Free will is when our choosing is free of coercion and other forms of undue influence. Nothing more. Nothing less. freely will.
An assertion. Necessitation is being ignored. Necessitated actions are not freely willed actions.
Dictionaries merely express word usage.
It is good to know how words are commonly used if you want to communicate. Most people do not define free will as requiring "freedom from causal necessity". That's the point. And "freedom from causal necessity" is never used to assess a person's responsibility for their actions, so it is truly odd that anyone would suggest it should be required of free will.
Definitions alone prove nothing. People define all sorts of things that don't exist, God, gods, Angels, Demons......
People refer to these things every day, ''thank God that our Janet did well at school,'' ''Let us pray to the Lord....''
The issue of free will is related to the role of will, how the brain works and how decisions and actions are made based on science and evidence, not slapping labels onto carefully selected conditions...which is Cherry Picking.
The brain plays chess because it has the capacity (neural architecture) and has acquired the necessary information. It matters not how the input is acquired, it's the inherent state of the system that determines ability.
The brain plays chess because someone asked it, "Hey, do you want to learn how to play chess?". And the brain said, "Yes".
That doesn't explain the means and mechanisms. It doesn't happen through magic.
We don't choose our brain, its abilities or its features.
Quite so. No one ever said to us, "Hey, we have a bunch of brains here. Would you like to choose one?".
The non-chosen state of the system determines how you think and respond.
When the brain breaks down we call someone, a doctor, to treat the condition.
Indeed.
External input alters the brain. Therapy, not free will, alters brain function. The patient seeks help because they are unable to help themselves.
If will has no agency, cannot regulate brain activity or make a difference to outcomes or behaviour, it is not 'free will' regardless of how many times it's asserted.
The causal mechanism is straightforward:
1. The brain encounters a problem that requires it to make a decision, such as the need to choose from the restaurant menu what we will order for dinner.
2. The brain decides, for various reasons, that we will order the Chef Salad.
3. The brain's will to order the Chef Salad causes it to trigger the appropriate motor functions to speak to the waiter, "I will have the Chef Salad, please".
Yes, all the work of acquiring and processing information is done unconsciously, the result presented in conscious form.
No free will involved.
Recognizing a problem, deciding what to do, and acting upon that deliberate intent are all part of the brain's causal agency.
If I decide that I will eat an apple right now, then I will get an apple and eat it. The intention to eat the apple motivates and directs my actions until the apple is eaten. There is nothing in neuroscience that contradicts this.
The brain processes information and generates deliberation. The brain has no choice but to acquire and process information because that is its evolutionary role.
Abstract
This review deals with the physiology of the initiation of a voluntary movement and the appreciation of whether it is voluntary or not. I argue that free will is not a driving force for movement, but a conscious awareness concerning the nature of the movement. Movement initiation and the perception of willing the movement can be separately manipulated. Movement is generated subconsciously, and the conscious sense of volition comes later, but the exact time of this event is difficult to assess because of the potentially illusory nature of introspection. Neurological disorders of volition are also reviewed. The evidence suggests that movement is initiated in the frontal lobe, particularly the mesial areas, and the sense of volition arises as the result of a corollary discharge likely involving multiple areas with reciprocal connections including those in the parietal lobe and insular cortex. - M . Hallett Clinical Neurophysiology , Volume 118 , Issue 6.
Your brain decides before you the conscious entity, a construct of the brain, is aware of the decision, the action is brought to mind milliseconds after initiation.
That's okay. It is still my own brain making the choice, free of coercion and undue influence. So, it's still a freely chosen "I will get an apple and eat it".
Everything in the universe has its own makeup and interaction with the environment. The makeup (not chosen) of each brain determines the behaviour of that brain in relation to its environment.
''At
this point certain questions need to be asked: Why does the coercion of a person by another, or the conditions of a brain microchip, or the conditions of a tumor, – nullify the “free will” ability? What part of the “ability” is being obstructed? This almost always comes down to a certain point of “control” that is being minimized, and where that minimized control is coming from (the arbitrary part).
The compatibilist might say because those are influences that are “outside” of the person, but this
misses the entire point brought up by the free will skeptic, which is that ALL environmental conditions that help lead to a person’s brain state at any given moment are “outside of the person”, and the genes a person has was
provided rather than decided.''
It is information processing, not free will.
It is both information processing and free will. Information processing is how choosing to eat an apple works! And, if I am free to make this choice for myself, then it is a choice of my own free will.
Free will is being inserted into the narrative. A narrative that doesn't require free will as an explanation for brain function or human behaviour.
The intention to eat the apple was not freely willed.
The intention (will) to eat the apple was freely chosen. That is exactly what free will is.
Determinism doesn't allow alternative. The intention to eat the apple is necessitated, not freely chosen. Chosen implies the possibility to have done otherwise, determinism doesn't allow alternate actions: there is no other possibility - in that instance, only the apple, nothing else.
It's the tail end of a long process that began before the decision and action took place.
Apparently that long process only takes a few seconds, so that doesn't bother me at all.
Brain activity only takes milliseconds, but as a deterministic system, the world began its inexorable progression of events long before it came to you selecting an apple, with no possible alternate action.
''All of these events, including my choices, were causally necessary from any prior point in time. And they all proceeded without deviation from the Big Bang to this moment.'' - Marvin Edwards.
Ironically, that is exactly how the scientific method works. Instead of a daydream, we have a hypothesis. We experiment to test that hypothesis. When a test fails, we imagine going back to try something different, modifying that daydream into a new hypothesis, and continuing this process until we find the best explanation of what is going on.
But how much progress do you think science would make if it never considered what it could have done otherwise?
Considering what ''could have been done otherwise'' is a part of the learning process. It's an exercise in imagination which provides a different outcome in the future.
The past states of the system evolving into the present and future states of the system.
The process of evolving events allows no alternate actions at any point in time.
That is the nature of determinism.
If you are not talking about determinism, compatibilism is irrelevant.
You can't have it both ways, if the events progress deterministically, there is no possible deviation or alternate action.
What Does Deterministic System Mean?
''A deterministic system is a system in which a given initial state or condition will always produce the same results. There is no randomness or variation in the ways that inputs get delivered as outputs.''
