Definitely start with Theory of Justice. Political Liberalism expands upon Theory of Justice. Both are well worth reading.

Animals don't operate on beliefs. Animals don't have language. So I've never been very impressed with views that try to explain animal behavior in this way. Don't see the usefulness of it. — Mikie

Since we essentially evolved from animals, do you think that there is a jump somewhere from having no beliefs to having beliefs? I would imagine the capacity evolved by degrees.

Here is a little piece of experimental technology that may be useful in this project (which has merit I think).

The Fibonacci sequence exemplifies a pattern. It has a purely numeric representation, and it is widely instantiated in nature. Recently, researchers attempting to overcome quantum decoherence subjected qbits to laser pulses based on the Fibonacci sequence. In so doing, they created a new phase of matter with two time dimensions, which indeed enhances quantum coherence.

I find this utterly fascinating, because not only are patterns instantiated in nature, but nature is also receptive to patterns apparently.

New Phase of Matter and Fibonacci Sequence

As a though experiment, what would a world in which free will "violates the normal functioning" of the laws of physics look like? How would we detect such a violation? — Echarmion

Given that the normal functioning of the laws of physics encompasses both entropy and negentropy, the possibilities are pretty much endless already.....

Sam Harris argues that in the chain of causation the buck does not stop and our "free will" cannot interrupt the determinist chain. — Edmund

What determinist chain?

We are having a "discussion" about free will. A "discussion" is something which can only exist in the context of free will. So anyone who proposes there is no free will is not proposing anything, since there is no free will and no one to propose.

In the chapter "An Agentless Semantics of Action" (Oneself As Another) Ricouer differentiates between what happens and why it happens, and argues for the causal efficacy of motivations. From a strictly material-cognitivist perspective, organisms evolve an internal feature of hysteresis, which is a processing delay between an input signal and any resultant output. This occurs at the most primitive level, in the formation of a cell membrane for example; and at the more sophisticated level of encephalization, and the evolution and elongation of neuronal dendrites. The fact that a complex cognitive system can amass knowledge means that a system that "knows" can and will act differently from an otherwise identical system that does not know. So there is no determinist chain in the context of a thinking thing, at least, to the extent that thing can be motivated by knowledge or reason. Which coincides with the traditional belief that thinking beings are free when they act based upon reason, but are not free when they act out of ignorance.

I wouldn't go that far. I don't consider animals as having beliefs, tacit or otherwise. I think that's an anthropomorphic projection. — Mikie

Actually, there is quite a bit of research on animal beliefs. I don't think they have a lot of them or that they are overly complex, mostly related to what we would call practical reason. Lower order of beliefs, lower order of consciousness. Fits my hypothesis.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200617145957.htm#:~:text=Summary%3A,and%20empirically%20investigate%20animal%20beliefs.

Is it useful to view human behavior this way? — Mikie

Not only human behaviour, I would go so far as to say this is what characterizes consciousness as such.

The question then becomes that of the accessibility of beliefs. Beliefs can be embedded to the point of being instincts. Or traditions. Or superstitions. Or habits. Or, rarely, reasoned and practiced efforts. We are our beliefs. To what extent are we shaping our own beliefs?

I believe that every behavior can be interpreted as ethical but we aren't bound to be ethical at all times. Unless, they're in the military or something. — Shawn

I guess my take is that people are always being ethical. Even when they fail to be ethical, they are manifesting an ethic, just not what we construe as a positive one. Realizing this can be a strong motivator to reflect and perhaps to begin to try to enact a more healthy ethic.

Human behaviour is by definition a manifestation of an ethic, which is a specific instantiation of ethics. In other words, all behaviour is ethical (or unethical) as the case may be; all behaviour is interpretable in ethical terms. Isn't it?

The philosopher's task — Metaphysician Undercover

Is it the philosopher's task or aspiration? It isn't like the relevant information hasn't been presented. The public at large is responsible for what it consumes. Perhaps philosophy should try to sensationalize itself?

Well, the concept of consciousness as primarily intentional is often a starting point in phenomenology (i.e Brentano). From consciousness being directed in the sense of intentionality it seems a short step to being directed in the sense of conation. It seems an essential feature to me.

I think that will is something that presents in degrees, just like consciousness. In fact, I'd say there is a relationship between the two.

The will seems related to the idea of self, to the idea of independence, to the idea of responsibility (you mentioned that) but then that amounts to overlooking an obvious truth about what will is; — Agent Smith

What truth is does that overlook?

compulsion is the absence of will. — Agent Smith

True enough. And compulsion also abrogates responsibility. The question is, can we ever really be compelled, or do we allow ourselves to be compelled?

I think that the real opposition is internal, and the force that counters will in us might best be understood as...temptation.

But I don’t see what the activity of the will consists of once it has started an action off. Are you saying that the will is like the driver of a train, who always monitors, but only acts when required, or that it is like the driver of a car, who has to control the car every second it is moving? — Ludwig V

I think of it more as an executive function that can assume control. Searle describes how intentional consciousness rises to the level of background abilities (which are like habits) like an expert skier who just picks a path down a slope versus a beginner who has to be aware of the mechanics of each turn. Similarly, will - assuming it has been itself been exercised, because willing itself can become a habit, or meta-habit, I suppose - I think can be alert to need.

Now this concerted effort which overrides the mechanistic causation of what could have happened, if the person did not exercise the will in this way, has to be looked at for a cause of it. If the mechanistic action has a mechanistic cause, then why wouldn't the concerted effort to prevent that action also have a mechanistic cause? Each can be said to be "the will". Either the will allows the describable mechanistic action to occur, or it disallows it, so the type of causation, as "the will", is the same in each of the two cases — Metaphysician Undercover

Exactly so.

You are very trusting of people's rationality and your own if you are sure that people defending positions that you find absurd must be self-consciously acting in bad faith. — Ludwig V

I think that the role of belief is to believe accurately. So when people pour extravagant amounts of energy into defending the belief that the earth is flat, for example, they are mis-believing, or believing in bad-faith.

But it is not true that actions are necessarily environmentally triggered. That is what will power, and the capacity to break habits demonstrates to us. If we cannot in every instance of a willfull act, establish a necessary relation between an environmental trigger, and the act, we cannot make the conclusion that such acts have an environmental trigger. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think you partially misunderstand me. I'm suggesting that a mechanistic causation is the case, but that we can override even that through concerted effort. I do think we are capable of spontaneous, 'random' behaviours. But in that case, we run the risk of being even more at the mercy of external laws.

So just as much, or more, will power is required to produce a habit, as is required to break a habit. — Metaphysician Undercover

Exactly so.

In the question as to the nature of the will, we need to position the will in relation to the habit. The habit is the propensity to actualize a potential in a specific way, and the habit is situated as a property of the potential to act, by Aquinas. A potential however, cannot actualize itself, so the habit being a property of the potential to act, cannot be the cause of the act which is specified by a description of the habit. — Metaphysician Undercover

Right, and behaviourism steps in and says that this is environmentally triggered and there you are. I'd propose an interpretation that is a kind of soft-determinism in conjunction with a modified conception of what constitutes free-will.

Let's assume that when we act, we are operating mechanistically in that the conditions of the success for an action trigger that action which exists in us as a tendency. Then our 'natural' actions are like instincts. But suppose also that it is possible to alter these instincts or habits through concerted and prolonged effort (the phenomenon of hysteresis, prevalent in organic systems evolution). Then, by choosing to modify our habits, we choose the direction in which our willing proceeds. Choice which is free to be determined by reasoned effort. Reasonable choice. Maybe we do not have free-will; but maybe we are free to (reasonably choose) to have will.

Really, what we are talking about is the time-frame in which this "actually free consciousness" exists. It is the time frame required "to successfully create successful habits".

I suppose it depends on what motivates knowledge seeking and society building. Science can find out things but to what end we apparently cannot derive goals or teleology from science. People might resort away from science for personal meaning and morality. — Andrew4Handel

I think some of the newest forms of science tend by their very nature to guide humanity in an advantageous direction. Systems theory bolsters the awareness that humanity has to comprehend itself as one element in the governing ecosystem that is planet earth. Historically, man conceived himself the "master and possessor" of nature, a misconception that the emergence of science only reinforced. This sense that man is an ultimate authority lends itself to a multitude of conflicting worldviews. Recognizing that all of these worldviews can, must, and in reality do coexist within a unified system can only contribute to their reconciliation.

I think people are creating a society with differing end goals and values that are actually counter productive and incompatible.
There is obviously a compromise, however I do not think these fundamental ideological differences are taken seriously. — Andrew4Handel

But are these surmountable through increased communication and increased knowledge? Surely a person who is moving towards enlightenment moves away from such misconstrued incompatibilities? And doesn't everyone desire the good, fundamentally, as Socrates thought?

Will is simply what the universe "will" do through the mechanism of cause and effect in every one of its parts. The will that every person feels that they have is the result of universal laws playing out in the body and mind of that person. — punos

There is some truth to this. In Oneself as Another Ricoeur looks at Gertrude Anscombe's event ontology, actions versus events, wanting and the why question (why did something happen). As Anscombe puts it, "I do what happens." And in a sense, we are always following laws or rules when we make something happen. But maybe there are emerging layers. What if we become Kantian self-legislating beings? Is that also what it means to be a self-positing being?

I feel that the role of the social and physical world in which we live in making us who we are is very important and should not be neglected. — Ludwig V

Definitely. Much - I might even say most - of our 'significant doings' are no longer merely mechanical in nature but operate by invoking and engaging social norms and perceptions. Hence the will becomes entangled with both reason and ethics.

I'm believe that people often don't know what they want or what they are doing. — Tom Storm

This is absolute true and relevant. To use will in a non-trivial and non-destructive way (which I don't consider exemplary willing anyway, just doing) you need to have a clear understanding of your goals. Your can't will what you can't conceive.

It is easy to come up with examples in which a strong will is not a good thing, but actually destructive. — Ludwig V

Yes, as I describe in people who can violently defend clearly absurd positions, will can be misused. For me, they would be self-consciously acting in bad-faith at some level.

The mystery is, however, that one can put together a perfectly clear rationale for an action, but yet fail to undertake it. — Ludwig V

This is also something that interests me. Reason definitely ought to bolster will. I think it is a question of being able to achieve certainty, rational certainty, versus irrational certainty.

You don't believe there is an inherent capacity which causes will-like actions. How do you feel about certainty then? Do people have different capacities for certainty? That is, to be possessed of the truth of their own thoughts? Certainly Descartes recognized that everyone is equally capable of believing, whether in truth or in error, the will being much wider in its range and compass than the understanding, as he says. And yet there must be something fundamentally different about being certain of what is true versus what is false. One is a growth of understanding, the other is not. So the certainty which is of a falsehood must somehow be in bad faith, hence not a true certainty. And yet the more absurd the belief, the more ferociously people will commit, you see it everywhere.

Edit:
If one is correct in their certainty, than surely all of the energy being put into verbalization of that certainty can find better expression as the instrument of that certainty, better means of productively enacting knowledge. Otherwise, what is the benefit of understanding? And if the enunciation of an understanding is the incarnation of that understanding, then it is self-exemplary, and its objective should be and is to reveal its own essential nature. This is also Fichte's foundational concept of Self-Positing. Which is an act of pure willing.

we are not even certain that humans have free will. — Tom Storm

Once again, we are at a fundamental impasse. The notion of free-will and, co-extensively, responsibility, is central to my entire understanding of reality. If you don't grasp that, I can only say that we must have very different experiences of what it means to exist and to think.

I am not saying people don't set and achieve goals, sometimes with the zeal of an addiction. I'm not saying that people can't be determined. I just don't think will holds up to being fetishised or understood as a transcendent, transformative virtue — Tom Storm

I don't think identifying a capacity is fetishizing it. Transcendent? Well, again, that is a fundamental orientation. Yes, I believe in the transcendence of consciousness, at least to the extent that materialism is a box and there is stuff that doesn't fit into it.

You have person A with a set of problems. You have person B with a similar set of problems. You say that providing person A with a certain idea (X was not your fault) thereby gives A the ability to overcome some functional impairment. But then, different people are differently receptive to that idea. Some people cling to trauma. Some people can utilize external authority to facilitate change. In Freudian terms, the superego can be projected onto external authority figures. An abrogation of responsibility and will.

Yes, we are all ensconced in a set of contingent mechanical circumstances. I am a certain type of person with certain strengths and certain weaknesses and I was born into a certain social context. If my social context and my native capacities align well, I may roll happily through a life that unfolds easily along a gradient of traditional norms and goals. But even in the case of perfect adaptation, there is the nagging question, isn't there something more? Hence the mid-life crisis , the turn to involution. If we perfect our external adaptations, eventually we turn inward. Then an effort is required to break out of an easy and comfortable rut. But it is still will, it is always will. Anytime you do anything difficult, that is what you are exercising.

A decision is not an action. Some things are difficult and not easy. Will is what separates action from decision.

people don't need more will power, they need to reimagine who they are. — Tom Storm

Indeed. And do you not think that is the ultimate act of will? I had chronic substance abuse problems. And suicide attempts after my fiance was killed in a car due to criminally negligent driving by one of my best friends. I was painfully shy as a child and youth, and fearful of human contact. So I took karate to overcome that and became a black-belt. I've run fifteen ultra-marathons. I went into my first fifty-mile with a serious ankle injury, rolled it again near the start, and still finished. None of which was easy, quite the opposite. I feel I am well-qualified to evaluate the nature of will.

I am familiar with psychologistic approaches. Have you heard of Joseph Sirgy? He wrote an excellent book called Self-Congruity. His self-congruity theory explains peoples' actions and behaviour in terms of three motive forces: self-knowledge, self-esteem, and self-consistency. We want to know, we want to feel good about ourselves, and we want to maintain self-sameness or identity. But what is it that tips the balance of self-knowledge, for example, to override the other factors in some cases? As mechanical systems, we are subject to the law of entropy. We take the easiest path wherever possible. But some people don't. They consciously choose to do what is difficult, change themselves, change the world, evolve. That is will.

My point is that what you are calling will might well be a conflation of complex psychological processes. Worth considering. — Tom Storm

I'd say it represents a fundamentally different approach to the psyche, which I don't share. However upon reflection, I would further characterize will as the psychic analog of negentropy. Similarly, the will is better understood through effect rather than cause, perhaps. It is no mystery that water flows downhill. But when it flows uphill, spawns creatures that grow limbs and write symphonies, the underlying cause does seem mysterious. However the effects are not.

So what is will and can you articulate its elements in dot points? — Tom Storm

I thought I characterized it pretty well in my opening post. I'm not interested in disputing its existence with a will-denier, if that's where your going. More in figuring out its role in relation to doing versus not doing, persistence in solving problems and learning, self-control, etc. Its existence isn't something that I doubt or want to debate.

I don't know...it seems pretty self evident that you can give up easily or you can keep trying. Effort. I've spent a lifetime doing difficult things. My personal experience, will is real.

But people want easy answers like that - ethics is about norms enforced by a will to control - and will is both the means and the end. — ToothyMaw

I think this last observation is great. The will is both a means and an end; we must utilize our will in order to strengthen it. :up:

Insofar as ethics is concerned, the role of will would be relatively controversial, I think. However, I can say my own desire to seek some sort of higher moral truth is an act of will, as it certainly involves obstacles to my biased, although admittedly developed, primate brain. Thus, according to it as so defined, it is different from the mere intention of intending to do what is right or wrong. There is an impetus to discover, even if it takes me to some unpleasant or weird places. — ToothyMaw

Often I find myself ethically offended when I encounter selfish uses of the systems I manage by people who are exploiting their position and authority. My instinct is to challenge them and I do; and this has often created considerable conflict. Now, many people in my position would simply ignore such happenings, safeguarding their own jobs. On the other hand, it would be harder for me to do that. But am I right to act in ethical outrage? Maybe there are better ways. Is ethics always about what you think is right? Or is it about not doing what is easy? I just don't know.

:up:

In my experience, most of our actions are unwilled. Not that they are inadvertent, but that they arise without conscious or rational thought. — T Clark

I agree, this I would say is the operation of habits. As mentioned though, will can also be internalized towards the modification of our own habits. Which can also be more or less difficult.

First a question - how is will different from intention? — T Clark

That is what I was trying to catch in my intro - intending to do something is a choice, but there can be obstacles to enacting a choice. To what extent one is or isn't prevented by obstacles is where it becomes a question of will.

I'm not sure that it follows that will is subjective, but rather that people have different attributes, capabilities, potencies of addictions, etc. It is much harder for an alcoholic to refuse a drink than for someone who just has a beer every now and then - even if the alcoholic might have significant willpower. I would say that the extent to which someone can accomplish something they will to or will not to do is instead relative based on their attributes and extraneous factors. — ToothyMaw

Hmm. And I tend to think the opposite. Two people can have the exact same physical abilities, but one person is able to push further - past the pain barrier, per your second point. I do agree that some things are easier for some people and some things harder. But I also feel that everyone has different strengths and weaknesses and, ceteris paribus, each person will find opportunity to use (or not use) his or her will, regardless of relative strength or weakness in whatever capacity is required.

Ordinary language is essentially a kind of socio-cultural baseline. If you believe (as I do) that one aspect of philosophy is that it re-integrate specialized insights as cultural verities (which is both an ideal and a prerequisite for its most comprehensive self-perpetuation), then ordinary language is integral, although not, I would say, exclusive of more technical languages.

From a purely pragmatic perspective, I'm fairly certain that our minds operate through habits. Even your "style" of thinking is a habit which can be changed with concerted effort. Maybe even your ego. But there the question of will creeps in again. But I do want to expand that to encompass all the dimensions I touched on. How do you quantify 'cognitive effort'? Why is it 'difficult" (or not) to do the 'right' thing? Etc.