At what point is free will impinged such that you would conclude for purposes of debate that a person Bob no longer has free will?
a) If the entire course of Bob's life is:
a0) unknown and unknowable.
a1) expressible by the english language
a2) written in a book locked away in a vault that can never be viewed
a3) written in a book that some unrelated to Bob can view.
a4) written in book that everyone including Bob can view.
ax) Bob retains "free will" in spite of everything here.
b) If the set of all possible things Bob can do is:
b0) limited by nothing. Bob can do anything including break
the laws of physics.
b1) limited by anything expressible by language.
b2) limited by anything that does not violate the laws of nature.
b3)
b4) limited by nature; born with sound mind/good health;unlimited wealth
b5) limited by nature; born with sound mind/good health; poverty
b6) limited by nature; born into captivity.
b7) born with fatal birth defects. ex. Anencephalic.
bx) Bob retains "free will" in spite of everything here.
c) If Bob's liberty is restricted by his inability to ever leave:
c0) the Universe
c1) the Local Group
c2) The milky Way Galaxy
c2) Our Solar system
c3) Planet Earth
c4) America
c5) The great state of Texas
c6) The great state of New Jersey
c7) His town
c8) His house
c9) his bathroom.
c10) a jail cell.
cx) Bob retains "free will" in spite of everything here.
My choices:
A3
B6
C4
My definition of free will is "meaningful" free will. Free will not in a deep philosophical sense, but when a court may conclude as a legal matter you have free will.
On numerous occasions, debates on this forum have devolved into a slugfest about free will, without any real agreement on what constitutes it.
Free will has rarely been the actual debate question asked, but is a frequently invoked subtopic to make an intermediate point.
I'm posting this question to get a sense of what everyone's view of free will is, not in an absolute philosophical sense, but what you deem it to be when you throw around the term in the debate forum.
I'm posting this question to get a sense of what everyone's view of free will is, not in an absolute philosophical sense, but what you deem it to be when you throw around the term in the debate forum.
When I say it I mean it in the philosophical sense.
I'd usually call b and c "freedom of action" rather than free will.
I'm posting this question to get a sense of what everyone's view of free will is, not in an absolute philosophical sense, but what you deem it to be when you throw around the term in the debate forum.
When I say it I mean it in the philosophical sense.
I'd usually call b and c "freedom of action" rather than free will.
What is the philosophical sense then? Do you lack free will by being unable to transcend the laws of nature?
I'm posting this question to get a sense of what everyone's view of free will is, not in an absolute philosophical sense, but what you deem it to be when you throw around the term in the debate forum.
When I say it I mean it in the philosophical sense.
I'd usually call b and c "freedom of action" rather than free will.
What is the philosophical sense then? Do you lack free will by being unable to transcend the laws of nature?
I would define free will as: "The ability to perform mental actions that are causally unconnected to anything else."
A being with free will does not lose it upon being chained to a wall, it has merely lost some freedom of action.
ax) — Bob either has free will, or doesn't necessarily not have free will, in all circumstances.
A circumstance in which Bob would not have free will is if the book said "Bob does something" and Bob were unable to say, "Screw you book, Imma do a different thing," and proceed to do so. He doesn't even have to do so, he just needs to be able to do so.
Category B:
First of all, aren't (b2) and (b3) exactly the same thing?
It's once again (bx)
Category C — It depends on why he can't leave.
But physically locking someone in a jail cell does not remove free will.
I view free will from the philosophical point of view. Everything listed in B and C still constitutes "free will".
As long as Bob is able to make conscious decisions and choices in his own mind, he has free will. A person in prison may be physically prevented from doing what they want, but their will is still their own.
B7 may be questionable IMHO. Depending on the type and severity of birth defect, it may be possible that the individual is incapable of thought or decision making in a meaningful way.
IMHO, everything in A is free will as long as Bob still retains the ability to make his own choices. ie the book is not controlling Bob, it is merely predicting.
The libertarian "definition" of free will is the lamest thing I've ever read. I put definition is quotes because "the idea that something (determinism) is false" is hardly a definition. And there's also the fact that it's impossible for an experiment to prove determinism false, since the entire point of experimentation is that repeating the experiment will yield similar results.
The everyday/legal definition of free will, "you want to do stuff, so you did it, and no one threatened you to get you to do it" is way better.
a4
b6
c4? Depends if people or just laws of nature are preventing him.
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The everyday/legal definition of free will, "you want to do stuff, so you did it, and no one threatened you to get you to do it" is way better.
Except it's not actually a definition of free will.
The whole point of coercion is that you're using threats of illegal actions taken against the coerced in order to persuade the coerced to take a course of action.
Coercion not only removes the coerced's ability to choose, it is inherent in the definition of the term that the coerced has the ability to make decisions.
The everyday/legal definition of free will, "you want to do stuff, so you did it, and no one threatened you to get you to do it" is way better.
Except it's not actually a definition of free will.
The whole point of coercion is that you're using threats of illegal actions taken against the coerced in order to persuade the coerced to take a course of action.
Coercion not only removes the coerced's ability to choose, it is inherent in the definition of the term that the coerced has the ability to make decisions.
Coercion does not remove free will.
Well that's kind of what I wanted to get at here. Because it looks like we're getting a few different answers by people who use the term differently.
I work in law. In my work setting, if coercion does not in fact remove free will, then a man who commits a crime under duress ought to be liable to the full extent of the crime without deference to his circumstances.
In other words, applying your theory to law, the man compelled to commit a crime under threat of being shot was placed between a rock and a hard place, and neither of those 'places' should move;
His free will was not in any way removed and he should be ready to accept either jail or death by bullet to the brain, and it just sucks to be him to be entangled in such unfortunate circumstances.
That could be the law. In fact sometimes it is the law regarding multinational citizens with legal duties that conflict from competing legal systems. But in cases of criminal duress, the law generally recognizes that duress impinges upon free will. Because the forum of the court is not a purely philosophical one, distinctions between free will, free action, and other theories are not typically made.
That so happens to be how I throw around the term "free will". But it seems people here start from a different perspective.
I work in law. In my work setting, if coercion does not in fact remove free will, then a man who commits a crime under duress ought to be liable to the full extent of the crime without deference to his circumstances.
That does not follow.
In other words, applying your theory to law, the man compelled to commit a crime under threat of being shot was placed between a rock and a hard place, and neither of those 'places' should move;
His free will was not in any way removed and he should be ready to accept either jail or death by bullet to the brain, and it just sucks to be him to be entangled in such unfortunate circumstances.
No, not even close.
In fact, my understanding is that legal definitions of coercion define it as persuading the coerced's decisions through threats of illegal activities. It is persuading a person to choose a course of action. Therefore, implicit in that is that the coerced has the ability to choose and make decisions. Coercion cannot, by definition, remove free will because it is defined as a method of persuasion through use of threats to get that person to choose a particular course of action, which cannot be done if the person has no free will.
That does not mean his decisions cannot be held as not legally binding.
But in cases of criminal duress, the law generally recognizes that duress impinges upon free will.
Which is an ass-backwards definition of free will. It's perfectly fine to recognize that the decisions of someone under duress should not be viewed the same as a person not under duress in the eyes of the law.
That doesn't mean a person magically loses the ability to make decisions when a gun is pointed at his head. Such an idea is both false and is a horrible mangling of basic ethics.
I work in law. In my work setting, if coercion does not in fact remove free will, then a man who commits a crime under duress ought to be liable to the full extent of the crime without deference to his circumstances.
You are confusing free will and liberty.
Gambling makes a useful metaphor.
A person without liberty is like a person deciding whether or not to bet on horses, they are able to make a decision but many things influence them.
A person without free will is like a person who has already made a bet, they have no influence over whether they will win or lose.
ax -- it doesn't specify if the book is controlling Bob, or predicting bob's actions. If the latter, then he still has free will.
bx -- even slaves and those borne to captivity can choose not to do/do something. There are consequences, of course.
cx -- what is important is why they are in bound in the first place. A criminal has free will which he practiced, which led to him being in jail. And even in jail he still has free will (see b).
In other words, applying your theory to law, the man compelled to commit a crime under threat of being shot was placed between a rock and a hard place, and neither of those 'places' should move;
Let's change "gun" to "my daughter needs meds or she will die". According to the law, is it ok for a man to steal in that situation?
I work in law. In my work setting, if coercion does not in fact remove free will, then a man who commits a crime under duress ought to be liable to the full extent of the crime without deference to his circumstances.
In other words, applying your theory to law, the man compelled to commit a crime under threat of being shot was placed between a rock and a hard place, and neither of those 'places' should move;
His free will was not in any way removed and he should be ready to accept either jail or death by bullet to the brain, and it just sucks to be him to be entangled in such unfortunate circumstances.
I also work in law, and I am not familiar with statutes or cases that say duress takes away "free will." It may take away mens rea or consent, but not "free will" per se.
Someone forced to commit a crime with a gun pointed at his head typically does not have criminal mens rea. In other words, he does not have a malicious or culpable state of mind. But he still has free will. He still has the power to either (1) comply with the gunman, or (2) say "go ahead and shoot me." For very valid reasons we do not usually punish this person for his actions under duress, but we also don't claim that the gunman temporarily transformed him into an agency-less automaton.
I think when free will is used in the context of philosophical or religious debate, it's typically referring to something like "sentient agency" or the sovereignty of the human mind. I'm not sure that such a thing truly exits, but if it does, it supposedly empowers people to make decisions that transcend the deterministic universe. It's not really connected to one's physical degrees of freedom.
I also work in law, and I am not familiar with statutes or cases that say duress takes away "free will." It may take away mens rea or consent, but not "free will" per se.
See, now this makes sense.
Saying it removes consent is fine. Saying it removes free will goes entirely against the definition of coercion.
And also the purpose of a law in the first place. Laws are statements of how people should behave, or must behave, within a society. There are provisions for people under duress because society recognizes that is a special circumstance, and there are limitations for how much society should be able to demand of a person who is being threatened with illegal activities. But it certainly isn't an argument against free will.
A1 (which I am assuming means "it can be expressed fully and completely by some means" as "the english language" is hopelessly over specific)
If your future is (in the strictest sense) knowable - that is, it is possible to accurately and inerrantly predict all future actions you will take - you cannot have free will.
If the future is determinable, it is clearly deterministic, and you do not have free will.
A3 and A4 should make no difference; who knows it is utterly irrelevant. (A2 is either a subset of A1 or A3; either it is either knowable but unknown, or knowable and known to someone).
In my opinion, it is when you couldn't have done otherwise.
Not just pressured, or coerced, or influenced, whatever either. I believe in a strong could not, rather than the weaker (in my opinion) chose not to.
After all, even a gun to your head doesn't explicitly mean you could not do otherwise. If you were brave enough, had the conviction enough to resist, you could have let them pull the trigger.
Now, I'm not unreasonable. Obviously self-interest and survival mechanisms are a helluva drug, so most people cave, being coerced under such distress certainly reduces your culpability, but I don't believe it ever fully removes it (sans Mindslaver).
If your future is (in the strictest sense) knowable - that is, it is possible to accurately and inerrantly predict all future actions you will take - you cannot have free will.
If the future is determinable, it is clearly deterministic, and you do not have free will.
So, my friend and I go get ice cream. He knows me pretty well, so he knows I like strawberry ice cream. I choose strawberry ice cream. My friend caused me to not have free will?
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Your friends prediction was accurate but not - well as well as inerrant I should have added necessary (necessary in the philosophical sense that it is impossible for it to have been different).
Also, if it was necessary it wouldn't mean your friend caused you not to have free will, but it would mean you didn't have free will. It doesn't know matter who knows it, or even if no-one nows it.
Could... if I wanted to do differently. But I didn't want to do differently.
Your logic will have to lead to defining free will as "free from one's own preferences." In which case I don't want to have that type of free will. In fact, it's logically impossible for someone to prefer to do things that go against their preferences.
Could... if I wanted to do differently. But I didn't want to do differently.
Your logic will have to lead to defining free will as "free from one's own preferences." In which case I don't want to have that type of free will. In fact, it's logically impossible for someone to prefer to do things that go against their preferences.
As IceCreamMan noted, "Necessary" doesn't mean quite that.
It's essentially 'Can I imagine an alternate universe where you chose to have chocolate icecream and is that alternate universe broadly consistent with the fundamenatal reality of our universe?"
For you to have free will, it must be possible - however unlikely - for you to have made a different choice.
An example of something that you necessarily couldn't have chosen: You couldn't have chosen to purchase shards-of-glass icecream. We can imagine it, but it's totally inconsistent with our reality. You couldn't have chosen to disassociate into seperate atoms, as that isn't how physics works.
You could have chosen chocolate. It may be implausible, but it is not utterly so.
However, if we have the ability to have perfect foreknowledge, it suddenly *is* utterly inconsistent with the facts of our universe, because the facts of our universe now include all your future actions.
edit: it's important to note I'm not saying it is possible for A1 to be true. But if A1 is true, you cannot have free will.
I work in law. In my work setting, if coercion does not in fact remove free will, then a man who commits a crime under duress ought to be liable to the full extent of the crime without deference to his circumstances.
In other words, applying your theory to law, the man compelled to commit a crime under threat of being shot was placed between a rock and a hard place, and neither of those 'places' should move;
His free will was not in any way removed and he should be ready to accept either jail or death by bullet to the brain, and it just sucks to be him to be entangled in such unfortunate circumstances.
I also work in law, and I am not familiar with statutes or cases that say duress takes away "free will." It may take away mens rea or consent, but not "free will" per se.
Someone forced to commit a crime with a gun pointed at his head typically does not have criminal mens rea. In other words, he does not have a malicious or culpable state of mind. But he still has free will. He still has the power to either (1) comply with the gunman, or (2) say "go ahead and shoot me." For very valid reasons we do not usually punish this person for his actions under duress, but we also don't claim that the gunman temporarily transformed him into an agency-less automaton.
I think when free will is used in the context of philosophical or religious debate, it's typically referring to something like "sentient agency" or the sovereignty of the human mind. I'm not sure that such a thing truly exits, but if it does, it supposedly empowers people to make decisions that transcend the deterministic universe. It's not really connected to one's physical degrees of freedom.
There is no law regarding duress I know that explicitly references free will. I did some research and apparently it has even been held that free will in the philosophical sense is not the kind of free will impinged common law duress.
But my contention is that the law without explicitly referencing free will interplays with the concept ambiguously. It's that 'ambigous' concept of free will that I'm talking about.
Some legal writers have termed it 'psychological free will', which appears to represent some manner of free will for practical purposes.
Look at this definition of duress
"Duress occurs when a person has been deprived of his free will by means of a threat of violence or threat to personal liberty. A person acting under duress might not be held liable for the crimes he has committed. When a person raises a duress defense, the accused admits to committing the crime, but typically asserts that his actions should be excused due to the duress."
and another one..
"If duress is used to make a person commit a crime or do something against their will, the defendant in a criminal prosecution may raise the defense that others used duress to force him or her to take part in the crime.
Duress occurs when a person is prevented from acting (or not acting) according to free will. Forms of duress could fall under threatened physical harm or economic duress. "
What definition of free will are these legal authors throwing around? My contention is that they're throwing around an ambiguous term, but not the philosophically understood term.
But I want to stop here because point isn't with duress per se, but with how the law employs the term free will.
Take the example of miranda confessions. Our law holds that when a person is interrogated under certain conditions, the law finds that the person's will has been overcome, and it's that kind of coercion that renders a confession extracted under those conditions inadmissible.
Do coerced confessions impine upon a philosophical view of free will? The law doesn't seek to answer that question. But from a practical view of free will, I'd say it does. It recognizes influence to that will.
You countered by arguing that duress simply removes mens rea. I agree with you. But like i said, my argument wasn't with duress per se, but with this concept of free will that the law seems to invoke when determining that that will has been impinged upon.
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a) If the entire course of Bob's life is:
a0) unknown and unknowable.
a1) expressible by the english language
a2) written in a book locked away in a vault that can never be viewed
a3) written in a book that some unrelated to Bob can view.
a4) written in book that everyone including Bob can view.
ax) Bob retains "free will" in spite of everything here.
b) If the set of all possible things Bob can do is:
b0) limited by nothing. Bob can do anything including break
the laws of physics.
b1) limited by anything expressible by language.
b2) limited by anything that does not violate the laws of nature.
b3)
b4) limited by nature; born with sound mind/good health;unlimited wealth
b5) limited by nature; born with sound mind/good health; poverty
b6) limited by nature; born into captivity.
b7) born with fatal birth defects. ex. Anencephalic.
bx) Bob retains "free will" in spite of everything here.
c) If Bob's liberty is restricted by his inability to ever leave:
c0) the Universe
c1) the Local Group
c2) The milky Way Galaxy
c2) Our Solar system
c3) Planet Earth
c4) America
c5) The great state of Texas
c6) The great state of New Jersey
c7) His town
c8) His house
c9) his bathroom.
c10) a jail cell.
cx) Bob retains "free will" in spite of everything here.
My choices:
A3
B6
C4
My definition of free will is "meaningful" free will. Free will not in a deep philosophical sense, but when a court may conclude as a legal matter you have free will.
On numerous occasions, debates on this forum have devolved into a slugfest about free will, without any real agreement on what constitutes it.
Free will has rarely been the actual debate question asked, but is a frequently invoked subtopic to make an intermediate point.
I'm posting this question to get a sense of what everyone's view of free will is, not in an absolute philosophical sense, but what you deem it to be when you throw around the term in the debate forum.
When I say it I mean it in the philosophical sense.
I'd usually call b and c "freedom of action" rather than free will.
What is the philosophical sense then? Do you lack free will by being unable to transcend the laws of nature?
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I would define free will as: "The ability to perform mental actions that are causally unconnected to anything else."
A being with free will does not lose it upon being chained to a wall, it has merely lost some freedom of action.
A circumstance in which Bob would not have free will is if the book said "Bob does something" and Bob were unable to say, "Screw you book, Imma do a different thing," and proceed to do so. He doesn't even have to do so, he just needs to be able to do so.
Category B:
First of all, aren't (b2) and (b3) exactly the same thing?
It's once again (bx)
Category C — It depends on why he can't leave.
But physically locking someone in a jail cell does not remove free will.
As long as Bob is able to make conscious decisions and choices in his own mind, he has free will. A person in prison may be physically prevented from doing what they want, but their will is still their own.
B7 may be questionable IMHO. Depending on the type and severity of birth defect, it may be possible that the individual is incapable of thought or decision making in a meaningful way.
IMHO, everything in A is free will as long as Bob still retains the ability to make his own choices. ie the book is not controlling Bob, it is merely predicting.
Ah yes how silly of me. I was editing the post.
The everyday/legal definition of free will, "you want to do stuff, so you did it, and no one threatened you to get you to do it" is way better.
a4
b6
c4? Depends if people or just laws of nature are preventing him.
Modern: U M'Olk; B Goodstuff
Except it's not actually a definition of free will.
The whole point of coercion is that you're using threats of illegal actions taken against the coerced in order to persuade the coerced to take a course of action.
Coercion not only removes the coerced's ability to choose, it is inherent in the definition of the term that the coerced has the ability to make decisions.
Coercion does not remove free will.
Well that's kind of what I wanted to get at here. Because it looks like we're getting a few different answers by people who use the term differently.
I work in law. In my work setting, if coercion does not in fact remove free will, then a man who commits a crime under duress ought to be liable to the full extent of the crime without deference to his circumstances.
In other words, applying your theory to law, the man compelled to commit a crime under threat of being shot was placed between a rock and a hard place, and neither of those 'places' should move;
His free will was not in any way removed and he should be ready to accept either jail or death by bullet to the brain, and it just sucks to be him to be entangled in such unfortunate circumstances.
That could be the law. In fact sometimes it is the law regarding multinational citizens with legal duties that conflict from competing legal systems. But in cases of criminal duress, the law generally recognizes that duress impinges upon free will. Because the forum of the court is not a purely philosophical one, distinctions between free will, free action, and other theories are not typically made.
That so happens to be how I throw around the term "free will". But it seems people here start from a different perspective.
That does not follow.
No, not even close.
In fact, my understanding is that legal definitions of coercion define it as persuading the coerced's decisions through threats of illegal activities. It is persuading a person to choose a course of action. Therefore, implicit in that is that the coerced has the ability to choose and make decisions. Coercion cannot, by definition, remove free will because it is defined as a method of persuasion through use of threats to get that person to choose a particular course of action, which cannot be done if the person has no free will.
That does not mean his decisions cannot be held as not legally binding.
Which is an ass-backwards definition of free will. It's perfectly fine to recognize that the decisions of someone under duress should not be viewed the same as a person not under duress in the eyes of the law.
That doesn't mean a person magically loses the ability to make decisions when a gun is pointed at his head. Such an idea is both false and is a horrible mangling of basic ethics.
Modern: U M'Olk; B Goodstuff
You are confusing free will and liberty.
Gambling makes a useful metaphor.
A person without liberty is like a person deciding whether or not to bet on horses, they are able to make a decision but many things influence them.
A person without free will is like a person who has already made a bet, they have no influence over whether they will win or lose.
bx -- even slaves and those borne to captivity can choose not to do/do something. There are consequences, of course.
cx -- what is important is why they are in bound in the first place. A criminal has free will which he practiced, which led to him being in jail. And even in jail he still has free will (see b).
Let's change "gun" to "my daughter needs meds or she will die". According to the law, is it ok for a man to steal in that situation?
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
I also work in law, and I am not familiar with statutes or cases that say duress takes away "free will." It may take away mens rea or consent, but not "free will" per se.
Someone forced to commit a crime with a gun pointed at his head typically does not have criminal mens rea. In other words, he does not have a malicious or culpable state of mind. But he still has free will. He still has the power to either (1) comply with the gunman, or (2) say "go ahead and shoot me." For very valid reasons we do not usually punish this person for his actions under duress, but we also don't claim that the gunman temporarily transformed him into an agency-less automaton.
I think when free will is used in the context of philosophical or religious debate, it's typically referring to something like "sentient agency" or the sovereignty of the human mind. I'm not sure that such a thing truly exits, but if it does, it supposedly empowers people to make decisions that transcend the deterministic universe. It's not really connected to one's physical degrees of freedom.
See, now this makes sense.
Saying it removes consent is fine. Saying it removes free will goes entirely against the definition of coercion.
And also the purpose of a law in the first place. Laws are statements of how people should behave, or must behave, within a society. There are provisions for people under duress because society recognizes that is a special circumstance, and there are limitations for how much society should be able to demand of a person who is being threatened with illegal activities. But it certainly isn't an argument against free will.
If your future is (in the strictest sense) knowable - that is, it is possible to accurately and inerrantly predict all future actions you will take - you cannot have free will.
If the future is determinable, it is clearly deterministic, and you do not have free will.
A3 and A4 should make no difference; who knows it is utterly irrelevant. (A2 is either a subset of A1 or A3; either it is either knowable but unknown, or knowable and known to someone).
Not just pressured, or coerced, or influenced, whatever either. I believe in a strong could not, rather than the weaker (in my opinion) chose not to.
After all, even a gun to your head doesn't explicitly mean you could not do otherwise. If you were brave enough, had the conviction enough to resist, you could have let them pull the trigger.
Now, I'm not unreasonable. Obviously self-interest and survival mechanisms are a helluva drug, so most people cave, being coerced under such distress certainly reduces your culpability, but I don't believe it ever fully removes it (sans Mindslaver).
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/dfwCompatFrankfurt.htm
http://www.philosophyinaction.com/docs/dap.pdf
http://philosophy.stanford.edu/apps/stanfordphilosophy/files/wysiwyg_images/Antosh.pdf
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/
Thanks to Xenphire @ Inkfox for the amazing new sig
“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments
are we bound to prosperity and ruin.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
So, my friend and I go get ice cream. He knows me pretty well, so he knows I like strawberry ice cream. I choose strawberry ice cream. My friend caused me to not have free will?
Modern: U M'Olk; B Goodstuff
Your friends prediction was accurate but not - well as well as inerrant I should have added necessary (necessary in the philosophical sense that it is impossible for it to have been different).
Also, if it was necessary it wouldn't mean your friend caused you not to have free will, but it would mean you didn't have free will. It doesn't know matter who knows it, or even if no-one nows it.
Your logic will have to lead to defining free will as "free from one's own preferences." In which case I don't want to have that type of free will. In fact, it's logically impossible for someone to prefer to do things that go against their preferences.
Modern: U M'Olk; B Goodstuff
You need to read up on PAP, and why "necessary" is a key word.
You (could / could not) have done otherwise is very important.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_possibilities
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/free-will-foreknowledge/
Thanks to Xenphire @ Inkfox for the amazing new sig
“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments
are we bound to prosperity and ruin.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
As IceCreamMan noted, "Necessary" doesn't mean quite that.
It's essentially 'Can I imagine an alternate universe where you chose to have chocolate icecream and is that alternate universe broadly consistent with the fundamenatal reality of our universe?"
For you to have free will, it must be possible - however unlikely - for you to have made a different choice.
An example of something that you necessarily couldn't have chosen: You couldn't have chosen to purchase shards-of-glass icecream. We can imagine it, but it's totally inconsistent with our reality. You couldn't have chosen to disassociate into seperate atoms, as that isn't how physics works.
You could have chosen chocolate. It may be implausible, but it is not utterly so.
However, if we have the ability to have perfect foreknowledge, it suddenly *is* utterly inconsistent with the facts of our universe, because the facts of our universe now include all your future actions.
edit: it's important to note I'm not saying it is possible for A1 to be true. But if A1 is true, you cannot have free will.
There is no law regarding duress I know that explicitly references free will. I did some research and apparently it has even been held that free will in the philosophical sense is not the kind of free will impinged common law duress.
But my contention is that the law without explicitly referencing free will interplays with the concept ambiguously. It's that 'ambigous' concept of free will that I'm talking about.
Some legal writers have termed it 'psychological free will', which appears to represent some manner of free will for practical purposes.
Look at this definition of duress
"Duress occurs when a person has been deprived of his free will by means of a threat of violence or threat to personal liberty. A person acting under duress might not be held liable for the crimes he has committed. When a person raises a duress defense, the accused admits to committing the crime, but typically asserts that his actions should be excused due to the duress."
and another one..
"If duress is used to make a person commit a crime or do something against their will, the defendant in a criminal prosecution may raise the defense that others used duress to force him or her to take part in the crime.
Duress occurs when a person is prevented from acting (or not acting) according to free will. Forms of duress could fall under threatened physical harm or economic duress. "
What definition of free will are these legal authors throwing around? My contention is that they're throwing around an ambiguous term, but not the philosophically understood term.
But I want to stop here because point isn't with duress per se, but with how the law employs the term free will.
Take the example of miranda confessions. Our law holds that when a person is interrogated under certain conditions, the law finds that the person's will has been overcome, and it's that kind of coercion that renders a confession extracted under those conditions inadmissible.
Do coerced confessions impine upon a philosophical view of free will? The law doesn't seek to answer that question. But from a practical view of free will, I'd say it does. It recognizes influence to that will.
You countered by arguing that duress simply removes mens rea. I agree with you. But like i said, my argument wasn't with duress per se, but with this concept of free will that the law seems to invoke when determining that that will has been impinged upon.