I think this is a poor way of considering the matter.MGL wrote:My understanding of free-will is that it requires the possibility of someone being able to have done something different in the same circumstances.
What does it mean to "have done something different"? Usually it's posed as a case in which time is wound back to before a decision is made and we're asked how the agent could have made a different choice, yet that choice be the intended choice. There are two problems with this thought experiment.
1) if at time zero the agent apparently has two courses of action available, it would be to beg the question if the free will denier stated that only one was actually available. However, the thought experiment states that at time one, the agents makes a decision and at time two the agents enacts that decision. Time is then wound back to time zero and the question "can the agent do otherwise?" is posed. But if time has been wound back, then there is nothing for the agent to do otherwise than. To claim that there is an action, at time two, that the agent can do again or do otherwise to, is to claim that there is a truth, at time zero, about what the agent does at time two. In short, it is to smuggle an assumption of determinism into the thought experiment. Thus the thought experiment begs the question in favour of determinism, and is flawed.
2) incompatibilist free will requires that, at time zero, there is no truth about what action the agent takes at time two (assume a correspondence theory of truth), this means that the agent will be able to, at time two, either perform or refrain from performing some relevant action. It is not the claim that the agent can both perform and not perform that action. Free will doesn't require contravening non-contradiction, so there is no reason for an affirmer of free will to think that they would or could make alternative decisions, even given some non-question begging form of the thought experiment.