I feel like a lot of the angst about free will boils down to conflicting intuitions.
It seems like we live in a universe of cause and effect, thus all my actions/choices are caused by past events.
It feels like I get to actually make choices, so 1. obviously can’t be right.
The way to reconcile these intuitions is to recognize that yes, all the decisions you make are in a sense predetermined, but a lot of what is determining those decisions is who you are and what sort of thing you would do in a particular circumstance. You are making decisions, that experience is not invalidated by a fully deterministic universe. It’s just that you are who you are and you’ll make the decision that you would make.
I think this comment doesn’t add much value beyond saying that compatibilism is the right position to have re: free will. The point of the post is to propose a test in which libertarian free will actually makes a concrete prediction that’s different from e.g. compatibilism.
I feel like a lot of the angst about free will boils down to conflicting intuitions.
It seems like we live in a universe of cause and effect, thus all my actions/choices are caused by past events.
It feels like I get to actually make choices, so 1. obviously can’t be right.
The way to reconcile these intuitions is to recognize that yes, all the decisions you make are in a sense predetermined, but a lot of what is determining those decisions is who you are and what sort of thing you would do in a particular circumstance. You are making decisions, that experience is not invalidated by a fully deterministic universe. It’s just that you are who you are and you’ll make the decision that you would make.
I think this comment doesn’t add much value beyond saying that compatibilism is the right position to have re: free will. The point of the post is to propose a test in which libertarian free will actually makes a concrete prediction that’s different from e.g. compatibilism.