Free will debate: What does free will mean and how did it evolve?

Illustration by Alex Eben Meyer It has become fashionable to say that people have no free will. Many scientists cannot imagine how the idea of free will could be reconciled with the laws of physics and chemistry. Brain researchers say that the brain is just a bunch of nerve cells that fire as a direct result of chemical and electrical events, with no room for free will. Scientists take delight in (and advance their careers by) claiming to have disproved conventional wisdom, and so bashing free will is appealing. Arguments about free will are mostly semantic arguments about definitions. These arguments leave untouched the meaning of free will that most people understand, which is consciously making choices about what to do in the absence of external coercion, and accepting responsibility for one’s actions. There is no need to insist that free will is some kind of magical violation of causality. Different sciences discover different kinds of causes. Does it deserve to be called free?

free will -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia from the Encyclopædia Britannica free will, in humans, the power or capacity to choose among alternatives or to act in certain situations independently of natural, social, or divine restraints. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Free Will New Advent (Catholic Encyclopedia) Please help support the mission of New Advent and get the full contents of this website as an instant download. Includes the Catholic Encyclopedia, Church Fathers, Summa, Bible and more — all for only $19.99... The question of free will, moral liberty, or the liberum arbitrium of the Schoolmen, ranks amongst the three or four most important philosophical problems of all time. It ramifies into ethics, theology, metaphysics, and psychology. Relation of the question to different branches of philosophy (1) Ethically, the issue vitally affects the meaning of most of our fundamental moral terms and ideas. (2) Theology studies the questions of the existence, nature and attributes of God, and His relations with man. (3) Causality, change, movement, the beginning of existence, are notions which lie at the very heart of metaphysics. (4) Again, the analysis of voluntary action and the investigation of its peculiar features are the special functions of Psychology. History Catholic doctrine Proof

Free will : Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online ‘Free will’ is the conventional name of a topic that is best discussed without reference to the will. Its central questions are ‘What is it to act (or choose) freely?’, and ‘What is it to be morally responsible for one’s actions (or choices)?’ These two questions are closely connected, for freedom of action is necessary for moral responsibility, even if it is not sufficient. Philosophers give very different answers to these questions, hence also to two more specific questions about ourselves: (1) Are we free agents? Incompatibilists hold that freedom is not compatible with determinism. The incompatibilists have a good point, and may be divided into two groups. The second group of incompatibilists is less sanguine. Suitably developed, this argument against moral responsibility seems very strong.

Free Will Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 1. Rational Deliberation 1.1 Free Will as Choosing on the Basis of One's Desires On a minimalist account, free will is the ability to select a course of action as a means of fulfilling some desire. David Hume, for example, defines liberty as “a power of acting or of not acting, according to the determination of the will.” (1748, sect.viii, part 1). One reason to deem this insufficient is that it is consistent with the goal-directed behavior of some animals whom we do not suppose to be morally responsible agents. 1.2 Free Will as deliberative choosing on the basis of desires and values A natural suggestion, then, is to modify the minimalist thesis by taking account of (what may be) distinctively human capacities and self-conception. Here we are clearly in the neighborhood of the ‘rational appetite’ accounts of will one finds in the medieval Aristotelians. 1.3 Self-mastery, Rightly-Ordered Appetite 2. 3. 3.1 Free Will as Guidance Control Proponents of the event-causal account (e.g. 4.