Free Will: Egnor shows neurological proof (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, November 10, 2020, 11:34 (1262 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTES: "There are three lines of evidence supporting the reality of free will: Neuroscience, physics and philosophy all point to the fact that free will is real. In this post, I’ll discuss the neuroscience. But first, we must start by understanding what free will is. Erroneous definition of free will is at the root of many mistakes inherent in denying it.
My will—my rational appetite—is an immaterial power of my mind. My will can be influenced by my passions but it is inherently free of material determinism of any kind. For example, my decision whether or not to eat that piece of cake is the result of the struggle between my material passions and my immaterial will—between my sensitive and my rational appetite.

"Now that we have a satisfactory definition of will, what do we mean by free will? Philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas gave the best answer: My free will is inclination based on abstract reasoning that arises wholly from me. Nothing other than me determines my will. I determine my will and my will is an immaterial power of my soul. In this specific sense, I have free will.

What we call our will cannot exist without consciousness, and nobody knows the origin of consciousness. Simply stating that it is immaterial does not prove that it is not the PRODUCT of materials, and it certainly doesn’t prove that there is such a thing as the soul. Although in a “specific sense” I can agree with Aquinas’s reasoning (see later), the neuroscience proves absolutely nothing. The case against free will is not confined to materialism versus dualism, but encompasses all the influences that shape our decisions and over which we have no control: to what extent are our reactions to choice determined by our genes, our upbringing, our chemical composition, diseases, accidents, experiences etc.? We may feel that our decisions are our own, because the influences are subconscious, but that feeling is hardly a reason for saying that our decisions are “free”, and it ignores the chain of cause and effect, which led Romansh to define free will out of existence, along the lines of the ability to take decisions independently of the universe. (I can’t remember his exact words.)
During those discussions, I defined free will as “an entity's conscious ability to control its decision-making process within given constraints”, the latter comprising constraints “imposed by the environment and our own limitations”. (e.g. our free will cannot enable us to walk out of prison, or flap our arms and fly). If we lay emphasis on all the influences known and unknown that shape our decisions, then I would say it is very difficult to defend the concept of free will, but if we follow Aquinas’s reasoning – regardless of materialism versus dualism – we can say that all the influences, including those that are material, are what constitute our singular identity, and so it is the unique “I” and nobody else who takes the decisions. The problem of defining "free will" is not the word "will" but the question of free from what?