Yes, I do have another reason. I am arguing that your decision, although voluntary, was caused by your brain state at that moment. Given that brain state, you could not have done otherwise. You were not compelled to go to the restaurant against your will, but you were physically caused (or compelled) to want to go. The physical state of your brain was a sufficient reason for your decision.

If I were to bend my legs and jump, would I not be jumping because my legs were bent? In other words, it appears as though you believe that because my brain is operating in a certain manner when I make a choice, I am not making a choice. That seems incredibly odd to me. Of course it's going to be operating in a certain manner - do you believe you can make choice without your brain? What would me making a choice without any brain activity look like?

I propose that if we were speaking of any other creature capable of rational choice, we would not run into the problem this discussion has: Mystifying the ability to make choice. Throughout the hundreds of lab tests with rats, where we document their ability to choose which path to go down, we never see someone asking: "Well, are you sure the rats are actually making a choice?! Are you sure it's not just their brain state?!".

So, I ask you: What do you think making a choice is? What would have to occur for us to be actually making a choice?

He may think that only choices made of my own free will are "real" choices. And since he believes that all choices are caused, and all causes compel, and what is compelled is not something I do of my own free will, he concludes that no choices are "real" choices. The false premise there is that all causes compel.

I think you are right. The problem is the belief that all causes compel.

I think it is a mystifying of what making a choice is. It is not simply an acting on a thought process, to him. It is something which can only be attained with no boundaries, not hinderences, no causes. He believes that if the firing of my neurons are what cause my choice, that I am now not making a choice - as you note, he believes the cause compels me. But of course there has to be a cause to my choice. And this is why I ask what would a choice look like without any cause, without any brain activity? Well, it wouldn't be a choice at all, would it?

The funny thing on this is that you people are defending the de arranged idea that 2+2 might have a different quotient than 4, or worse, several outcomes...

We act based on a "Gravitational" order of need...

The funny thing on this is that you people are defending the de arranged idea that 2+2 might have a different quotient than 4, or worse, several outcomes...

Best Regards>FILIPE DE ALBUQUERQUE

Wait, what group of people do you believe are defending that? I don't quite understand who your post is directed to. And don't you mean sum of 4? A quotient is the result of division, not addition.

No one said there was no cause.

Kennethamy and Zetherin - You have made various statements in reply to my posts, but I am having difficulty in putting them all together to form a coherent picture. It is like a jigsaw puzzle with ill-fitting and/or missing pieces. I am not even quite sure whether you are fully in agreement with each other. So let me ask some specific questions:

1. Please re-read the OP. Do you accept prothero's distinction between (strong) determinism and (weak) causality? The former excludes chaos theory and quantum mechanics (and is therefore presumably false), while the latter includes them. Note that this is a different matter from the distinction between "hard" and "soft" determinism. As prothero pointed out in post #5, the OP did not concern the question of free will.

2. Do physical laws (plus indeterminacies if applicable) entirely explain our choices and actions?

3. I am puzzled by your claim that not all causes compel. By this you seem to mean that the cause (or joint causes) of a human choice were not sufficient to make that choice inevitable. Is that what you are saying? If so, it seems to violate the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

4. Regarding kennethamy's restaurant example, I ask again: Why did you agree to your friend's suggestion? What was the cause of your acceptance? (Never mind whether causes compel.)

5. If "hard" determinism is as absurd as you seem to think, how do you account for the fact that it is a serious philosophical position?

I think it is a mystifying of what making a choice is. It is not simply an acting on a thought process, to him. It is something which can only be attained with no boundaries, not hinderences, no causes. He believes that if the firing of my neurons are what cause my choice, that I am now not making a choice - as you note, he believes the cause compels me. But of course there has to be a cause to my choice. And this is why I ask what would a choice look like without any cause, without any brain activity? Well, it wouldn't be a choice at all, would it?

If you are arguing that:

(a) the experience of making a choice is an epiphenomenon of mechanical processes going on in your brain; and

(b) those processes are entirely caused by physical laws acting on the antecedent conditions (allowing for any indeterminacy required by chaos theory and quantum theory),

then, if you want to refer to the feeling of being free to choose as "free will", I have no dispute. But I think many people's idea of free will is of something metaphysical or purely mental, and not reducible to physical (mechanical) processes.

Well, it appears as though we have no dispute, then.

I cannot imagine a metaphysical free will, as I have no idea what that means. I believe that, without my brain, I would not be able to make choices. And, I believe the phenomenon which is my consciousness is a result of activity in my brain, whatever that activity may be. And, I do not think I would be conscious if I did not have a brain, and I do not think that I would be able to make choices without being conscious. So, my choice-making ability has to be reducible to something physical, even if to truly understand it we must reach for further understanding in quantum mechanics.

What would having metaphysical free will mean? As in, I, supernaturally, make choices? Does this have something to do with a notion of God?

"Politics"..."Diplomacy"...Conciliating the common sense thinking with some big important and so it seams also inaccessible questions...remember the book ?
- "BULLSHIT" !
(no offence meant, as I regard you, to the average, as a fairly superior intellect)

I am utterly overwhelmed. I don't understand your first paragraph. What is wrong with commonsense? Maybe questions are inaccessible because of the lack of commonsense. There used to be a television show called, "I Love a Mystery". You would have just adored it! God forbid that we should actually try to give sensible answers to philosophical questions! It would offend the gods of obscurity.

Now, where the traditional and discardable idea of free will as a kind of mysterious cause of action, or the denial that the action was caused, meets my description of what is ordinarily meant by "free will" as a denial of compulsion, is when somebody insists that all causation is compulsion. And it is that belief that has to be addressed if the compatibilist view of free will (that free action is consistent with caused action) is to be argued for.