[quote=Paul C. Anagnostopoulos;4709]
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Originally Posted by Ian
To decide something is to choose. That which is non-conscious does not choose as any action is simply the playing out of physical laws.
| You could define a free will decision to require conscious thought, and that is certainly part of the folk definition of free will, but it is arbitrary.
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The definition of any word is arbitrary. The point is that free will has a particular meaning. If you wish to define it as meaning something else, then don't expect people to know what you're talking about. That goes for consciousness too and many other things which materialists have redefined.
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Whatever mechanism is proposed to account for libertarian free will could come in two flavors: conscious and nonconscious.
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I don't believe that free will has a mechanism. I do not subscribe to the mechanistic philosophy -- as I've repeated to you over and over and over again. And I don't understand what "libertarian" free will means.
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The problem with requiring all free will decisions to be conscious is that you'll be sad when you learn how many decisions you make nonconsciously or semiconsciously, but would like to be decisions that you made freely. Now they cannot be free.
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I am not remotely sad about it.
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They don't need to be free. Nay, we don't want them to be free. Just think how tedious it would be if when walking from A to B we had to consciously decide to put one foot in front of another every step of the way.
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And this problem is easily repaired by allowing for free decisions to be nonconscious.
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As I keep explaining
ad nauseum a decision or choice by definition is not non-conscious. Otherwise we would need to say a statue chooses to remain still.
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Otherwise you just admitted that you've never walked anywhere freely. Even if you claim that you made an initial free decision about your destination, you've lost any control over whether your body in fact walks to that chosen spot.
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We're in full control. I do not make decision as to put one foot in front of another, but I do choose to walk to a particular destination. Whilst I am walking I am on "autopilot", but at any time my conscious will can intervene to abort my walking.
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What definition of "decide" do you have which allows a human being operating wholly according to physical laws to decide, but which doesn't allow other things operating wholly according to physical laws to decide?
| It would have something to do with having a brain that uses memories and environmental inputs to calculate decisions. It's simply a question of definition.
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So computers make decisions?