[FRIAM] alternative response

[Jon Zingale]

Glen: What's most interesting about the concept is where selection happens
and the scope of its impact.

I hesitate to call this free will (except maybe to steal it away from deists
as SteveG wishes to do with his notion of god), though I do appreciate your
allusions to free and bound variables. To reiterate once more, before I drop
the point, *free will* is a limiting notion that became *all the rage* for
enlightenment thinkers. Much like SteveG sometimes plays a function which
takes a thing and asks about its opposite, these enlightenment thinkers
would take a concept, iterate, and ask about the limit. If we agree that a
discussion of *will* is a discussion of scope (bound versus free) then fine,
I also see this as useful. *Free will* on the other hand is (at best)
another unnecessary proxy and (possibly at worst) an unfounded
generalization. If we scope the conversation to ask to what degree can I
choose to go to the store, or that frog can choose to jump, or that
thermostat can choose to regulate, then I feel we are operating within
meaningful bounds. We can call it agency, or will, or whatever. But perhaps
we should leave *free will* in a corner somewhere to talk to itself.

Because *free will* has a meaningful part to play in the history of
responsibility, the *leaving in a corner* is not so easy with respect to the
progeny of moral responsibility. Our institutions still doff their hats to
*free will* and therefore continue to treat it as a viable technology. I
feel that what makes *free will* a relevant discussion today is that it
clearly needs to be *deprecated*. The question for me becomes, with what
should we replace it?



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