On 26 Dec 2003 09:37:52 -0800,

Beowulf <beowulf_is_not_here@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<luaeuvgm01b1p1vcncuajuqu3pqtdt7hhl@4ax.com>...

On 22 Dec 2003 08:52:51 -0800,

As an example: Today I got out of bed at 10:30. Would it have been
in my ability to get out of bed one minute earlier or one minute later
instead? A believer in free will would say that I could have done
that; a denier of free will would say that no, I couldn't have done
either one in the circumstances; I got out of bed precisely at 10:30
because I had to.

Not all deniers of "free" will would say that. You're excluding the
middle ground of constrained will. It's not capricious free will vs
unthinking robot.

You'll have to say more about that 'middle ground'. All that I can
see are two mutually exclusive alternatives:

1) Everything I do is a purely physical action, as much dictated by
prior physical events as the 'actions' of, say, a rock. If I do A,
it's because I had to do A - I did A only because there was a
sufficient cause of A, event(s) B
in my brain; and given B was a sufficient cause of A, there was no way
that A could not have occurred. Similary, B, as a physical event,
also had a sufficient cause, C - my perceptions C1, my memories C2,
outside forces C3, my preference C4, my reasoning process C5, etc.
and, given C, there was no way B could not have occurred. Similarly,
since C1, C2, etc. were also physical events, there was no way they
could have occurred without sufficient causes, so there must have been
sufficient causes of them - and given those sufficient causes, there
was no way that C1 etc. could not have occurred. And so on, back to
the beginning of time.

2) In some cases, at leat one of the causes of B, Cn, was an event
that did not have to occur in those circumstances. Rather, given the
very same circumstances in which Cn did occur, it was possible that Cn
would have occurred, and also possible that Cn would not have
occurred. As Cn did not have to happen, B did not have to happen, and
therefore A did not have to happen - so my doing A was not determined
back at the beginning of time.

Was there any such Cn or not? The only possible answers I can see
(besides the agnostic "dunno") are "yes" and "no" - with no possible
middle ground between them.

If you include quantum events "back to the beginning" of time then
you'd have to answer maybe or probably.

I think the problem with your #1 above though is that the human brain
is clearly not "like a rock" in that it is constantly doing
calculations on innumerable inputs to emit behavior.

Just because
there is a Cn which could have gone one way or another at some time t
in the past does not mean immediately that you have capricious free
will. It might mean that, but it could just as easily mean that you
make choices that are informed by a number of complex inputs through a
complex process.

As I said, I don't see it as unthinking robot (or rock) vs capricious
free will agent (by which I mean that at any moment I can make any
choice I want uninfluenced by C and unconstrained by physics). There
are numerous cognitive processes going on when a person makes a
choice. I don't see how they are free as defined in the parenthetical
statement above, but I also don't see how they are equivalent to the
choice-making processes employed by the rock.