The article (and several modern scientists and lots of classical philosophers) confuse free will with some external entity that can take decisions for our life while standing outside it (as some objective spectator).
In the end, those decisions, even if they were possible, would not be free will, but either arbitrary (random) or requiring some homunculus doing the thinking somewhere inside us.
Rather, I say, our will, and that's free enough, and as free as it gets, is mixed up in ourself: it is ourself. Our body, past history, experiences, brain structure, etc, define us, and their sum is what ends up taking the decisions.
Thus it doesn't even matter if our "conscious self" is not aware of a decision we've made as some studies say [1]. Our body is still us (in fact, that's all there is when we talk about our self, our body + our neural synapses as shaped by our life experiences from our trajectory in space-time). We are not some souls independent of our body/life story. We ARE our life story/body.
This means that determinism (that the universe makes us takes exactly a specific decision at every point etc), if exists, is totally combatible with such a notion of free will. Free doesn't mean "able to go random" but "expressing freely its owner" -- and since our will's owner is our body+history, it cannot but take a single decision each time, those that determine who we are, and thus our essence.
Sure, it's combatible with compatibilism (e.g. similar to Frankfurt's ideas) but it's not one of the classic variants. I find incompatibilistic (sp?) theories hopelessly dualistic.
>But it's not a scientific view, it's a moral one.
I'd say it's fundamentally a philosophical one, on the nature of self, and only derivatively a moral one. I also don't think they are "scientific" views on such matters, as they transcend observation.
(As for the moral part: I don't think morality is about what we "freely chose" to do: rather it's about who we are -- the choosing after all is secondary and stems from that. This reconciles morality with both the influences of a personal history beyond one's control, and the person's "agency").
>However, most people would disagree with you. The lay person's view are actually more of a libertarian view of free-will.
Yeah, but the "most" part shouldn't matter, as reality is not a popularity contest. It's only whether they are right that matters.
In the end, those decisions, even if they were possible, would not be free will, but either arbitrary (random) or requiring some homunculus doing the thinking somewhere inside us.
Rather, I say, our will, and that's free enough, and as free as it gets, is mixed up in ourself: it is ourself. Our body, past history, experiences, brain structure, etc, define us, and their sum is what ends up taking the decisions.
Thus it doesn't even matter if our "conscious self" is not aware of a decision we've made as some studies say [1]. Our body is still us (in fact, that's all there is when we talk about our self, our body + our neural synapses as shaped by our life experiences from our trajectory in space-time). We are not some souls independent of our body/life story. We ARE our life story/body.
This means that determinism (that the universe makes us takes exactly a specific decision at every point etc), if exists, is totally combatible with such a notion of free will. Free doesn't mean "able to go random" but "expressing freely its owner" -- and since our will's owner is our body+history, it cannot but take a single decision each time, those that determine who we are, and thus our essence.
[1] http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080411/full/news.2008.751.ht...