Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos  So you'll only accept a folk definition of free will. Okay, what is it?
~~ Paul |
Well, you can more or less take any dictionary definition, or something out of GOOGLE, such as this:
"the partial freedom of the agent, in acts of conscious choice, from the determining compulsion of heredity, environment and circumstance."
The problem is immediately obvious - the definition depends on the definitions of:
freedom
agent
conscious
choice
determining
compulsion
From the point of a philosophical discussion such as we are having, you simply enter a branching tree of further definitions.
You just can't define these concepts in an absolute way - which is a rather curious fact, I would say.
David