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

by romansh , Wednesday, November 11, 2015, 21:14 (3088 days ago) @ dhw

dhw Your definition of free will as “the ability to act or make choices independently of the environment and the universe” makes free will an impossibility. Your insistence that cause and effect are the only possible approach also makes free will an impossibility. On this level I therefore agree that free will is an impossibility!-Not for those that believe in contra causal free will it isn't.
But if the universe is to large a concept ... I'll take independently of cause.
> -> dhw you apparently do not dispute that our identity is ours alone regardless of the influences (causes and effects)
A bacterium's identity is its ... so what? Each brick in your house has a unique identity. I will accept that fundamental particles might be identical and not have unique identities -> dhw that have helped to form it, but you believe the self to be an illusion, -Yes the "I" that has helped to form it is not as it seems. I am not a self made man thereby alleviating God of an almighty responsibility.-> dhw so presumably your belief somehow invalidates this particular approach;
To me it is irrelevant.-> dhw I agree that you have as much right to insist that cause and effect are the only possible criteria as I have to disagree with you; the two thousand year old debate is not based on a “semantic misunderstanding”, but on different views of what constitutes free will; you presumably consider your definition of free will to be accurate, and so you presumably continue to reject my own: “the ability to make conscious choices within given constraints.” 
When you insist on including coercion in your definition you are confounding free will with freedom of action
http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/freedom_of_action.html-> dhw When we last corresponded on this issue, six weeks ago, I suggested that “whether we think we have what is known as “free will” ....depends on how we define the term”. Since I accept that your definition and your cause-and-effect approach eliminate free will, and since for you the compatibilist approach and my identity approach are rabbit holes that miss the point completely (the point presumably being that nothing is independent of cause and effect, the environment and the universe), I really think this discussion has now run its circular course.-Here is Wiki's criticism of compatabilism ...->> Wiki Critics of compatibilism often focus on the definition(s) of free will: incompatibilists may agree that the compatibilists are showing something to be compatible with determinism, but they think that something ought not to be called "free will." Incompatibilists might accept the "freedom to act" as a necessary criterion for free will, but doubt that it is sufficient. Basically, they demand more of "free will". The incompatibilists believe free will refers to genuine (e.g., absolute, ultimate) alternate possibilities for beliefs, desires or actions, rather than merely counterfactual ones.-And in your requirement conscious choice as a definition. note the consciousness quagmire.-For me ...
Conscious choice is equivalent to confabulation.