Free Will (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by romansh , Monday, September 06, 2010, 03:13 (5191 days ago) @ dhw

I am dissatisfied with Romansh's definition of free will as "the ability to act or to make choices independently of the environment or of the universe", because it excludes the internal influences over which we have no control.
Hey I object - where exactly in the definition does it exclude my or my excludes the influences? Which part of my my internals are not part of the universe? --- :joke: sort of. -> My point is the possibility that internal factors (whether present or absent) may determine whether or not it has free will.
Agreed - they may compromise whatever free will we think we have.-> As far as humans are concerned, I argued that if the environment and the universe might make our decisions dependent, why not also the given, uncontrollable elements of human beings too? You do not know what I mean by uncontrollable. I mean any part of us that directs our behaviour without our being conscious of it or able to change it ... e.g. certain physical / mental disorders, our brain cells, our whole genetic make-up. I think it is perfectly possible that such factors limit our freedom of will, but you have discounted them in your definition.-By uncontrollable you seem to include our unconscious which controls much of our behaviour. And by controllable you appear to mean the behaviours we think we are aware of? Again I'm not sure how the definition I have chosen limits these possibilities. It certainly does not specify any particular entity for inclusion or exclusion.
 
> You don't seem to have too many objections, though, to my own definition (which, of course, does encompass internal constraints). The extra imponderable of consciousness, which I defined earlier, seems to me to be integral to the concept, but I agree that "one's" is too anthropic. How about: "an entity's conscious ability to make decisions independently of constraints beyond the control of that entity." 
OK just to be clear, say I were to lock up this said entity in a box, it would not change the entity's free will (or lack of it) one iota. It would limit it freedom of action. that's all. If that is what you meant by constraints?-If by constraints you meant genetics, evolution, chemistry and physics - then fair enough. -My only objection would remain the inclusion of conscious. Here's a quote from Steven Pinker from How the Mind Works:
>>> The philosopher Georges Rey once told me that he has no sentient experiences. He lost them after a bicycle accident when he was fifteen. Since then, he insists, he has been a zombie. I assume he is speaking tongue-in-cheek, but of course I have no way of knowing, and that is his point.
 
> (Sorry, but I can't discuss these things with you unless I think I'm me and I think you're you). So hey ho, I remain in rational limbo, but am happy to carry on feeling I have all these attributes. 
Strange, not knowing something has never stopped me talking about it. -> You finish: "as an agnostic I try to avoid beliefs ... fail miserably of course." Great line. 
Thanks :)-> But your various references to our "anthropic" discussion suggest that you're trying to avoid being confined to your humanity.
Should our definitions be in our image?-> If you could really identify yourself with a brick or an amoeba or a duck-billed platypus, if you really knew the answers to all our questions, or if you really went through life not believing in anything, you'd probably be literally out of your mind. I wouldn't regard it as "miserable failure" that you're not.-Again I'm lucky I can dissociate my reasoning from my pragmatic existence. The two do not have to correlate. No I can't pragmatically identify myself with a brick. But with some really good anthropomorphization, I can identify with my fellow kind (wives are a bit more difficult) and probably most importantly, pragmatically speaking, I can identify with myself.