Compatibilists’ arguments are that determinism does not matter; what matters is that an individuals’ will are the results of their own desires and are not overridden by some external force.
That seems to be pretty close to what I wrote. So apparently the compatibilists have an idea of what free will is similar to the one I described.
It’s interesting that at least twice, now, you said what “free will” isn’t, but you haven’t said what it is. I think that nowhere do you successfully explain what free will supposedly is. The closest you come is here:
“Free will” in this context refers to a mysterious philosophical phenomenological concept related to consciousness—not to whether someone pointed a gun at the agent’s head.
That’s not an explanation. It says that free will is not something, and it says that what it is, is a “mysterious philosophical phenomenological concept related to consciousness”—which tells the reader pretty much nothing.
And now in your comment here, you say
That’s not the usage of “free will” that philosophers such as Kant are talking about, when they talk about free will. When philosophers debate whether people have free will, they’re not wondering whether or not people can be coerced into doing things if you point a gun at them.
but you leave it at that. Again you’re saying what free will supposedly is not. You don’t go on to explain what the philosophers are talking about.
I think that “free will” is an idea with origins in daily life which different philosophers have attempted to clarify in different ways. Some of them did, in my opinion, a good job—the compatibilists—and others did, in my opinion, a bad job—the incompatibilists. Your exposure seems to have been only to the incompatibilists. So, having learned the incompatibilist notion of free will, you apparently find yourself ill-prepared to explain the concept to anyone else, limiting yourself to saying what it is not and to saying that it is “mysterious”. I take this as a clue about the incompatibilist concept of the free will.
Checking the Wikipedia article on free will:
That seems to be pretty close to what I wrote. So apparently the compatibilists have an idea of what free will is similar to the one I described.
It’s interesting that at least twice, now, you said what “free will” isn’t, but you haven’t said what it is. I think that nowhere do you successfully explain what free will supposedly is. The closest you come is here:
That’s not an explanation. It says that free will is not something, and it says that what it is, is a “mysterious philosophical phenomenological concept related to consciousness”—which tells the reader pretty much nothing.
And now in your comment here, you say
but you leave it at that. Again you’re saying what free will supposedly is not. You don’t go on to explain what the philosophers are talking about.
I think that “free will” is an idea with origins in daily life which different philosophers have attempted to clarify in different ways. Some of them did, in my opinion, a good job—the compatibilists—and others did, in my opinion, a bad job—the incompatibilists. Your exposure seems to have been only to the incompatibilists. So, having learned the incompatibilist notion of free will, you apparently find yourself ill-prepared to explain the concept to anyone else, limiting yourself to saying what it is not and to saying that it is “mysterious”. I take this as a clue about the incompatibilist concept of the free will.