Australian Atheists Forum

Is free will logical?

Theisticproatheist wrote: ↑Mon Jun 10, 2024 12:42 pm Is free will logical?

Let's start with "Is it even there?".

You would have to define it first.. i.e. What do YOU mean when you say "free will"?

That is kind of my problem with compatibilism, they (re)define free will in a way so that it can be real alongside determinism (i.e. compatible), but it is not what is generally meant by "free will" historically or by many of people today (that are for and against it).

joele wrote: ↑Tue Jun 11, 2024 4:20 pm You would have to define it first.. i.e. What do YOU mean when you say "free will"?

That is kind of my problem with compatibilism, they (re)define free will in a way so that it can be real alongside determinism (i.e. compatible), but it is not what is generally meant by "free will" historically or by many of people today (that are for and against it).

I just read (in the wiki entry on compatabilism ):

As Steven Weinberg puts it: "I would say that free will is nothing but our conscious experience of deciding what to do

If free will is an "experience", or perhaps a feeling, maybe it's more akin to concepts like love, where we are quite comfortable with thinking about it in terms of a poetic or beautiful concept as we experience it subjectively, while also examining the physiological traits, like the state of the brain and the endocrine system, or the evolutionary benefits arising from it and the genes associated with it.