I'm personally a fan of the theological-style "everything is perfectly predestinated, and also you have full free will, and both are true at the same time" arguments.
The question therefore is: is God’s omniscience equivalent to predestination?
Some think yes (no free will. some Protestants and Muslims). Some think not (therefore we are free. Catholics, ppl who reject omniscience.)
Personally I like Tolstoy’s take on the whole thing in WnP, because it betrays how deep his understanding of physics is (he even scratches at chaos theory).
We are the needle. The needle responds to the environment of the record but can't see outside it's little perspective.
God on other hand sees the record from above all at once.
We are a consciousness needle scratching a path through 4D space-time.
And death is when the needle has scratched the record so much that it has become worn flat, producing just silence. The record is still being played but the effect is all the same.. Until a new record is placed on the player. Do you identify yourself with the record or the needle? ;-)
What’s the definition of “free will”?
Think of God as an observer at the top of the Grand Canyon, looking down into the winding path of the river below. Humans are afloat on the river down in the canyon, unable to see what lies ahead. They can choose how to react to obstacles, for example, yet do no see them coming. God, however, sees our entire path on this metaphorical river laid out for us since birth; each of our individual choices are "perceived"[0] by him simultaneously.
[0]: Note, however, that many theologians would protest anthropomorphizing God in this way. Maimonides, as an example, says that we can speak of God as exhibiting mercy but not being merciful. He simply acts in a way that is analogous to human mercy.
Furthermore, in this metaphor God doesn't just see the river, He created the river, and all the people on it. He laid out its twists and obstacles, with a perfect understanding of how it would affect the humans afloat on it. Moreover, at the moment of creation, He had an unbounded freedom to create the river in any other way He saw fit. If I get smashed on a rock half way down, it's because He chose to create the river in such a way that I would get smashed on it. If He didn't know this, or didn't have a choice, then He is either not all knowing, or not all powerful.
This, for me is the fundamental problem with any theist philosophy that holds that God is both omniscient and the prime mover of creation, but still suggests concepts like free will and morality have any meaning. Not only are "our" decisions predestined, they're a direct result of another being's free will, and the concept of us then being judged on them by that same being is farcical. It's like a puppeteer putting one their puppets on trial.
We have free will to the extent that we can seperate internal and external forces, and to the degree that internal forces play the causal role in any given event. Of course, in reality, this is just an abstraction, and there's no true seperation between internal and external just as there's no real seperation between bodies of water, but the categories are useful, so we use them.
It's actually not. The assumption that determinism precludes moral responsibility has turned out to be false.
When did this happen? I missed that memo.
If you want a review of the failures of every challenge meant to demonstrate how moral responsibility and determinism are incompatible, and that Compatibilism empirically matches our use of moral language and so is what people actually mean by free will, that will take more time.
Compatibilism is a kind of comfortable opinion, because it simply avoids thorny questions regarding logic, and morality. E.g. C-sts belive that a criminal is guilty, when he allegedly acts in accordance with his will, because, as you noted, that's what people mean when they say "free will". However, it still may sound unconvincing when one believes that the criminal's mind contents was predetermined aeons before he was born.
Standards of evidence for HN are lower. Calling something false needs a preponderance of evidence, not a formal proof. Centuries of challenges attempting to show an inconsistency have all failed.
> However, it still may sound unconvincing when one believes that the criminal's mind contents was predetermined aeons before he was born.
Anything can be made to sound unconvincing when it's completely divorced from its context. The point in context, is that bad behaviour felt justified in the moment, and holding a learning agent responsible is the moral feedback needed to correct that error in judgement.
That's exactly where the trouble is. In case of strict logical determinism we correct nothing because everything is predestined. However, choosing limited definitions, and restricting ourselves in comfortable contexts we can certainly avoid discomfort of the thought. Not that I have better idea, but I see clearly why non-compatibilists say "word juggling" towards compatibilists.
A predestined correction is still a correction though. Unless you assume "correction" to have some bizarre and probably incoherent non-deterministic meaning. In context, "correction" means "learning to choosing correctly as opposed to incorrectly", which is precisely what happens in this scenario.
> However, choosing limited definitions, and restricting ourselves in comfortable contexts we can certainly avoid discomfort of the thought.
I dispute this characterization. It's not "limited definitions" and "comfortable contexts" (presumably pejoratively), it's "appropriate definitions" and "relevant contexts".
> but I see clearly why non-compatibilists say "word juggling" towards compatibilists.
I think you'll find that the incompatibilists are just as guilty of this. They've spent centuries arguing for a definition of free will that no one actually holds. Philosophy is sometimes about drawing fine but relevant distinctions, and that's exactly what Compatibilism does: it carves out a fine line behind which we can make sense of holding intelligent learning agents responsible for their choices.
This statement is incorrect, and actually prove the very thing you intended to deny. It's not like adherents of C. held a plebiscite, isn't it? (And if they would, I dare to say they would be in danger of huge disappointment.) They made a choice to call an action free when it's inescapable consequence of a butterfly flapping wings millenia ago on another continent, but not free if it's e.g. equally inescapable consequence of a another human doing something recently, and closely (even if this forcing person is equally inescapably forced by a butterfly wings before). It is not, however, some sort of obvious conclusion, accepted by everybody. It's something C. philosophers prefer to call a common sense, because... well because this way we can make sense of things we do. So it feels much better.
As a side-note, your explanation of 'correction' makes perfect sense if you took the C. pill already, but doesn't make any useful proof of C. One have to accept that the only available variant of future (if we are in a purely determinist universe) still presents a free choice between correct/incorrect. Which is a circular reference to basic presumption of C.
Anyway, thank you for taking time to write the long response!
"There's a divinity that shapes our ends/ Rough hew them how we will."
Hamlet, to Horatio, in Hamlet Act 5 Scene 2.
Personally, I don't see any reason it isn't a figment of the mind. Nobody is debating whether love exists. Our ability to model counterfactuals in our mind doesn't have any broader philosophical implications, so I don't see why free will would, when that may as well be all that it is.
Perhaps such a system could predict our actions and intervene when some poor outcome is predicted and direct us toward more positive outcomes?
This statement itself depends on the logic which are you supposing might be deprecated.