For instance if I decide hit someone and do so that might be considered blameworthy. If someone else decides to pick me up and throw me at that person then that wouldn't be blameworthy of me. Traditionally you'd distinguish between these by invoking free will and I think that's a useful distinction to make.
If you choose to define an action as representing free will only if it is uncaused then first, you've made up a definition entirely at odds with the normal English usages and, second, your definition is useless because it only cuts actions into those actions that exist and those that don't and we already have a perfectly good word for that so the new one is redundant.
> If you choose to define an action as representing free will only if it is uncaused then first, you've made up a definition entirely at odds with the normal English usages
I was trying to be precise, and assumed you agree that something that's part of a causal chain cannot be reasonably be called "free" by any common sense definition. You can't change the past after all, can you? If not then you're a product of circumstance just like everything else in the universe.
Now, if you told a normal person that someone in that circumstance couldn't have done anything except buy the soda they would agree that would mean I didn't have free will but they wouldn't see why. To them the "My decisionness" and "Could have been differentness" are the same thing. But philosophically we have to choose one or the other and it's both more useful, in terms of carving reality at the joints, and in greater accordance with common usage to pick "My decisionness" as what we interpret "free will" to mean.
I'm sorry I'm not directly addressing your point about changing the past, but that's because I'm still rather confused by how it relates to free will. Certainly I'd say that nobody can change the past.
Yes you can call it free since you have defined free to mean acting according to your motivations, just like I predicted in my original comment. But since your behavior is caused by your motivations, and your motivations have it's own causes, and so on, I really don't see what you actually win (except the language game) by describing the process as free. It's about as free as the last cogwheel in a machine.
> I'm sorry I'm not directly addressing your point about changing the past, but that's because I'm still rather confused by how it relates to free will.
Suppose your will is a function of your brain, and suppose that your brain is a function of gene expression and environmental stimuli. Suppose you are unable to choose your genes, and suppose that you are unable to alter the history of environmental stimuli. It follows that the causes of your will are outside your control. If you don't control your will, then your will is not free.
So we've begged the question.
To me, the way this is worded, it lays bare that compatibilism is about the ethics of 'free-will' and not its ontology. It's a completely different discussion and somewhat counterproductive.
If I hold a gun to your head and force you to do something, that isn't your free will, but if you choose to do something without my influence, that is your free will. Whether you actually had the option to make another choice (whether any specific moment in time has multiple different future paths based on some magical internal rational agent) is irrelevant.
You are "simply" along for the ride, but it is still you making your decisions, as opposed to someone or something else.
In that case the concept is detrimental to our justice system. Take away free will and it still makes sense to protect society from dangerous agents, the only thing that changes is the notion of justice being somehow predicated on retribution and punishment instead of rehabilitation and restoration.
> that anything that comes from the brain of a single individual is that individual's free will, by definition.
In that case free will is the effect of your past causal history molding the neuronal structure in your brain, your brain's current chemical composition combined with electrical signal processing. Describe where there is something "free" in that.
> If I hold a gun to your head and force you to do something, that isn't your free will, but if you choose to do something without my influence, that is your free will.
That does not make any sense. It's not like I can choose to ignore my self preservation instinct when I'm on top of a tall building, but suddenly can't ignore it when being threatened by you. You seem to claim that we are influenced by our environment only in some subset of circumstances. How can you tell when that switch is turned on or off?
> Whether you actually had the option to make another choice (whether any specific moment in time has multiple different future paths based on some magical internal rational agent) is irrelevant.
How are you defining free will if the ability to make choices is irrelevant? Also it seems to contradict your previous sentence that I have the ability to make a choice unless you are influencing me.
If you remain unconvinced, try meditating for like 5 minutes. That is, focus on nothing but your breath for as long as possible. You could not avoid having other thoughts pop into your head even if your life depended on it.
Whatever mechanism there is that makes you act on some thoughts but not on others, that mechanism is itself subject to the same mystery as thoughts are. What I mean is, you would have to make the decision to make the decision to act, but not before having made the decision to make that decision, and so on. What we in fact experience is no such regression of decisions, but instead merely the sensation of the thought, possibly followed by the sensation of acting.
That you identify yourself as the voluntary thinker of your thoughts and actor of your actions is a beneficial psychological feature surely, it's the difference between someone suffering from schizophrenia and someone not, but that feeling is necessarily an illusion because of the reasons I have explained.
The question of free will is whether I want to get up from bed, or I have to get up from bed. It doesn't matter how the mind works, it matters whether or not the choice is freely taken or is coerced.
The secret is not avoiding thoughts, but having the same thought (a blank canvas, a black void, your breathing, etc.) for five minutes.
It's constantly being settled - in fact, it has been settled several times in these threads.