Then will is not self caused.Not all causes produce necessary effects. By saying God causes the will, we simply mean that He sustains its existence so that it (the will) exists and acts according to its nature. The nature of the will is that it pursues its ends voluntarily. It is just ontologically dependent on God for its continual existence.
So the mover is God. This means that there is no free will.The will is not a “prime mover”, no…
No, will is self-direct and self-caused. That is true because we decide what and when we want to do things, by first we mean that the will is self-directed and by second we mean that the will is self-caused.Since the will self-directs its motion, there is free will. That is what free will is.
That is half part of the story considering the last comment.There would be no free will if the movement of the will was necessarily directed in all choices, but that’s not the case here. Not all causes produce a necessary effect.
Sure. Please find my response in the following.Are you going to read and respond to the rest of my last post?
This depends on how do you define good and evil. What are your definitions?I should add that the will is directed in its nature to pursuing the good as its end. This does not mean it always chooses a moral good; it only means that the will chooses due to a desire for a certain good in the choice it makes, and that the will’s desires can be subjective and not prioritized properly.
This is discussed in details in the first comment.But back to the point, the will has an ontological dependence on God for its continual operation. The will is free in that it’s decisions are not necessary. The decisions are pursued voluntarily by the person.
I don’t think that we could have a true AI with the ability to self-direct and self-cause its choice.As an imperfect analogy, assume a true AI. It is dependent on electricity for its continued operation. But a truly free AI still operates it’s will according to its nature. It still self-directs its motion despite its dependence on the external electrical current for its continued activity. The AI’s will is caused, but it directs it is responsible for directing it’s motion, and so can in some sense be called ‘self-moved,’ especially when compared with events in which the causes produce a necessary effect. I don’t necessarily believe an AI such as this could have exist, but perhaps it helps to illustrate the point.
Good. We are one step ahead. Lets see where we can go with the following argument:I think your error is in seeing the cause of the will as a series of discrete events, where each time the will moves (you think I’m saying) the movement is prompted by God. That is not what I’m saying. By the will needing a cause, I only mean that the will’s continuing operation requires continual ontological dependence upon God. God is not sitting there nudging the will every time it moves. He’s simply continually sustaining it’s ability to act according to its own nature.
If anything moves the will externally, it is the objects the will is directed towards. I might not will ordering a pastrami sandwich until the object is presented before me (or at least on a menu). I might not will healing from a broken leg until I have a broken leg. But that’s a whole other issue. The will’s operation is based on an intellect and movement according to a principle intrinsic to the will, not external to it. The will is perfectly capable of directing it’s motion when and where it wants to without being the first mover in the chain
(5) does follow. Something which has design has to have parts otherwise design becomes a meaningless term. An act cannot be initiated by a part since otherwise the rest of parts become useless. It is easy to see that this leads to infinite regress since one can say the part which initiate an act should have a design too.5 doesn’t follow. A thing can be designed simply to act according to its nature, which for the will involves freedom of choice. The will is driven by this as an intrinsic principle. It is not necessary for the will to be a simple algorithm with deterministic outputs.