How is "free will" defined?

[Trurl]

There are at least two different definitions.

One is that the freedom of “will, wish, desire, etc…” is sufficient, even if that “will” cannot be put to practice. As long as the person’s mind is not termpered with (no brainwashing happens), the person has “free will”.

The other one connects the “freedom of will” to the ability of carrying out that will. Sometimes its is called the “freedom of action”. According to this view, without the freedom of action, the freedom of will is irrelevant.

What is your opinion, and why?

 

[Sair]

I think there are a couple of definitions of free will - one is as you say, that a person’s mind is basically under internal control, unswayed by any brainwashing or state of altered consciousness. This appears to be the basic definition that applies in a legal and practical sense - that if a person was not coerced in any way and was aware of what they were doing (so, not intoxicated or asleep, for example), then they are responsible for their actions in given circumstances. This definition would appear to involve freedom of action as well as freedom of thought.

But the other, getting into more philosophical territory, concerns the actual nature of mind and consciousness. This is, I believe, generally referred to as ‘libertarian’ free will, and involves the insistence that in order for free will to really exist, it must be independent of determinism of any kind - to the point that, in any given circumstance, a truly free person would be able to make any decision; in other words, this person, given exactly the same circumstances, could have done differently had they so chosen.

From what I’ve read, I don’t think there are many people who really believe the second form of free will actually exists - there’s always a consideration of circumstances, but the point at issue seems to be the extent to which a person’s actions are determined by prior circumstances. Most people seem willing to concede that under particular circumstances, people’s choices are limited, but they are likewise unwilling to believe that choices and subsequent actions are determined down to the last detail by present states of affairs. The latter is what is claimed to be the logical outcome of physical determinism.

I think I am prepared to consider the likelihood that our choices are all determined by prior events as they occur in our brains (and as our brains respond to external events). However, I don’t think these events are fixed in the way they would be fixed if, for example, they were planned, or able to be known (that is, apprehended with certainty, not merely predicted) beforehand. Everything that happens to us and within us affects the eventual outcome, so it’s seldom possible to predict perfectly what a person will do in particular circumstances. This may be simply a reflection of our lack of knowledge of all the circumstances involved in the making of a particular decision, though.

I also don’t think the seat of the self is somewhere beyond the manifestation of consciousness by the physical events of the brain. I don’t see how it could be. It seems, though, that if our actions are determined by physical events, this overturns the possibility of libertarian free will, but not freedom of choice and action - and the attachment of personal responsibility - in the practical, legal sense I mentioned above.

 

[Trurl]

You are correct in the sense that our decisions never happen in a vacuum. They are always constrained by our previous experiences, our goals, preferences. They are also constrained by our abilities, our physical environment. Our decisions are heavily influended by our upbringing. But they are not “determined” by them.

In this thread I am more interested in the question of: “is the ability to carry out one’s will an integral part of having free will, or not?”.

There is a good reason for the limited scope. I remember that a long time ago I asked someone, why does God allow the free will of a strong bully to conquer the free will of the weak girl? The bully wishes to rape the girl, the girl wishes to escape this act. To my utter astonishment, the answer was that the girl’s “free will” is intact, only her ability to put her will into practice was taken away. I could hardly believed my eyes to see such a callous, ridiculous answer. (As a matter of fact, I expressed my view in no uncertain terms and received a warning for it…)

To have “free will”, the following criteria must be met:

1. The locus of decision must be with the agent.
2. There must be at least two ways that allows the agent carry out his wish.

What the internal workings of the mind are is of no relevance. As long as there is no external determination, or irresistable pressure, the decision is free.

 

[tonyrey]

I think there are a couple of definitions of free will - one is as you say, that a person’s mind is basically under internal control, unswayed by any brainwashing or state of altered consciousness. This appears to be the basic definition that applies in a legal and practical sense - that if a person was not coerced in any way and was aware of what they were doing (so, not intoxicated or asleep, for example), then they are responsible for their actions in given circumstances. This definition would appear to involve freedom of action as well as freedom of thought.

But the other, getting into more philosophical territory, concerns the actual nature of mind and consciousness. This is, I believe, generally referred to as ‘libertarian’ free will, and involves the insistence that in order for free will to really exist, it must be independent of determinism of any kind - to the point that, in any given circumstance, a truly free person would be able to make any decision; in other words, this person, given exactly the same circumstances, could have done differently had they so chosen.

From what I’ve read, I don’t think there are many people who really believe the second form of free will actually exists - there’s always a consideration of circumstances, but the point at issue seems to be the extent to which a person’s actions are determined by prior circumstances. Most people seem willing to concede that under particular circumstances, people’s choices are limited, but they are likewise unwilling to believe that choices and subsequent actions are determined down to the last detail by present states of affairs. The latter is what is claimed to be the logical outcome of physical determinism.

I think I am prepared to consider the likelihood that our choices are all determined by prior events as they occur in our brains (and as our brains respond to external events). However, I don’t think these events are fixed in the way they would be fixed if, for example, they were planned, or able to be known (that is, apprehended with certainty, not merely predicted) beforehand. Everything that happens to us and within us affects the eventual outcome, so it’s seldom possible to predict perfectly what a person will do in particular circumstances. This may be simply a reflection of our lack of knowledge of all the circumstances involved in the making of a particular decision, though.

I also don’t think the seat of the self is somewhere beyond the manifestation of consciousness by the physical events of the brain. I don’t see how it could be. It seems, though, that if our actions are determined by physical events, this overturns the possibility of libertarian free will, but not freedom of choice and action - and the attachment of personal responsibility - in the practical, legal sense I mentioned above.

How are freedom of choice and action consistent with choices and actions determined by physical events?

 

[Iron_Donkey]

I said freedom of action is necessary, but only to avoid the idea that the will can exist and be free while the body acts purely according to physical laws. But by freedom of action, I don’t mean necessarily mean the ability to accomplish what you decide to do, so much as the ability (in normal circumstances) to try to accomplish what you decide to do, even if such an attempt has a 0% chance of actually working.

So depending on what exactly you meant, I may have checked the wrong box.

 

[nuntym]

+JMJ+

There are at least two different definitions.

One is that the freedom of “will, wish, desire, etc…” is sufficient, even if that “will” cannot be put to practice. As long as the person’s mind is not termpered with (no brainwashing happens), the person has “free will”.

The other one connects the “freedom of will” to the ability of carrying out that will. Sometimes its is called the “freedom of action”. According to this view, without the freedom of action, the freedom of will is irrelevant.

What is your opinion, and why?

Free will is the person’s ability to change the circumstances of the present moment.

St. Lawrence, while being martyred by being roasted on the spit, told his torturers that he should be flipped over because one side is done already. That is a great witness to one’s free will.

 

[Iron_Donkey]

After reading a couple of your posts, I think I voted wrong according what you meant by your phrases. I do not agree that free will requires the ability to do what is willed in order to be meaningful.

I think will could be said to simply be the ability to make decisions. This does not depend on my ability to carry out the action I decided to do. While you might say that making a decision one cannot carry our is not meaningfully making a decision, I would disagree on two counts: that while a person attempts to carry out the decision, he may cause other effects, and more importantly that even if our will does not or cannot change what physically happens at all, it certainly has moral significance both for us and for others and an interior effect on (at least) us (the likelihood that neither of these would manifest in other ways is, I think, small, but even if they don’t these two things are very significant).

In the unfortunate example of rape you mentioned, it is the fact that will is meaningful even when it cannot be acted on and that a person’s will should be respected particularly when it comes to such things that makes it so bad. It is the fact that the woman willed that the action not occur and yet the rapist caused it to occur anyway that made the action rape. In this sense, even in the horrendous example of rape it is not that the will of the woman is removed, but that the criminal does not respect the will.

It is the very fact the victim’s will still exists in a meaningful way that makes rape a terrible crime. If the person’s will somehow vanished or became less meaningful then you could not say that anything was going on against the person’s will. I don’t know exactly what the person who said the rape victim still had free will said (so I am not ruling out that they said something that was perhaps callous or incorrect, though not saying they did either), but they were correct at least in that point.

Because again, if you say a rape victim does not have free will, then you are implying that they weren’t really raped as such and in fact during the act actually lost some of their humanity rather than were simply treated as less than human by the rapist.

From the other direction - it can be a moral (and at times civil) crime to will something that you are not capable of bringing about. I may decide to kill a person who is always under heavy guard, and later find out (possibly when I get shot trying to get to him) that I am simply not capable of getting to him and carrying out the action. Yet the decision to do so was certainly meaningful and sinful and had an effect on me.

Or the classic example - a certain angel could decide to rebel against God and try to thwart God at every turn, even knowing that he would only be able to exactly those bad things that God permitted him to do, and so in no way could “win” in the sense of bringing about a reality that God would not allow. And yet that angel still made a choice and that choice certainly has meaningful effect. Perhaps not the effect he wanted, but certainly an effect on the angel and many unfortunate effects on the rest of reality as well.

 

[Pitcharan]

There are at least two different definitions.

One is that the freedom of “will, wish, desire, etc…” is sufficient, even if that “will” cannot be put to practice. As long as the person’s mind is not termpered with (no brainwashing happens), the person has “free will”.

The other one connects the “freedom of will” to the ability of carrying out that will. Sometimes its is called the “freedom of action”. According to this view, without the freedom of action, the freedom of will is irrelevant.

What is your opinion, and why?

All tasks are comprised of three basic steps: discern, decide and do. Our spirit discerns accurately and advises our mind, which then decides. Our heart does the mind’s will, i,e., implements the decision. Because of our corruption, the mind wavers and the heart usurps the role of the spirit to advise the mind based on its own sensual craving. As a result, more often than not, the spirit’s counsel is overruled by the hearts whim. Thus our God given “free will” is a slave to our sensual cravings. Allowing the heart to overrule the spirit and manipulate our will, is nothing short of slavery to evil. To preserve our mind’s freedom to will, there is only one way - surrender to God’s will.

Do not possess anything that can hinder you or rob you of freedom. Be resigned to My will and you will suffer no loss. (Imitation o f Christ, Book- III, chapter - 27)

 

[Trurl]

After reading a couple of your posts, I think I voted wrong according what you meant by your phrases. I do not agree that free will requires the ability to do what is willed in order to be meaningful.

Very well. I wonder if you are aware that you just “killed” the so called “free will defense”? If the only thing that matters is to be able to carry out SOME decisions, then God - obviously - could take away the ability of all the criminals to perform their desired actions, while leaving them the ability to choose which pair of socks should they wear? In your definition their “free will” is perfectly fine, after all only a few actions became closed to them, the others are not.

Furthermore, there is a (not very hypothetical) scenario, when a criminal holds the family of a person hostage, and threatens to kill or maim the person’s children if the person does not perfrom some illegal activity (say: killing someone). If that person complies, then (according to your definition) he cannot later claim that he was deprived of his free will (and as such he would be fully culpabe), since he still could choose whether to stab or shoot, or poison or maybe dismember the victim. The whole justice system is based upon the fact that someone is NOT free, if one is under irresistable pressure.

Returning to the rape scenario, the victim always has the “option” to lay back and enjoy her predicament, but somehow I am not willing to concede that she does it out of her free will… As we see; your milage varies. Interesting. But one thing is certain, if someone would argue that God “must” allow all the horrible mayhem to happen, lest he would deprive the poor criminal of his “precious” free will, I hope you will come forward and correct them. Can I count on you? Or, maybe, just maybe, you have second thoughts?

 

[Iron_Donkey]

Very well. I wonder if you are aware that you just “killed” the so called “free will defense”? If the only thing that matters is to be able to carry out SOME decisions, then God - obviously - could take away the ability of all the criminals to perform their desired actions, while leaving them the ability to choose which pair of socks should they wear? In your definition their “free will” is perfectly fine, after all only a few actions became closed to them, the others are not.

No not at all. I didn’t say the ability to act on choices is unimportant, I only said that free will doesn’t vanish when circumstances remove that ability. Free will exists and is meaningful regardless, even if true freedom does not always exist (and even freedom does not require the ability to bring about everything we will to do, but I really don’t want to try to dig any deeper into that). Slaves have free will. They do not have freedom.

The ability to (normally) try to act on decisions part of what makes us human. The will is ordered towards action, but taking an action is a multi-step process. I have to first decide to shoot someone and then actually do it. If someone interrupts me before I can, then while he has interrupted the entire process of taking an action, he has not made my decision less of a decision or destroyed every step in the process. You may break a link in the chain, thus causing the chain to fail entirely, without breaking every link in the chain.

As to the problem of evil - God allows us (normally) to try to act on our wills and even for our wills to interfere with each other. Could He have made the world differently so that all or at least most people who will to do evil are stopped before they commit the action? Probably, but 1) this would not prevent evil entirely because even willing to do evil is evil, 2) this does take away FROM freedom, it just doesn’t make freedom meaningless - I never meant to imply that a state of being where you could make choices and not act on them was true freedom, and 3) even if we know that it would theoretically be possible, you’d have to show that it would certainly be better (not just that it would seem better to you) in order for this to be a logical problem, and that is easier said than done.

Furthermore, there is a (not very hypothetical) scenario, when a criminal holds the family of a person hostage, and threatens to kill or maim the person’s children if the person does not perfrom some illegal activity (say: killing someone). If that person complies, then (according to your definition) he cannot later claim that he was deprived of his free will (and as such he would be fully culpabe), since he still could choose whether to stab or shoot, or poison or maybe dismember the victim. The whole justice system is based upon the fact that someone is NOT free, if one is under irresistable pressure.

He was not deprived of his free will, because he still had the ability to make the choice. “Deprived of free will” does not mean coerced, it does not mean forced, it does not mean “made a choice that one normally wouldn’t under conditions that no man should have to endure,” it means that he is mind controlled - that someone else is acting through him and there is no decision making process owned by him involved.

Obviously the man in your example would have been put in a terrible situation, and a case to make (both legally, and for lessened moral culpability), but it would be a case of being coerced, not a case of having one’s free will stopped.

Again “in possession of free will” and “in possession of freedom” are two different things. The first cannot be changed (except maybe through drugs and the like, but leaving that aside). The second can easily be changed.

Returning to the rape scenario, the victim always has the “option” to lay back and enjoy her predicament,

Not sure what this has to do with anything.

but somehow I am not willing to concede that she does it out of her free will…

Does what? I never said anything that implied that anything a rape victim did during the rape was a result of their own decisions. That’s part of why rape is such a bad thing.

As we see; your milage varies. Interesting. But one thing is certain, if someone would argue that God “must” allow all the horrible mayhem to happen, lest he would deprive the poor criminal of his “precious” free will, I hope you will come forward and correct them. Can I count on you? Or, maybe, just maybe, you have second thoughts?

I would never argue that God must do anything. I’m even uncomfortable with that language when it makes perfect sense (“God cannot sin”), simply because of the connotations of an exterior requirement that He must live up to. He’s God.

And no, I neither have second thoughts nor will argue against the free will explanation for evil. It’s not that God must allow us to act as we will and can, but that when He created us out of love, He gave us a really real ability to participate in creation - not a fakey you can do what you want so long as it’s what I want ability. The possibility of misusing that ability is part of what that ability being a real ability means.

But talking more about this would be diverging into the problem of evil, which I think is probably a separate topic.

 

[Pitcharan]

Heaven is a matter of free choice made by a firm will that does not lose its freedom to sensuality or adversity but remains steadfast to the end against all odds.

Surrendering free will to God is actually like placing it in God’s loving care because of our helplessness in preserving its true freedom.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

There are at least two different definitions.

One is that the freedom of “will, wish, desire, etc…” is sufficient, even if that “will” cannot be put to practice. As long as the person’s mind is not termpered with (no brainwashing happens), the person has “free will”.

The other one connects the “freedom of will” to the ability of carrying out that will. Sometimes its is called the “freedom of action”. According to this view, without the freedom of action, the freedom of will is irrelevant.

What is your opinion, and why?

I would say the will of man is a " free will " which always exists as one of the principles of his soul, the others being intellect, appetite ( passion ), memory, life. Since it is one of the principles of the soul it is always present no matter the condition or age of the Person under consideration. So it is always present and always free even if dormant temporarily or permanently. The degree to which it may act freely is a different question entirely. Many factors may influence the precise degree to which the free will may actually fulfill its proper function. So it must be considered as a principle ( having the full range of potentiality of freedom proper to its nature) and the degree to which the principle can fulfill its free functionality under a wide range of influences.

Some of this can be picked up in the Summa Theologiae Part 1 , ques 75-83, some of it is just common sense.