I'm sure there are other definitions, but I use something like free will is about "the ability to make voluntary actions in line with your desires free from external coercion/influence".

Free will is key in morality and justice, so I like to understand how the courts define and use it. Lets use a real life example of how the Supreme Court considers free will.

​

>It is a principle of fundamental justice that only voluntary conduct – behaviour that is the product of a free will and controlled body, unhindered by external constraints – should attract the penalty and stigma of criminal liability.
>
>https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/1861/index.do

In the case of R. v. Ruzic

>The accused had been coerced by an individual in Colombia to smuggle cocaine into the United States. He was told that if he did not comply, his wife and child in Colombia would be harmed.

The Supreme Court found that he didn't smuggle the cocaine of his own free will. He didn't do it in line with his desires free from external coercion. Hence they were found innocent.

>And so he claims they are compatible, but to do so he redefines free will, then claims he hasn't and that was the definition of it we were working with all along. It just isn't convincing to me. I'd like to be convinced, for a long time I thought I was missing something, but I'm now begining to believe I'm not missing anything.

I feel it's you who have redefined what free will means, you are using a definition that doesn't exist, is incoherent and no one outside of amateur philosophers actually use.

Most professional philosophers most are outright compatibilists.

>https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/all

Lay people have incoherent ideas around free will, but when properly probed the majority have compatibilist intuitions.

>In the past decade, a number of empirical researchers have suggested that laypeople have compatibilist intuitions… In one of the first studies, Nahmias et al. (2006) asked participants to imagine that, in the next century, humans build a supercomputer able to accurately predict future human behavior on the basis of the current state of the world. Participants were then asked to imagine that, in this future, an agent has robbed a bank, as the supercomputer had predicted before he was even born. In this case, 76% of participants answered that this agent acted of his own free will, and 83% answered that he was morally blameworthy. These results suggest that most participants have compatibilist intuitions, since most answered that this agent could act freely and be morally responsible, despite living in a deterministic universe.
>
>https://philpapers.org/archive/ANDWCI-3.pdf

​

>Our results highlight some inconsistencies of lay beliefs in the general public, by showing explicit agreement with libertarian concepts of free will (especially in the US) and simultaneously showing behavior that is more consistent with compatibilist theories. If participants behaved in a way that was consistent with their libertarian beliefs, we would have expected a negative relation between free will and determinism, but instead we saw a positive relation that is hard to reconcile with libertarian views
>
>https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0221617

Then finally most/all court and justice systems use the compatibilist definition of free will. >It is a principle of fundamental justice that only voluntary conduct – behaviour that is the product of a free will and controlled body, unhindered by external constraints – should attract the penalty and stigma of criminal liability.
>
>https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/1861/index.do

In the case of R. v. Ruzic

>The accused had been coerced by an individual in Colombia to smuggle cocaine into the United States. He was told that if he did not comply, his wife and child in Colombia would be harmed.

The Supreme Court found that he didn't smuggle the cocaine of his own free will. He didn't do it in line with his desires free from external coercion. Hence they were found innocent.

So no, the compatibilist definition is what we have been using all along, it's you who have redefined it to be incoherent.

>But the question remains about morality. How can I hold you morally responsible? After all, if you didn't choose to have that will, how is it your fault you have that will?

I like to see it in terms of impact on society. We should punish you to act as a deterrent to you and other people. We might also want to protect society by removing you from from committing more crimes.

Free will, fault and moral responsibility are concepts that are key for morality and justice. They make sense from an almost utilitarian point of view.

>What does “freedom to act” mean?

Just use the normal definition used in society. I generally like to refer to the legal system.

In a legal contract there might be certain conditions that restrict your freedom to act in certain ways.

It's about the "external" world influences on what we call a "person". So to what extent does the external world influence and control what the person can do.

So treat a "person" as a black box, that includes everything that goes into making up that person, so their DNA and all past environmental inputs that you would consider making a person what they are.

Then since that person is a black box, you can't know how they work. In such a situation would knowing the current environmental inputs be able to predict what that person does.

So lets use a real life situation.

You may offer that person the opportunity to commit to traffic drugs. In the normal case you can't completely know whether the person would traffic drugs, that person has the freedom to choose. (The fact they choose deterministically is irrelevant).

In another situation you threaten the person to kill the person's family if they don't traffic drugs. In this situation the external environment is limiting the freedom to act of the person. That person is going to very likely to traffic drugs. (The fact they choose deterministically is irrelevant).

There is a real difference between being coerced into committing a crime and not. The difference according to most/all court and justice system, most lay people and most professional philosophers is know as "free will". The only group that might not agree are amateur philosophers.

>It is a principle of fundamental justice that only voluntary conduct – behaviour that is the product of a free will and controlled body, unhindered by external constraints – should attract the penalty and stigma of criminal liability.
>
>https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/1861/index.do

In the case of R. v. Ruzic

>The accused had been coerced by an individual in Colombia to smuggle cocaine into the United States. He was told that if he did not comply, his wife and child in Colombia would be harmed.

The Supreme Court found that he didn't smuggle the cocaine of his own free will. He didn't do it in line with his desires free from external coercion. Hence they were found innocent.

I think it's saying the distribution of fat in women is better than fat in man. It's not saying fat is good.

So for men, particularly Asians it's really important to not get fat.

Women should also watch their weight, being overweight even if the fat goes to the hips isn't healthy.

There was a study saying that there is no good evidence that low serotonin levels being related to depression.

SSRI's do work for some people but they aren't fixing any underlying chemical imbalance in the brain. Think of them as a painkiller, they help with the symptoms but aren't fixing some underlying issue.

I suspect this is just a correlation thing rather than causative. For your brain to function properly you need to have a good diet, sleep and exercise. If you aren't doing those then your brain isn't going to work properly showing up as things like memory dysfunction and depression.

We have studies that show the causal effect of exercise and have a ideas on the mechanisms why

>Aerobic exercises, including jogging, swimming, cycling, walking, gardening, and dancing, have been proved to reduce anxiety and depression.3 These improvements in mood are proposed to be caused by exercise-induced increase in blood circulation to the brain and by an influence on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and, thus, on the physiologic reactivity to stress.3 This physiologic influence is probably mediated by the communication of the HPA axis with several regions of the brain, including the limbic system, which controls motivation and mood; the amygdala, which generates fear in response to stress; and the hippocampus, which plays an important part in memory formation as well as in mood and motivation.
>
>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470658/#i1523-5998-8-2-106-b3

​

We have studies showing that exercise is just as effective as medicine in treating depression

>Four trials (n = 300) compared exercise with pharmacological treatment and found no significant difference (SMD -0.11, -0.34, 0.12). From https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24026850/

Exercise has massive effects on mitochondria, which might be partly a mechanism in relation to depression. >Mitochondria Linked to Major Depression in Older Adults https://today.uconn.edu/2023/02/mitochondria-linked-to-major-depression-in-older-adults/#>

​

Depression is linked to lower brain volume

>Conclusion: Our results suggest that lower CV fitness and exaggerated exercise BP and HR responses in middle-aged adults are associated with smaller brain volume nearly 2 decades later. Promotion of midlife CV fitness may be an important step towards ensuring healthy brain aging.
>
>https://n.neurology.org/content/86/14/1313.short?rss=1

​

>We found that longitudinal measures of cortical atrophy were widely correlated with sleep quality. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4162301/

​

>A better diet quality is associated with larger brain tissue volumes.
>
>https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29769374/

​

>This study shows that a more severe and chronic lifetime disease course in MDD is associated with reduced volume in brain regions relevant for executive and cognitive functions and emotion regulation in a large sample of patients representing the broad heterogeneity of MDD disease course. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/da.23260>

Sleep is really important, if you aren't sleeping properly you have have a tenfold higher risk of depression,

>People with insomnia , for example, may have a tenfold higher risk of developing depression From https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/depression-and-sleep-understanding-the-connection

Then there is diet

>The diet may have a significant effect on preventing and treating depression for the individual. A diet that protects and promotes depression should consist of vegetables, fruits, fibre, fish, whole grains, legumes and less added sugar, and processed foods. In the public health nurse’s preventative and health-promoting work, support and assistance with changing people’s dietary habits may be effective in promoting depression. From https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7084175/

​

>Current evidence supports the finding that omega-3 PUFAs with EPA ≥ 60% at a dosage of ≤1 g/d would have beneficial effects on depression Https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-019-0515-5

>I agree that we should use words how they are used in daily life and not redefine them.

That's my main argument. Most people have compatibilist intuitions in respect to free will. Most professional philosophers are outright compatibilists. Moral, court and justice systems are all based on compatibilist free will.

So yes, we should use the definition of what most people/society really mean by the word free will.

>[https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/all)

The only people redefining free will are the ones using libertarian free will, and incompatibilists.

>Then, as I kept trying to explain more, I realized I don’t even think ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’ really make sense in a deterministic/random universe.

I use the word voluntary since it's also used by incompatibilists like Sam Harris.

So Harris gives the example of deliberately shaking your hand as a voluntary action and your hand shaking as a result of Parkinson's as an involuntary action.

In theory we could do brain scans to differentiate the kinds of actions which are voluntary and involuntary.

So lets just use the words as defined by medical science.

I assume you agree there is a manful different between someone hitting you on purpose vs having an epileptic fit. That difference is what people normally mean by voluntary and involuntary actions.

>My point was that free will means you could have acted differently given the same exact set of circumstances, genetics, environment, so on,

Libertarian free will would mean that, but I'm talking about compatibilist free which doesn't doesn't.

>I’m not sure what the conventional use of the term ‘free will’ has to do with metaphysics. See the conventional use of “begging the question” for why lay use of philosophy jargon is not always helpful.

My point is that most lay people have compatibilist intuitions, most professional philosophers are outright compatibilists, pretty much all moral, court and justice systems are based on compatibilist free will.

>Most professional philosophers are compatibilists https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/all

Why on the earth would someone use some metaphysical definition of free will, "libertarian free will", which is only really used by some amateur philosophers? It has zero relevance to what most people actually mean by the term, and has zero relevance or impact on the world in which we live.

I want to talk about the definition of free will which most people really mean, the term used by most professional philosophers, the the definition used by moral systems, court and justice systems around the world. I want to use the definition which is relevant to the world in which we live.

So if you want to talk about metaphysics which has zero relevance to the world in which we live, then you should make it clear. Because when people say that free will doesn't exist it confuses lay people. When you confuse people then it leads to people being more racist, immoral, etc.

​

>These three studies suggest that endorsement of the belief in free will can lead to decreased ethnic/racial prejudice compared to denial of the belief in free will. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0091572#s1>
>
>For example, weakening free will belief led participants to behave less morally and responsibly (Baumeister et al., 2009; Protzko et al., 2016; Vohs & Schooler, 2008)
>
>From https://www.ethicalpsychology.com/search?q=free+will
>
>these results provide a potential explanation for the strength and prevalence of belief in free will: It is functional for holding others morally responsible and facilitates justifiably punishing harmful members of society. https://www.academia.edu/15691341/Free_to_punish_A_motivated_account_of_free_will_belief?utm_content=buffercd36e&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
>
>From https://www.ethicalpsychology.com/search?q=free+will
>
>A study suggests that when people are encouraged to believe their behavior is predetermined — by genes or by environment — they may be more likely to cheat. The report, in the January issue of Psychological Science, describes two studies by Kathleen D. Vohs of the University of Minnesota and Jonathan W. Schooler of the University of British Columbia.
>
>From https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/health/19beha.html?scp=5&sq=psychology%20jonathan%20schooler&st=cse

>I dislike your focus on the legal use of "free will" because the legal system

If you read the legal judgements around free will you'll see that they have an amazing grasp and understanding of the subject. They are as good if not better than most stuff philosophers write on the subject.

I like looking at the legal approach since is a nice realistic approach and understanding of the world that makes sense rather than an incoherent idea that isn't applicable to the reality we live in.

​

>I can't help but feel that if more people realized that compatibilism is flawed, we might be able to better rehabilitate people.

Having a more rehabilitative justice system has absolutely nothing to do with the fact the justice system is based on compatibilist free will. So that's just a non argument.

Any functioning justice system which focuses on rehabilitation needs to also use compatibilist free will to work.

In fact studies suggest the justice system would likely be even worse without compatibilist free will.

>These three studies suggest that endorsement of the belief in free will can lead to decreased ethnic/racial prejudice compared to denial of the belief in free will. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0091572#s1>
>
>For example, weakening free will belief led participants to behave less morally and responsibly (Baumeister et al., 2009; Protzko et al., 2016; Vohs & Schooler, 2008) From https://www.ethicalpsychology.com/search?q=free+will
>
>these results provide a potential explanation for the strength and prevalence of belief in free will: It is functional for holding others morally responsible and facilitates justifiably punishing harmful members of society. https://www.academia.edu/15691341/Free_to_punish_A_motivated_account_of_free_will_belief?utm_content=buffercd36e&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer From https://www.ethicalpsychology.com/search?q=free+will
>
>A study suggests that when people are encouraged to believe their behavior is predetermined — by genes or by environment — they may be more likely to cheat. The report, in the January issue of Psychological Science, describes two studies by Kathleen D. Vohs of the University of Minnesota and Jonathan W. Schooler of the University of British Columbia.

From https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/health/19beha.html?scp=5&sq=psychology%20jonathan%20schooler&st=cse

>You can't just tell people this assumption is wrong and expect them to magically adapt their whole way of thinking to that. It's no wonder accountability, morality, etc goes straight out the door if it was always based on the cultural myth of free will.

I see it another way, people really mean compatibilist free will which does exist, convincing people they don't have libertarian free will just confuses them and messes up their perfectly working moral system based on compatibilist free.

>A determinist would agree that it’s incoherent… which is why they are determinist, no?

Nearly all compatibilists are determinists.

The way I see it is that professional philosophers are using the definition of what people "really" mean by the term. Amateur philosophers are using some weird incoherent definition that doesn't exist and hence isn't what people really mean by the term.

>It depends on who you consider to a be a philosopher

Someone once posted, most lay people have compatibilist intuitions, most professional philosophers are outright compatibilists, but amateur philosophers are incompatibilists.

>This doesn’t seem like a logical argument to me. It seems like you’re just saying humans tend to believe we have free will, and our society is based upon that assumption.

I'm saying that humans use the compatibilist definition of free will. Hence it makes sense to talk about compatibilist free will rather than libertarian free will.

I'm saying it's illogical to use the incoherent concept of libertarian free will.

>Where would we draw the line between free will and compulsion?

It would depend on the facts and I like to look at the legal system, which does this all the time.

In cases like R. v. Ruzic, they looked at the facts and determined they were coerced and hence didn't have free will.

In the case of Powell v Texas, where they tried a defence that it wasn't of their own free will since they were an alcoholic. While this argument shows they didn't have libertarian freewill. The courts didn't accept this argument and it was found they did have free will. So they did distinguish between free will and compulsion in this case.

>It has to be arbitrary

Just like pretty much every high level concept. Even the concept of "life" is arbitrary with many blurred lines. But just because the concept of life is arbitrary doesn't mean it isn't useful or that we can't apply in the context of humans.

>, just like you noted about a robot’s desires. An automaton desires nothing other than following its programming, so anything a robot does successfully would be an exercise of free will. But I don’t think anybody would actually argue that, they’d argue it’s an exercise of the programmer’s free will. Why is it different for us just because our programming isn’t apparent?

​

>Why is it different for us just because our programming isn’t apparent?

Maybe that's the main difference. We aren't programmed with a clear simple goal of killing someone, whereas the robot was.

If you change the example of just making the angry and violent, then if the robot following these goals kills someone, I think it is fairly similar to the human case.

Here are some links and studies around researchers effecting people's level of free will belief.

Turns out that convincing people that they don't have free will is bad.

​

>These three studies suggest that endorsement of the belief in free will can lead to decreased ethnic/racial prejudice compared to denial of the belief in free will. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0091572#s1>
>
>
>
>For example, weakening free will belief led participants to behave less morally and responsibly (Baumeister et al., 2009; Protzko et al., 2016; Vohs & Schooler, 2008)
>
>From https://www.ethicalpsychology.com/search?q=free+will

​

>these results provide a potential explanation for the strength and prevalence of belief in free will: It is functional for holding others morally responsible and facilitates justifiably punishing harmful members of society. https://www.academia.edu/15691341/Free_to_punish_A_motivated_account_of_free_will_belief?utm_content=buffercd36e&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

​

>A study suggests that when people are encouraged to believe their behavior is predetermined — by genes or by environment — they may be more likely to cheat. The report, in the January issue of Psychological Science, describes two studies by Kathleen D. Vohs of the University of Minnesota and Jonathan W. Schooler of the University of British Columbia.
>
>From https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/health/19beha.html?scp=5&sq=psychology%20jonathan%20schooler&st=cse

>I think in the context of free will discussion, voluntary action isn’t the same as free will.

I didn't say it was the same.

>Someone who kidnaps because they have the goal of making money versus someone who kidnaps because they have the goal of surviving against the person who ordered them at gun point to kidnap have very different degrees of voluntary action. The causes of their doing the kidnapping say something about the person’s propensity for voluntarily engaging in anti-social behavior.

Even if you don't use the word "free will", you are using the concept to distinguish between these two situations. So I'm not really sure of your point.

You accept that there is a difference between the situations. Do you also accept the legal system and most people would use the term free will in that context?

>Legality doesn’t imply truth.

I just refer to the legal system since they have good high quality analysis of free will which matches up to most people's intuitions around free will. It also lines up with what most philosophers think.

>Let’s compare two scenarios: in one you program a robot to kill someone,

Not sure here, how do you define a robot's desires?

If we switch it out to be a person, and say they have the genetics and upbringing to make them a violent killer. If they had the desire to kill someone and voluntary acted on that then it would be of their own free will.

> in the other you program a robot to cut people’s hair but it has a horrible malfunction and kills someone.

Well that's not in line with their desires and isn't a voluntary action, so wouldn't be of it's free will.

>If you agree that humans are essentially no different from robots, then it follows that we can’t have free will regardless of what any court or law says.

Sounds like you are talking about libertarian free will, and sure people don't have libertarian free will, but that doesn't matter since most people are really talking about compatibilist intuitions, which we do have.

What people really mean by free will is the same thing the courts are talking about. They aren't talking about the libertarian free will you are using.

>But what’s free about that?

I'm sure there are other definitions, but I use something like free will is about "the ability to make voluntary actions in line with your desires free from external coercion/influence".

Free will is key in morality and justice, so I like to understand how the courts define and use it. Lets use a real life example of how the Supreme Court considers free will.

>It is a principle of fundamental justice that only voluntary conduct – behaviour that is the product of a free will and controlled body, unhindered by external constraints – should attract the penalty and stigma of criminal liability.
>
>https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/1861/index.do

In the case of R. v. Ruzic

>The accused had been coerced by an individual in Colombia to smuggle cocaine into the United States. He was told that if he did not comply, his wife and child in Colombia would be harmed.

The Supreme Court found that he didn't smuggle the cocaine of his own free will. He didn't do it in line with his desires free from external coercion. Hence they were found innocent.

Compare that to the average case of smuggling where someone wants to make some money and isn't coerced into doing it. If they smuggle drugs then they did it of their own "free will" and would likely be found guilty.

So in one example the person had what the courts say is free will and not in the other.

​

>What’s the difference between you acting on your desires and a robot acting on its programming?

Well I would say a person is just a really complicated robot, so there isn't anything fundamentally different apart from complexity.

>Yeah dawg, western philosophers been agreeing this is all an illusion for almost two centuries now

You've got it backwards most philosophers most are outright compatibilists. Only a very tiny percent think it's an illusion.

>[https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/all)

>If all our decisions can be traced back to genetics, situational and nurture; aren’t those variables beyond our own control anyway?

You are your genetics and upbringing. There is no need for you to have control over what you are.

So free will is about being able to act in line with your desires. It isn't about having complete control of your desires.

>We literally can not exist outside of gender and sex because of the way society forces it on us.

Let's say aliens that are asexual came to earth and studies humans or other manuals.

Do you think these aliens would come up with similar/same ideas as sex as us?

I think they would, which would suggest it's something more innate to the biology rather than something society has told us.

>Butler is saying that there’s no point in making a distinction between the two because ultimately, gender only exists because of sex.

That's where I'm confused, isn't the quote from the article is the other way round. In that sex comes from the the "social meanings"/gender?

Also isn't that the right's position, in that gender comes from sex or that they are highly linked.

>For Butler, it makes no sense to talk about biological “sex” existing outside of its social meanings.

Can someone elaborate on this. Isn't biological sex based on biology that doesn't rely on social meanings?

>Your rewording is still meaningless.

I didn't reword anything, I just quoted the OP

>Natural birth is all birth.

Anyone with half a brain understands what is meant by natural birth in this context.