I (personally) believe free will is a pseudo-problem, that the argument about if free will exists or not depends totally on how you define it, and depending on the definition it either straightforwardly does or does not exist. There are a few different popular, contradictory, definitions, and arguing from these different definitions is the most common way I see two people disagree on whether or not free will either obviously does or does not exist. The question then becomes, what definition of free will makes the most sense, what properties does it have, and why is it better than the others?
"You say: I am not free. But I have raised and lowered my arm. Everyone understands that this illogical answer is an irrefutable proof of freedom."
Free will, I think, obviously exists, which is why everyone talks about free will as if it exists, makes decisions as if free will exists, and why people generally find arguments that free will does not exist either shocking, or unintuitive. To start, I believe that there is no fundamental "true" underlying definition of a word, two people can say the same thing, "free will", and be trying to communicate two totally different concepts. There's nothing wrong with this, but it means that you need to try and figure out what people are talking about exactly before you decide if you disagree or not. For example, this anon is obviously correct.
>>316373 if you define free will as the will totally lacking constraints, any whatsoever, then free will does not exists. In this definition, as long as you can prove the will is limited in some way, any way at all (this is easy), you have a perfect proof for free will not existing. I don't think this definition of free will makes sense, however. Nobody who is arguing that they have free will, and that free will exists, believes that they can fly, give themselves a million dollars, etc. So, the people who disagree are clearly using another definition.
The other definition of free will that leads you to free will not existing is a free will which requires you have access to all of the inputs to your decision making. What is being talked about in this post
>>316372 is the ability to do a probabilistic (but not perfect, this will be important later) sort of precognition by measuring someone's bra
Post too long. Click here to view the full text.