I agree that if you don’t have a definition of “free will”, you’re blowing smoke. But there are widely used definitions of the term that are compatible with a deterministic universe. Compatibilism is a long-standing and widely held belief.
For example, a standard philosophical definition is that an actor has free will with respect to an action if the actor’s choices caused the action or could have prevented it. Whether, in turn, that choice was determined by the past is irrelevant from the point of view of this definition.
And once you adopt this definition, it can do useful work. In particular, knowing whether an action was the result of a choice tells you whether you’re justified in drawing inferences about the actor’s mental state based on the action. If you choose to hit me, I can infer things from the action that I could not infer if you hit me while you were having a seizure.
That may be helpful in assigning fault, etc. But that wasn’t the question being asked. It’s not useful in answering the question of do we have free will? It assumes the answer to that question is yes, by the very nature that it considers choice.
Does that definition of free will add any further understanding? Using choices to explain free will to me seems no different than using phlogiston to explain fire. You’re just adding a meaningless layer of complexity that completely begs the question.
My definition picks out a set of things I want to talk about, and captures what I mean when I use the term free will.
If you don’t like that definition, what’s yours?
I assume you want to define free will in an incompatiblist way. If so, I ask what understanding that definition aids or what explanatory power it has?
I agree that if you don’t have a definition of “free will”, you’re blowing smoke. But there are widely used definitions of the term that are compatible with a deterministic universe. Compatibilism is a long-standing and widely held belief.
For example, a standard philosophical definition is that an actor has free will with respect to an action if the actor’s choices caused the action or could have prevented it. Whether, in turn, that choice was determined by the past is irrelevant from the point of view of this definition.
And once you adopt this definition, it can do useful work. In particular, knowing whether an action was the result of a choice tells you whether you’re justified in drawing inferences about the actor’s mental state based on the action. If you choose to hit me, I can infer things from the action that I could not infer if you hit me while you were having a seizure.
That may be helpful in assigning fault, etc. But that wasn’t the question being asked. It’s not useful in answering the question of do we have free will? It assumes the answer to that question is yes, by the very nature that it considers choice.
Does that definition of free will add any further understanding? Using choices to explain free will to me seems no different than using phlogiston to explain fire. You’re just adding a meaningless layer of complexity that completely begs the question.
My definition picks out a set of things I want to talk about, and captures what I mean when I use the term free will. If you don’t like that definition, what’s yours?
I assume you want to define free will in an incompatiblist way. If so, I ask what understanding that definition aids or what explanatory power it has?
I gave a definition in my opening comment:
To quote you, my definition picks out a set of things I want to talk about, and captures what I mean when I use the term free will.
If you want to define free will that way, that’s fine. But it doesn’t help answer the question of do you actually have it.