[FRIAM] alternative response

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

Jon, Glen, 

As a matter of historical fact, I think Jon is right.

But for me the most interesting cases of free will occur in the most trivial
and banal situations.  Let it be the case that I drop a dried cranberry on
the floor: Am I going to bend down and pick it up?  Or am I going to slip it
into the toe space under the cupboard.  I used to ask myself, as if I were
in charge, Which shall I do?  Now I just wait to see what I do.  

Nick 

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
 


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Jon Zingale
Sent: Monday, June 15, 2020 3:56 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] alternative response

Glen says:
I don't think free will is bound with (naive) morality at all. It's all
about selection functions. Do I turn this way or that. Do I eat some food,
go for a run, or read a book. So, I don't see it as "importing" anything.
Free will is all about which things are bound and which things are free (and
which things are partially bound ... constrained).

I would have to disagree. While I think that *will* more generally has to do
with the agency you mention, conversations of *free will* are a kind of
pathology that happens in the limit. When we discuss whether or not I have
this choice or that, the most trivial philosophical cases are those of
selection functions and don't require the full import of FREE will. Again,
the discussion of free will is for the benefit of whom? Outside of
conversations where we go back and forth about determinism and the degree to
which biology is or is not able to exploit indeterminism, the motivating
impetus for discussing free will is one of assigning responsibility.



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