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Modern version of free will has degenerated into question of deterministic vs randomness and few other more vague branches. I don't think that is accurate, I t

Modern version of free will has degenerated into question of deterministic vs randomness and few other more vague branches. I don't think that is accurate, I think the more important aspect is [still] the definition of free will. It was rather surprising to me that at least some and maybe most people mean something entirely different when they use the term free will then what I thought free will should obviously mean. I always thought it should obviously mean that in given situation one has several possible actions and one can make a free choice among them but it turns out that is not what some or even most people mean or are interested in when talking about free will.

nabla9 8y ago
In any case the classical definition of free will has been solved. The question of free will in voluntary action implicitly was important in the context of soul and dualism. Any action that originated "inside self" could be done at least in principle without outside influence, "the will does not have to be such as it is". There was at least possibility of fundamental free will. If there is no fundamental system boundary, the question of free will is defining less fundamental boundaries and the question loses its status as fundamentally important question. Generating new definitions for free will can of course continue.
- danbruc 8y ago
  In any case the classical definition of free will has been solved. What is the classical definition and how has it been solved, in case it is not obvious from the definition? Or, in case it takes to much text to answer that, who proposed the classical definition or who wrote a good book on it? I did not put a huge amount of effort into this topic but at least quite a bit, but I am still puzzled what a common, the most common, or a classical understanding of free will is.
  - nabla9 8y ago
    The Aristotle's definition and others like it. For Aristotle there was three causes for things: chance, necessity, chance, a third thing (the agent-causality) or "up to us". In the Nicomachean Ethics virtue and vice are "up to us". We have desires and we deliberate and make voluntary choice. What is left unsaid because it was self evident at the time was that there was something called soul or person separate from the environment. In the modern sense "up to us" is not same level ultimate origination concept as change and necessity.
state_less 8y ago
It seems a question of whether, given that you made a decision y[c] and the prior state of the world is x, how much of y[c] could we have determined just knowing state x.
- danbruc 8y ago
  That is what I thought, free will means that, when I face a decision, my choice is neither determined by the current state of the universe - me and my entire environment - nor is my choice independent of the current state of the universe, i.e. it is not purely random. If you rewind the universe to the same decision again and again, I will make different choices in different iterations, i.e. the choices are independent of and therefore not predictable from the state of the universe, but they are also not just random because that would not be free will either. And we can also allow mixtures of both, say for example were the current state of the universe determines a probability distribution and the choice is random but distributed according to that probability distribution. With this interpretation of free will it seems almost obvious that it can not exist, how could a choice neither be depended nor independent of the current state of the universe? I can not even start to imagine such a thing, it seems we would have to have missed something very fundamental about the world, like discovering that two things can not only be the same or not the same but that there is actually a third option. But as it turns out some and probably many people don't think of that when they say free will. They mean something a lot weaker, namely that their choices reflect their desires, that they do what they want, at least to the extend that external constraints allow it. For that definition of free will it is totally fine that your choices are determined by the current state of the universe as long as they align with your desires. I would say it seems quite obvious that humans have this kind of free will, we mostly do what we want as far as allowed by external constraints. I would also say that we generally do not perfectly have this free will, an arachnophobic person, for example, may desire not to be scared by a small spider but may be unable to control their instinctive reaction. So my current point of view is that free will does and doesn't exist, it just depends on what precisely you mean when you say it. I also wanted for quite some time to go over all the common views on free will and see how many of them are really conflicting views, I could well imagine that there are far less real conflicts than it may seem at first glance.

nabla9 8y ago

In any case the classical definition of free will has been solved. The question of free will in voluntary action implicitly was important in the context of soul and dualism. Any action that originated "inside self" could be done at least in principle without outside influence, "the will does not have to be such as it is". There was at least possibility of fundamental free will. If there is no fundamental system boundary, the question of free will is defining less fundamental boundaries and the question loses its status as fundamentally important question. Generating new definitions for free will can of course continue.

danbruc 8y ago
In any case the classical definition of free will has been solved. What is the classical definition and how has it been solved, in case it is not obvious from the definition? Or, in case it takes to much text to answer that, who proposed the classical definition or who wrote a good book on it? I did not put a huge amount of effort into this topic but at least quite a bit, but I am still puzzled what a common, the most common, or a classical understanding of free will is.
- nabla9 8y ago
  The Aristotle's definition and others like it. For Aristotle there was three causes for things: chance, necessity, chance, a third thing (the agent-causality) or "up to us". In the Nicomachean Ethics virtue and vice are "up to us". We have desires and we deliberate and make voluntary choice. What is left unsaid because it was self evident at the time was that there was something called soul or person separate from the environment. In the modern sense "up to us" is not same level ultimate origination concept as change and necessity.

state_less 8y ago

It seems a question of whether, given that you made a decision y[c] and the prior state of the world is x, how much of y[c] could we have determined just knowing state x.

danbruc 8y ago
That is what I thought, free will means that, when I face a decision, my choice is neither determined by the current state of the universe - me and my entire environment - nor is my choice independent of the current state of the universe, i.e. it is not purely random. If you rewind the universe to the same decision again and again, I will make different choices in different iterations, i.e. the choices are independent of and therefore not predictable from the state of the universe, but they are also not just random because that would not be free will either. And we can also allow mixtures of both, say for example were the current state of the universe determines a probability distribution and the choice is random but distributed according to that probability distribution. With this interpretation of free will it seems almost obvious that it can not exist, how could a choice neither be depended nor independent of the current state of the universe? I can not even start to imagine such a thing, it seems we would have to have missed something very fundamental about the world, like discovering that two things can not only be the same or not the same but that there is actually a third option. But as it turns out some and probably many people don't think of that when they say free will. They mean something a lot weaker, namely that their choices reflect their desires, that they do what they want, at least to the extend that external constraints allow it. For that definition of free will it is totally fine that your choices are determined by the current state of the universe as long as they align with your desires. I would say it seems quite obvious that humans have this kind of free will, we mostly do what we want as far as allowed by external constraints. I would also say that we generally do not perfectly have this free will, an arachnophobic person, for example, may desire not to be scared by a small spider but may be unable to control their instinctive reaction. So my current point of view is that free will does and doesn't exist, it just depends on what precisely you mean when you say it. I also wanted for quite some time to go over all the common views on free will and see how many of them are really conflicting views, I could well imagine that there are far less real conflicts than it may seem at first glance.