There are two threads about this in Other Philosophical Discussions.
The consensus is that Libertarian free will does not exist, cannot exist, and is in fact a nonsense concept. It is alleged in fact that it has been proposed in this nonsense way specifically so that people can argue against it as a straw man in an attempt to defend their "hard determinism".
The contention here is whether "free" and "will" can make sense at all in some other definition than the one that is clearly ridiculous.
Definitions have been proposed (by me because I'm the only one that gets that deep in the weeds) which allow math to be done on responsibility in particular. While you may dislike this, I am going to replace "free" and "will" with two other more precise terms. Feel free to utter "free" and "will" when you see them in this conversation, as unless you have a mental block around them, they are functionally the same, assuming you can accept my definitions!
First, we replace 'will':
let ••• be "a list of instructions executing against an interpreter unto a requirement".
I'll still use the term "will", just to be clear. But when I use it:
let 'will' be "shall come to pass".
You might say "well that doesn't seem very much like what I think of when I think of a will: as in 'free will'"
And even so, I bet you don't often think "where A and B are sets, and X is any element of a set, for every X in A AND B, X is in B AND X is in A" when you think =.
For it to make sense, we have to have a definition of free, as this also has a LOT of baggage and I'm on the "math" side, where we check those bags, please:
Let some thing be °°° "When a system shall pass through a given configuration or set of configurations at a given point in time"
This creates an interaction: a °°° ••• is then a set of instructions executed against an interpreter whose requirement shall come to pass.
You might then ask "well, how does °°°, •••, and °°° ••• make any use at all? How Can I use these?"
To understand this, we can imagine a scenario: someone (a dwarf, let's say) is in a room, and currently they hold a ••• in their head. That ••• is: open the door, walk down the hall, open another door, enter the hall, find someone there, and hit them (FIGHT!)
It's a list of instructions unto
a requirement (FIGHT!).
We might ask "is this ••• °°°: shall it come to pass that this dwarf actually fight someone?"
In the scenario, the answer is "no, the door is locked". Therefore "they lack the °°° in their ••• to fight, even if they have the ••• to do so."
So, then, something happens. As a result of this, the dwarf has some event happen in them. The failed ••• to fight gets replaced by a process which, frankly, is not important in the moment. In their new state they have a new requirement: Throw Tantrum, and a new ••• happens. We will call this •••(*).
This •••(*) is: "find all apparently accessible places. For each that contains a thing that can be thrown, broken, etc., add it to a list. Select an object from list. Assemble •••(A): Find path to [object], select destructive act, perform destructive act on [object]"
Note that this terminates in something whose requirement cannot easily fail. This means that •••(*) is necessarily °°°.
Now I can say "the dwarf has a •••(A) held by °°° •••(*)"
This is what is commonly understood when someone asks "does he have free will to act?", As really they are not going to be immediately concerned with whether •••(A) is °°°, though that may be contextually understood in some cases. Mostly, they are asking whether •••(*) was °°°.
There are some situations where •••(*) comes from outside rather than inside. That unspecified even that shoved •••(*) in place? Sometimes it's a gun in someone's face. At that point •••(*) is "do what the guy with the gun says" or simply "live", which subordinates the •••(A) to something not held by °°° ••• but rather imposed •••.
In some ways the •••(*) absent the gun is imposed in it's existence but not in it's operation. There is no "fetch other person's will", no abstraction to external influence at that point. So while it was not within their ••• to be needing to throw a tantrum, and so TANTRUM is not a °°° ••• held by requirements internal to the system... But which tantrum they throw is!
