be about free will, without using the term free will, but, the way I look at it is that we are all victims or benefactors of our genetic and environmental influences, so we have little if any control over our behavior. If someone is born a psychopath , that person will have no moral compass. If someone is born to two very smart, morally upright people and that person was taught right from wrong, educated in decent schools and loved, it's likely that person will be the type of person who cares about others and at least has a good chance at having a successful life, assuming they didn't inherit some mental illness from a distant relative.

Having said that, sometimes certain influences change a person's behavior. See, I didn't use the term free will to describe the way I see people's actions and values. Is that compatibilism? I don't give a fuck. To me, it's not worth having endless arguments over how much if any free will we actually have. Maybe we females don't care about such shit because we have been fighting the patriarchy for a long time, so we have other things to concern us. ( I'm reading a book about that right now, so I can't help myself )

My view just makes it much easier for me not to judge people. I'm not saying I never do, or that I don't resent people who are part of the trump cult. I just think they are the result of how they've been raised, including religious influences, and any genetic influences they received from their parents and other relatives.

My late sister was almost like a clone of my late grandmother, despite barely knowing her. How did that happen, other than she inherited certain traits from our grandmother? She obviously couldn't help who she was, despite her grudge holding dislike for anyone who pissed her off over trivial things. She was almost exactly like our grandmother, right down to their love of long painted finger nails and their struggle with obesity. Both of them cut one or more of their children out of their lives as well as other friends and relatives. How could two people be so much alike? Genetics? Other influences? You tell me.

Gotta go fight the patriarchy, so have fun guys discussing this topic again. I guess you can't help yourselves.

 

[Jarhyn]

I have no idea exactly what this thread is supposed to be about since it seems to be about free will, without using the term free will, but, the way I look at it is that we are all victims or benefactors of our genetic and environmental influences, so we have little if any control over our behavior. If someone is born a psychopath , that person will have no moral compass. If someone is born to two very smart, morally upright people and that person was taught right from wrong, educated in decent schools and loved, it's likely that person will be the type of person who cares about others and at least has a good chance at having a successful life, assuming they didn't inherit some mental illness from a distant relative.

Having said that, sometimes certain influences change a person's behavior. See, I didn't use the term free will to describe the way I see people's actions and values. Is that compatibilism? I don't give a fuck. To me, it's not worth having endless arguments over how much if any free will we actually have. Maybe we females don't care about such shit because we have been fighting the patriarchy for a long time, so we have other things to concern us. ( I'm reading a book about that right now, so I can't help myself )

My view just makes it much easier for me not to judge people. I'm not saying I never do, or that I don't resent people who are part of the trump cult. I just think they are the result of how they've been raised, including religious influences, and any genetic influences they received from their parents and other relatives.

My late sister was almost like a clone of my late grandmother, despite barely knowing her. How did that happen, other than she inherited certain traits from our grandmother? She obviously couldn't help who she was, despite her grudge holding dislike for anyone who pissed her off over trivial things. She was almost exactly like our grandmother, right down to their love of long painted finger nails and their struggle with obesity. Both of them cut one or more of their children out of their lives as well as other friends and relatives. How could two people be so much alike? Genetics? Other influences? You tell me.

Gotta go fight the patriarchy, so have fun guys discussing this topic again. I guess you can't help yourselves.

Really, I'm not sure what Rousseau even wants at this point.

Abandonment of the term "free will" as an address relating to responsibility?

I don't see what's so wrong with saying "I had free will in my decision to do the thing" instead of "I was responsible for doing the thing".

That's really what I'm gathering here.

What it means "to be responsible for" is just another repackaging of the whole discussion.

They seem to be asking why we need both terms.

Really though, terms like this are repeated across language because synonymous usages usually are used to contextualize what, exactly, the discussion was about.

Usually when we had free will, we don't say it as "I had free will"; instead we engage 'responsibility' when attempting to regard the same events in hindsight, even if the hindsight is preemptive -- imagining looking back from one time far ahead to a time only slightly ahead, and saying 'if I do this I will be responsible dor causing that', for example. only when discussing something active do I generally notice people saying "I HAVE free will", which is to say, we engage the 'free will' format of discussion usually to indicate ongoing activity and a lack of some error state overriding our decision processes with active external directives.

I do very much agree there are things that are as responsible for us as we are for our more recent actions. I meet my biological paternal sisters this coming Sunday, and I imagine it will be quite interesting. There will certainly be similarities. I hear my sister did to our biological father what I did to my older brother, cutting him out of my life.

I'm hoping that my sister relents and reconciles with him, but I'm not going to push her. I'm going to push bio father on being a better person and on avoiding being the kind of person he was that triggered whatever happened there...

That said, to return to my point, it's more just a discussion over why we use language the way we do, and what that language actually means. A quibble about semantics, I think.