6 Comments
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Rob Zagey's avatar

I actually wrote an article about this, which has commonalities and differences too: https://robzagey.substack.com/p/somewhere-between-autonomy-and-autopilot. The essence of it was this: Maybe freedom isn’t total, but it's real enough to matter.

I always appreciate your sensitivity to the cruelty that exists in the world MQT. It’s not something that should ever be flattened into comfortable explanations or easy philosophical answers.

Vilove's avatar

Sorry, but I still don’t understand why people claim free will has to be unlimited in order to be considered free will. Of course one can make only choices from what reality offers. That doesn’t mean free will is diminished in any way. It goes without saying that you can have free will only with what is.

Medium Quality Thinker's avatar

Yes, you can have free will within the limitations of reality. So not free, limited.

Vilove's avatar

free will never meant unlimited free will. It is a freedom to choose. And you can only chose from that which is.

Medium Quality Thinker's avatar

Yes, limited will. Deliberately limited by a god, according to some, that limited our ability to fly but not to murder.

Stephen Thomas's avatar

As usual, lost my long note after writing it. I don't have freedom to go back in time and retrieve it. Nor to discover your location, travel through space to your location at faster than c and pass through the wall of your home to chat face to face with you over tea, although that would doubtless be a pleasure. At least for me. And if it were not a pleasure for you (perhaps you are busy), could you stop me against my will?

So unless this is just a thought exercise, you seem to be indicating that the structure of spacetime is inconsistent with multiple omnipotences. Which appears both self-evident and not apposite to the normal usage of the word "freedom".

We are all free to redefine terms,but we need to agree with our interlocutors on their meaning. And there are those pesky multiple wills again.