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Originally Posted by Og  Free will does not make sense when you sit down and actually think about your motivation for action. Do you have reasons for behaving in a certain way? Yes. These reasons are a description of how your brain (the machine) is working. Could you change your reasons for action? If so, what would your reasons be for doing that? See? |
I'm pretty sure I understood this the first time through, didn't need a 2nd or 3rd interpretation of it, you described it very well the first time.
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Originally Posted by Og To be truly responsible for your actions, you need to say that you caused them. So in some odd way, free will as a notion requires causality/determinism to apply. The only way that an action could appear free if it was truly and utterly random (i.e. no reason to connect it to a causal chain). |
And assuming, like I said in the last post, that there is a soul (regardless of whether it's an anecdotal claim), then wouldn't you have to delimit actions of free will to truly and utterly random ones, to include other types of actions directly caused by the soul?
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Originally Posted by Og And furthermore, not all christian's believe in free will. In fact, a large number of them do not (such as presbyterians and other calvinists). They believe everyone is predestined and have bible verses to back it up. |
yeah makes total sense, in their eyes either you do have free will but God just knows everything you're gonna do anyway, or you don't, because of predestiny.
Overall I'd rather settle on a conclusion such as the one you're recommending, but I can't do that honestly, without accounting for the "soul factor" of free will.