Nonsense. Free will is not presupposed in practice. First of all, your definition of "free will" is not satisfactory, as it is not clear what you mean. (In one sense of what you stated, it is clearly false that there is an ability to do otherwise, as whatever one does, one does that and nothing else, and cannot have done what one has not done, as then one would have done that and not something else. It is self-contradictory to say that one has done what one has not done, or that one will do what one will not do. Presumably, though, you mean something else by "the ability to do or to have done otherwise", but you have not explained your meaning at all.) And second, there are people who do not believe in free will, and there are those who do not think about the question of whether there is free will or not. One does not need metaphysical speculation to live one's life at all.

TBH, what is the point of having free will when in the end, you're still going to have choices, but there will only be one choice you can make, there are alternate situations within alternate solutions, but you will only have one choice, and one fate - which is death.

Even such a hard line free will denier as Wegner admits that, not only is it impossible for him to function without the assumption of free will, but also he must undergo "the illusion" in order to perform the very acts for which he claims that it's unnecessary. All healthy human adults assume that if they visit an unfamiliar location, and they want to piss, they can find out where the toilet is and if it's vacant, they can piss and if it's occupied, they can refrain from pissing. In other words, they assume that they can make and enact a conscious choice between realisable alternatives, and that is demonstrating free will.

so the ability to do otherwise is easy enough to prove, isnt it? you know you would choose to have something for dinner that you like, so you can choose to have something you hate instead.

the thing about having a cause doesnt matter-because if our own thinking is the cause of what we do or what we choose, then that is free will, isnt it? unless our thinking is programmed somehow ... and how would we know that?

so the ability to do otherwise is easy enough to prove, isnt it? you know you would choose to have something for dinner that you like, so you can choose to have something you hate instead.

the thing about having a cause doesnt matter-because if our own thinking is the cause of what we do or what we choose, then that is free will, isnt it? unless our thinking is programmed somehow ... and how would we know that?

Even such a hard line free will denier as Wegner admits that, not only is it impossible for him to function without the assumption of free will, but also he must undergo "the illusion" in order to perform the very acts for which he claims that it's unnecessary. All healthy human adults assume that if they visit an unfamiliar location, and they want to piss, they can find out where the toilet is and if it's vacant, they can piss and if it's occupied, they can refrain from pissing. In other words, they assume that they can make and enact a conscious choice between realisable alternatives, and that is demonstrating free will.

If that is all that you mean by "free will", it is not incompatible with determinism.

I have yet to come across a coherent defense of libertarian free will, which I define as "the ability to have done otherwise." Basically, I can conceive of only three possible ultimate sources of one's actions: (1) that with which one is born, (2) one's environment (from one's birth to the time of the action), and (3) randomness (which may arise in the context of quantum indeterminacies). None of these three sources enables libertarian free will.

Is there anyone out there who can provide a sound argument in favor of the existence of libertarian free will?

I feel that this is an important issue because without libertarian free will, the concept of moral responsibility is rendered incoherent.

Thank you for your time.

None of which implies determinism, in fact you're listing requirements for free will, ie that there be an agent with a means of choosing. Further, this stuff can be circumvented by using a pair of dice to select from the menu.

---------- Post added 04-26-2010 at 05:52 PM ----------

1) should I take that as acknowledgement that you accept that all healthy human adults unavoidably assume and act on the assumption that they have free will?
2) it is incompatible with determinism because in a determined world the state of the world at all times is a fact at all times, in short, in a determined world there are no realisable alternatives. So, it is the case that all healthy human adults unavoidably assume that they have incompatibilist free will.

None of which implies determinism, in fact you're listing requirements for free will, ie that there be an agent with a means of choosing. Further, this stuff can be circumvented by using a pair of dice to select from the menu.

1) should I take that as acknowledgement that you accept that all healthy human adults unavoidably assume and act on the assumption that they have free will?

2) it is incompatible with determinism because in a determined world the state of the world at all times is a fact at all times, in short, in a determined world there are no realisable alternatives. So, it is the case that all healthy human adults unavoidably assume that they have incompatibilist free will.

they may not, in fact, be able to do otherwise, if they cannot want to do otherwise.

Of course they can. This can be proved, to anyone who accepts that radioactive decay isn't determined, by acting according to whether or not a decay event occurs. It can be proved, to be the case with an infinitely great probability, by acting according to the result of a tossed coin.
Do you think I haven't been faced with these kind of objections before, literally hundreds of times, at the other site?

In any case, regardless of your theorising, it remains the case that all healthy human adults unavoidably assume that they do have realisable alternatives, whether you deny this or not.

And, of course, no one can prove that they could have done other than what they have done, given all of the circumstances that obtained.

Pyrrho;156839 wrote:

And, of course, no one can prove that they could have done other than what they have done, given all of the circumstances that obtained.

I think that only someone who was in the throes of philosophizing would make that statement. I wonder what you would require as proof that I could not have asked for chocolate rather than vanilla ice-cream at the ice-cream show the other day if what we would ordinarily accept as evidence would not do the trick, as obviously it would not, since if you thought it would, you would not have made that statement the first place. You seem to be requiring absolute certainty for I am sure that you don't think that in the normal run of things there would be any good reason to think that I could not have asked for chocolate when, in fact, I asked for vanilla.

I think you are misunderstanding my remark. First of all, not being able to prove something does not entail that its opposite is true.

You could have asked for chocolate ice cream the other day if you had wanted to. No one (so far) is denying that. But the question is, could you have wanted to ask for chocolate, given all of the circumstances that obtained the other day?

I think you are misunderstanding my remark. First of all, not being able to prove something does not entail that its opposite is true.

You could have asked for chocolate ice cream the other day if you had wanted to. No one (so far) is denying that. But the question is, could you have wanted to ask for chocolate, given all of the circumstances that obtained the other day? One problem, of course, is that we do not know all of the relevant circumstances for why you wanted what you wanted. So, we may say, as far as we know, you could have picked chocolate instead of vanilla, as we do not in fact know why you wanted vanilla on that occasion. But since we do not know very far on this, we do not know that your desire for vanilla was not determined by the circumstances that obtained the other day. And if your desire for vanilla was determined by those circumstances, then given those circumstances, you could not have wanted chocolate. But, perhaps, what one wants is uncaused, and then it may be that things could really have been otherwise, given all of the circumstances that obtained the other day. But no one seems to believe that desires are uncaused, do they? But that is taking us in another direction that is unimportant for my present purposes. Until we can answer the question fully, why you wanted vanilla, we cannot know what, if anything, would have to change in the circumstances the other day for you to have wanted chocolate. If your desire for vanilla was caused by the circumstances that obtained, then, given those circumstances, you could not have wanted chocolate, as those circumstances caused your desire for vanilla. If they did not cause your desire for vanilla, then they would not have to change in order for you to have desired chocolate, though it would then be wondered, what caused the change in desire? Or are desires uncaused?

I did not think that not being able to prove something entailed its opposite is true. To believe that is fallacious. It is a variant of the fallacy of the argument from ignorance.

If you mean to ask whether I could have done otherwise in precisely the same circumstances that I did what I did, then the answer is that I could only if determinism is false. However, there is no reason to think that anyone who, in ordinary circumstances (I mean when not philosophizing) claims that he could have done otherwise would be making such a claim. As Dennett says, that would not be the kind of free will worth having.

I did not think that not being able to prove something entailed its opposite is true. To believe that is fallacious. It is a variant of the fallacy of the argument from ignorance.

If you mean to ask whether I could have done otherwise in precisely the same circumstances that I did what I did, then the answer is that I could only if determinism is false.

However, there is no reason to think that anyone who, in ordinary circumstances (I mean when not philosophizing) claims that he could have done otherwise would be making such a claim. As Dennett says, that would not be the kind of free will worth having.

Yes.





I think that you are forgetting the title of this thread, and are not reading the posts in it closely enough. The "pro-free will" camp in this thread is claiming that an incompatibilist version of free will is necessary for morality, and is presupposed by all normal adults in making decisions. See posts 1, 47 and 48 (though the ideas that are pointedly expressed in 47 and 48 are also expressed earlier in the thread). Those are the claims that I think are false, and the people who have claimed them should provide evidence for them, as well as a coherent explanation of what they mean by "libertarian free will", as so far, the things that look like definitions are either incomplete and unclear or are not such that they are incompatible with determinism.