Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Sep 17, 2022 4:38 pm
Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑Sat Sep 17, 2022 3:17 pm
This topic seeks to
clarify free will. I have two questions to start with; you may have more to add?
1. What freedom(s) does free will bestow?
The power to make a choice. That is, a "will" not predetermined by prior impersonal forces.
What is the DIFFERENCE between 'personal forces' and 'impersonal forces'.
AND, IF God created EVERY thing, then the 'will', which you refer to here, WAS PREDETERMINED, by prior circumstances/situations. ALL caused and created by God, right?
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Sep 17, 2022 4:38 pm
2. In contrast, what are the freedoms that free will does not, or cannot, bestow, if any?
It doesn't "bestow" anything else.
'The power to make a choice', by the way, is for all intents and purposes, the SAME as '
the ability to choose'.
Unless, of course, one can show WHY NOT, 'otherwise'.
But 'this power' or 'this ability', to CHOOSE or to MAKE A CHOICE, 'was given' or has 'evolved', (depending on one's view of things), from pre-existing conditions. In other words, pre-determined factors have CAUSED, or CREATED, 'free will' to exist. Or, in more words, human beings have, or exist with, 'free will'.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Sep 17, 2022 4:38 pm
It's not a promise of absolute freedom from influence, constraint or input from material facts.
'The power to make a choice', or 'the ability to choose', or 'free will', has absolutely NOTHING TO DO with influence, constraint, nor input from material things.
LOOK AT and LISTEN to the words, WHEN 'free will' means or refers to 'the ability to choose' or 'the power to make a choice', those words have NO bearing AT ALL on ANY thing else other than 'that power' or 'that ability'.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Sep 17, 2022 4:38 pm
One has to choose either
with, or
in spite of such things.
This does NOT matter.
'Free will' is just 'the power' or 'the ability' (to choose/make a choice), ONLY.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Sep 17, 2022 4:38 pm
It's not a promise that whatever anybody wants to be true will become true.
WHY bring the 'promise' word in here? And, WHY even bring ANY of this OTHER stuff in here?
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Sep 17, 2022 4:38 pm
It's not a guarantee that you cannot surrender your will, if you so choose. It's not a promise of "happiness" on your own terms, or lack of responsibility, or even freedom from oppressive forces and persons. It most certainly does not ever mean "without consequences"; free will presupposes that you will both choose and face those. Most of all, "free" must not be misrepresented as meaning, "total liberty." No such thing is ever available, nor is any such thing every implied. It only means that within the vicissitudes and circumstances of life, one has say as to what one does.
The 'free' word in the 'free will' term just refers to HAVING 'the power' or HAVING 'the ability'. One is absolutely FREE, to 'choose' or to 'make a choice'.
There is NO need to COMPLICATE ANY thing else further here.
One is ABSOLUTELY, TOTALLY FREE to 'make a choice'.
What one can 'choose from', however, IS LIMITED. BUT, this has NO bearing AT ALL on the Fact that one is ABSOLUTELY and TOTALLY FREE to 'choose'.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Sep 17, 2022 4:38 pm
But it is also, as John Locke so clearly put it, premised on the reality God will hold each person accountable for his or her own choices, and that claiming, "I could not have done otherwise" will never work.
Well adding MORE and MORE UNNECESSARY 'stuff' into a discussion, which was SUPPOSEDLY started for CLARITY, is NOT the wisest of CHOICES, and SO, once again, 'you' WILL be HELD ACCOUNTABLE.
NOW, 'the reality that God will hold each person accountable for their OWN choices', contrary to POPULAR BELIEF, in the days when this was being written, does NOT relate to, NOR refer to, what happens to each person AFTER the body that they ARE WITHIN stops breathing and stops pumping blood, or "dies" as some of 'you' Wrongly call 'it'.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Sep 17, 2022 4:38 pm
Because of that, free will makes morality possible, and moral accountability certain. So it implies, "Choose wisely."
'Heed your OWN advice', is another saying, ALSO, "immanuel can".
By the way, 'free will' does NOT make 'morality possible'.
Understanding, itself, makes 'morality, itself, an ACTUALITY.
'Free will' just provides and thus IS 'the
ability to choose'.
And, ONLY WHEN one understands the DIFFERENCE between what IS Right and what IS Wrong in Life, then, and ONLY THEN, one can CHOOSE 'wisely', or 'correctly'. Until then 'you', human beings, WILL and DO carry on the way you have been.