One of the best discussions of free will I have come across is Sam Harris's book Free Will.
Would have to politely but strongly disagree - I might be mixing it up with other stuff of his but in general I think his argument displayed a poor understanding of causality, makes an appeal to the substance dualism of "laws of nature", relied on the flawed
"everything is deterministic or indeterministic" dichotomy, and confused the will with the varied emotions/desires humans have.
My feeling from reading him is Harris has an
aesthetic desire for determinism, rather than a strong case, because to him that's the only way reality makes sense. And so he tries to build up a case that seems appealing largely because we live in a culture where predictable causal chains and the necessity of natural laws are taught as hard scientific facts (at the classical level anyway) rather than metaphysical assumptions.
But if one isn't as convinced, or doesn't share the same aesthetic desire, one might feel that the case isn't as airtight as Harris wants to believe. For example I don't think human beings can be described mechanistically, I don't think there are imposing laws of nature, and I suspect consciousness is what carries causation rather than being carried by it.
One of the illustrations he uses is a person with schizophrenia. If he kills a bystander, was it his free will? Not exactly, and this is obviously a very extreme example.
Well I'd say so extreme as to be largely irrelevant, even though I'm not 100% convinced the schizophrenic isn't responsible. At the very least it would depend on the situation?
But factors that influence our "decisions" are not black and white, yes or no, but lie on a continuum. Why do I find arguing on this forum worthwhile of my time while my step brother will be amazed this place can be interesting to anyone? Genetic predispositions, environment during all stages of life, experiences - banal and extreme - and many other factors, including the insecurity that drives me to prove my point of view. All this eventually brought me here and motivate my (poor) epistolary skills.
Why is there a continuum? I don't disagree that preferences/emotions/etc are not 100% decided by us (
though if reincarnation is real...). But that's been acknowledged by a variety of
"can't choose who you fall in love with" romantic comedies?
My take on freedom would be more in line with a quote by Sartre's ->
"Freedom is what you do with what has been done to you."
In that vein, consider Balaguer's argument against determinism:
Why there are no good arguments for determinism
(IMO ignore the torn-decision stuff, I don't think it's relevant and I disagree with that stuff.)
"This paper considers the empirical evidence that we currently have for various kinds of determinism that might be relevant to the thesis that human beings possess libertarian free will. Libertarianism requires a very strong version of indeterminism, so it can be refuted not just by universal determinism, but by some much weaker theses as well. However, it is argued that at present, we have no good reason to believe even these weak deterministic views and, hence, no good reason-at least from this quarter-to doubt that we are libertarian free. In particular, the paper responds to various arguments for neural and psychological determinism, arguments based on the work of people like Honderich, Tegmark, Libet, Velmans, Wegner, and Festinger."
This paper is actually weaker than it would be now,
given the recent experimental evidence against Libet and Tegmark being wrong about Orch-OR's
quantum biology claims. (That said I don't think Libet's readiness potential experiments ever had anything to do with free will for reasons noted above.)
I find myself responding to similar stimuli in similar way. One is getting drawn into arguments.
So you have habits, which may be good or bad. That people have good/bad habits has been acknowledged for much of history, but people can and do change habits?
I'd go with C.S. Pierce and suggest even "laws" of Nature are actually habits.
When I was interested in The Fourth Way movement I made an interesting observation. Say, I walk down the corridor at work and am fully aware of myself and immediate surroundings, purposefully trying to be... mindful (I hate this word, but there is no better one). Then a colleague makes a statement; I respond, a conversation starts and lasts for a few minutes. After it ends I have a feeling that while the conversation lasted I disappeared somewhere, and all the talk was done by someone else, almost automatically. Quite a few people report the same impressions.
Never had this feeling. But why would isolated experiences during this mindfulness be definitive evidence? It could just as easily be you disassociating from the experience of talking after the fact?
That's the metaphor used by one Russian author. Every minute there is someone in your head trying to take the central place. In my case it is the "talker" when I get involved in a conversation, the "teacher" when I teach my students, the "professional" when I talk to clients, the "dad" when I give shit to my children and so on, continuously obscuring the one who is aware and mindful and present in any given moment, the least illusory and closest to the real "me" that there is, no matter how fleeting it is. It even happens when I am alone: the thoughts do a great job to keep the mind occupied with the past, future and - most often - non-existent. The said author said that that real "me" exists in the real bliss, united with the rest of everything else.
So the fleeting self is the real you, rather than the you that is there more often? Why?
Additionally I'm not sure why shifting tone/language/etc when in different company means there are different selves? I mean people have been criticized for "acting different" around different groups of people, but this doesn't imply there are actually different personalities in the mind?