A Sense of Free Will: the consciousness quagmire (Introduction)

by romansh , Thursday, September 17, 2015, 22:59 (3138 days ago) @ dhw
edited by romansh, Thursday, September 17, 2015, 23:15

If cause and effect are true then as you state:
> dhw .. the consequences are that we do not have conscious control of our decisions ... -then you go on:
>... when I am conscious of a choice, the way in which I consciously make it ...
So when we are supposedly conscious of a choice/decision it is a historical artifact of the forming events. 
> is still uniquely mine and nobody else's, and the thoughts that accompany the process are uniquely mine and nobody else's,
so what? This is not an issue.-> regardless of the influences that have made me what I am. (This fits in with the compatibilist interpretation of freedom as ‘not coerced',
if you have understood my previous posts, coercion is really irrelevant to the discussion.-> or 'not against my will'.) 
No one is arguing whether we have wills or not. The debate is on how they are formed.-
> Therefore on this level, I do have conscious control of my decisions. 
This I find to be an oxymoron given your first statement I quoted of yours, assuming you do really do accept cause and effect.->This level can also encompass libertarianism, because although I cannot break the chain of cause and effect, nevertheless my “wilful” decisions themselves may create a new causal chain (= origination) which could have been different had I not made the conscious choice I did make.
I don't think this is libertarianism as such. Not based on the copious amount of reading I have done on the subject. Ultimately it is a denial of cause and effect. It also goes by the contra causal free will and causa sui. A classical libertarian argument is that is it is god given, this recognizes the issue with cause and effect. James (a libertarian of "a quagmire of evasion" fame) argued for indeterminism understanding that compatibilism as a problem.-> And so I can only repeat that for me the answer lies in the level at which you approach the subject of free will - which perhaps boils down to answering the question “free from what?”. 
It is free from what? If my will is free from the vegetables growing in my vegetable patch, does that make my will free? -> In your uniquely Romanshic way, you have (freely or not freely) chosen the first level. In my uniquely dhw way, I (freely or not freely) accept both, as they both make equally good sense to me.
Actually it is not particularly unique. Freedom is a semantic game. If cause and effect are true then then any compatibilist definition is a semantic shell game, that you frequently accuse me off.-This may help
http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/Chapters/2013freewill.htm-I agree we can define things into and out of existence. Nevertheless if the underlying premises [cause and effect] are true, then there are problems for any compatibilist definition. But if a two millennia year old approach to what is and is not free will does not satisfy then I don't see any benefit in "defending" it; it is unnecessary. You may or may not agree with my definition, that is irrelevant. If you understand my definition, agree with the premises and agree there is no free will within this this structure, it behooves us do understand the consequences.