Monday, March 9, 2015

Philosophical Free Will

In a previous posts here and here, I discussed free will from a Christian perspective. In that setting, the definition of free will is the first one below.  In this post I will explore the philosophical idea of free will.  Different philosophical definitions are listed below (2-6).


1.) A power of the human will by which a man can apply himself to the things which lead to eternal salvation, or turn away from them (religious free will)
2.) The ability to make decisions free from constraint (completely free to choose anything)
3.) Requires “alternate possibilities”, or the power to “do otherwise” (choose from a subset of options, not as free as 2)
4.) Requires that we are the “ultimate sources” of our free actions, or of our wills.  “Self Determining.” (Choices are internal, not external).
5.) Able to perform an action that was possible to predict by nobody, or nothing, other than the agent itself (either chaotic or not deterministic)
6.) Able to perform an action that does not inevitably follow from all conditions preceding the action (not deterministic).
7.) Ability to make decisions of the sort for which one can have...
a. moral responsibility
b. moral value
c. originality
d. self-governance

The diagram below, shows the standard model of free will options (4 of them), from a philosophical perspective.




I have found that philosophical model to be insufficient as free will and determinism is a false dichotomy, so I decided to come up with my own taxonomy of free will options based on my research. Yes, I know that it does not fit on the screen very well, but I had to make it big enough to be readable. Where do you fit? Do I have it all covered or did I miss something? Am I misrepresenting anything?




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