I did not want to prime you with my own examples, but since you say
‘give me a situation in which someone who is normally apt to have free will doesn’t?’ [...] my answer is ’I can’t
I will try. Here are some examples where you might feel not having free will, which is an easier question to answer than objectively not having free will, since all you have to do is ask someone about what they feel and think. Note that different people are likely to give different answers.
The voices in your head tell you to stab someone and you are compelled to do it. Subcases: a) you don’t want to do it, but do it anyway, b) you don’t care either way and just do it, c) you don’t understand what wanting or not wanting even means when the voices in your head make you do things. I’m sure there are more alternatives.
You see your arm rising and punching someone, without consciously deciding to do so. Again, various subcases are possible.
You instinctively yelp when startled, before having time to decide whether you should.
Ah, I see. It seems to me that all those examples are like my example (2), where someone has free will but is not presently exercising it (however much it may appear that they are). I agree that, on the face of it, those all seem to me to be examples of not exercising free will. One could be in those situations while having free will all the same. I could, for example, watch my arm punch someone, and yet be freely writing a note to my mother with the other arm.
those all seem to me to be examples of not exercising free will. One could be in those situations while having free will all the same.
I am unclear about the difference between not having and not exercising free will. Are you saying that going with the default choice (whatever it might mean) is not exercising free will? Or the inability to see choices is not exercising free will? Or seeing choices and wanting to choose but being unable to do so is “not exercising”?
No, nothing so complicated. Say I meet Tom on the street. Tom is angry with me, so he pushes me over and I smash a pigeon. Did I smash the pigeon? Yes, in a way. But my smashing a pigeon wasn’t an action on my part. It wasn’t an exercise of my will. Yet I have free will the whole time. Tom’s pushing me over can’t do anything about that.
This isn’t quite a parallel case, but my smashing the pigeon isn’t an exercise of my mathematical knowledge either, but the fact that I’m not exercising my mathematical knowledge doesn’t mean I don’t have it. Does that make sense? I guess I always understood ‘having free will’ as something like having a capacity to act, while ‘exercising free will’ means acting. But I don’t have any reflective depth there, it’s just an assumption or maybe just a semantic prejudice.
I did not want to prime you with my own examples, but since you say
I will try. Here are some examples where you might feel not having free will, which is an easier question to answer than objectively not having free will, since all you have to do is ask someone about what they feel and think. Note that different people are likely to give different answers.
The voices in your head tell you to stab someone and you are compelled to do it. Subcases: a) you don’t want to do it, but do it anyway, b) you don’t care either way and just do it, c) you don’t understand what wanting or not wanting even means when the voices in your head make you do things. I’m sure there are more alternatives.
You see your arm rising and punching someone, without consciously deciding to do so. Again, various subcases are possible.
You instinctively yelp when startled, before having time to decide whether you should.
Ah, I see. It seems to me that all those examples are like my example (2), where someone has free will but is not presently exercising it (however much it may appear that they are). I agree that, on the face of it, those all seem to me to be examples of not exercising free will. One could be in those situations while having free will all the same. I could, for example, watch my arm punch someone, and yet be freely writing a note to my mother with the other arm.
I am unclear about the difference between not having and not exercising free will. Are you saying that going with the default choice (whatever it might mean) is not exercising free will? Or the inability to see choices is not exercising free will? Or seeing choices and wanting to choose but being unable to do so is “not exercising”?
No, nothing so complicated. Say I meet Tom on the street. Tom is angry with me, so he pushes me over and I smash a pigeon. Did I smash the pigeon? Yes, in a way. But my smashing a pigeon wasn’t an action on my part. It wasn’t an exercise of my will. Yet I have free will the whole time. Tom’s pushing me over can’t do anything about that.
This isn’t quite a parallel case, but my smashing the pigeon isn’t an exercise of my mathematical knowledge either, but the fact that I’m not exercising my mathematical knowledge doesn’t mean I don’t have it. Does that make sense? I guess I always understood ‘having free will’ as something like having a capacity to act, while ‘exercising free will’ means acting. But I don’t have any reflective depth there, it’s just an assumption or maybe just a semantic prejudice.