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Not OP, but later in their comment they say: > [...] declining dessert because I’m trying to lose weight. Which is the sort of banal decision that “free will”
by ratrocket 4y ago
Not OP, but later in their comment they say:
> [...] declining dessert because I’m trying to lose weight. Which is the sort of banal decision that “free will” has historically referred to.
So, they shared that "free will" really means things like ... declining dessert.
- bheadmaster 4y agoIn that case, by "free will" they mean "the feeling of free will". In which case it's completely besides the point, since the original argument is about how can free will arise from deterministic/random universe. If the rebuttal is "well I feel like I have free will" there is nothing anyone can do to refute that, since the feeling is real, to them. But that doesn't mean free will itself is real. He's not really choosing to decline dessert just for the sake of it - he has a motivation behind it: losing weight. Now, one could say "well I could decline dessert just for the sake of it" to prove a point, but then "proving a point" would be the motivation for declining dessert. There's just no way out. Free will is a fundamentally ill-defined concept, just like consciousness. We all "feel" it, but nobody can put it into words precisely enough to enable any kind of rigorous discussion.