We treat the possibility as different from a logical possibility. — Metaphysician Undercover

Not per Leibniz. He said that free will just amounts to the absence of contradiction in some alternate action being performed. I'm not saying you have to accept Leibniz's view. But since one of humanity's greatest minds contradicts you, you should put up some argument for your view. You can't just drop it on me as given.

Not sure what you meant here, but my position is that the concept of being swayed by argumentation is meaningless without free will. You would not be "swayed," as if to suggest you could decide either way, but you would be compelled one way or the other, and the potency of the argument may or may not be a causal factor in the way you decide. Believing yourself swayed and believing that you were free to accept or reject an argument is just a compelled belief in a deterministic system. That is, the reason you believe you have accepted a particular argument is largely irrelevant, considering your belief is just the result of some pre-determined force that may or may not have anything to do with what you believe caused it.

There is quite a bit of evidence, such that it hurts one or more persons (including the doer of the action), it puts one or more persons at risk of hurt, or it brings about future suffering for one or more persons. — Agustino

Remember, we're talking about God and sin.
For all I know, God does exist And He wants us to hurt each other. For all I know, Not hurting people is a sin (according to God).

Let's assume that God exists. Whatever God you please. What does He want? Does God even "believe in sin"? How do you know?

You're saying it's contradictory for a person to struggle to persuade an audience to accept determinism. That's true. I guess I was reading grander stuff into your original post... a precondition for understanding the world (whatever that is, I want one.)

A precondition for understanding the world: that the world is always already conceptually articulated.

Perhaps you could explain what you mean by "free will just amounts to the absence of contradiction in some alternate action being performed", so that I can judge whether it's consistent with how I understand free will.[/quote]

You have free will to the extent that there is no contradiction in your doing otherwise than you have. That's Leibniz's view. It's closely kin to the way possibility is apt to be understood in modal logic.

A precondition for understanding the world: that the world is always already conceptually articulated. — John

By the fool on the hill? :)

Let me get this straight. Suppose I did X. How could it not be contradictory to say that I did not do X? It appears like you have defined free will in a way which makes it logically impossible. If it is possible that I did other than I did, then I have free will.

Sorry.. I'm not explaining this well. Some cookies are iced with chocolate, some with strawberry. "You pick chocolate." and "You pick strawberry." Neither of these statements presents us with a contradiction (which is a way of saying that they're both logically possible.) You pick chocolate. Simply based on the fact that doing otherwise does not present us with a contradiction, Leibniz says you demonstrated free will.

Leibniz is dealing in logical possibility. So let's consider whether there really is any other kind of possibility. What argument would you put to Leibniz to convince him that there is?

Leibniz is dealing in logical possibility. So let's consider whether there really is any other kind of possibility. What argument would you put to Leibniz to convince him that there is? — Mongrel

I could choose to do something which is logically possible, but physically impossible, such as I might decide to grab a hold of the moon, or the sun, and bring it into my house with me. This demonstrates that what really determines what is and is not possible is something other than logic.

Grab a hold. It's logically possible that you're from Kentucky.

I could choose to do something which is logically possible, but physically impossible, such as I might decide to grab a hold of the moon, or the sun, and bring it into my house with me. This demonstrates that what really determines what is and is not possible is something other than logic. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, that's right. I think Mongrel's characterization of Leibniz's view may be a bit too thin. Leibniz viewed human freedom as autonomy. Some agent A is free to see to it that P (where P is a timeless proposition -- for instance the proposition that A has eaten a piece of chocolate cake at time t) if whether or not P is true is determined by A and by nothing else. This means that nothing besides the internal states of the agent much be such as to determine the truth of P. We can phrase this through saying that the condition for A, as some time t, to be free (with respect to some outcome P), is if, given the state S of the external world at t (excluding the internal state of A) then it is logically consistent with S both that P or that not P. It is fair to construe this as entailing physical possibility, meaning that for some proposition to be physically possible from the standpoint of an agent is for the truth of this proposition to be logically consistent with S. The logical possibility at issue in Leibniz's conception of free will would thus be a conditional possibility: it is conditional on the logical restrictions imposed on future states of the world by the past and by physical laws. (In Leibniz's peculiar metaphysical framework, such natural/physical/metaphysical restrictions derive from the condition that the world be the best possible world in the mind of God -- which would seem to make the internal state of any agent -- or metaphysical monad viewed as the soul of this agent -- determined as well. This doesn't undermine Leibniz's view of human freedom provided only we cast him as a compatibilist!)

Kant rather had a positive view of autonomy, qua rational autonomy, contrasted with Leibniz's purely negative view (construed as mere logical/metaphysical possibility, as explained above) and he derided Leibniz's view of freedom as mere freedom of the turnspit, since on Leibniz's compatibilist account, it would seem, a purely mechanical and non-rational device such as a turnspit, which moves according to its own internal physical principle, would turn out to be as free as we are.

then it is logically consistent with S both that P or that not P. It is fair to construe this as entailing physical possibility, meaning that for some proposition to be physically possible from the standpoint of an agent is for the truth of this proposition to be logically consistent with S. — Pierre-Normand

You disagreed with me while saying exactly what I said. Neat trick, Pierre.

The logical possibility at issue in Leibniz's conception of free will would thus be a conditional possibility: it is conditional on the logical restrictions imposed on future states of the world by the past and by physical laws. — Pierre-Normand

There is a problem here, because "physical laws" are laws which are produced by human beings to describe the processes of the world. So they are internal to the agent, what the agent claims about the world. If, by creating such laws, the human being is given the capacity to impose restrictions on future states of the world, we need to determine how a law which describes the world, can be used to impose restrictions on the world.

With this in mind, the described internal/external distinction breaks down. If the past imposes restrictions on the world, this is the feature of determinism. If physical laws impose restrictions, these are created by the human mind, so the question is, how does the human mind impose restrictions by creating laws? There must be something more than just creating laws, which allows human beings to actually impose restrictions, otherwise I'd create a law which would allow me to grab a hold of the sun.

If the human being cannot impose any restrictions whatsoever, on the external world, in what sense can you say that it has free will? To have free will, it must be logically possible that P, or not P, thus the human being must be capable of imposing the necessary restrictions to make this logically possible. The human being cannot make "P or not P" logically possible simply by asserting that it is logically possible, or else I could make it logically possible to grab a hold of the sun, by asserting that it is logically possible to do such.

You disagreed with me while saying exactly what I said. Neat trick, Pierre. — Mongrel

I didn't disagree. I said your characterization was a bit too thin. Logical possibility isn't equivalent to opportunity for action in general, but it may be construed as being similar within a highly qualified Leibnizian metaphysical framework. Teasing out unstated assumptions for the sake of clarity isn't a "trick". I'm glad that you are agreeing, though.

It doesn't appear that you followed the discussion MU and I were having prior to interjecting that it's logically possible to put the moon in your house.

Leibniz is dealing in logical possibility. So let's consider whether there really is any other kind of possibility. What argument would you put to Leibniz to convince him that there is? — Mongrel

I would try to convince Leibniz that the notion of "logical possibility that I could have acted otherwise" is physically meaningless. I would convince him that absolute determinism is true, by using his own Principle of Sufficient Reason and telling him about Relativity.

I would then ensure that he was a committed realist and accepted the explanatory nature of science. Through quantum mechanics I would show that you can recover the physical meaning of "logical possibility" and demonstrate the physical mechanism of free will.

Leibniz is dealing in logical possibility. So let's consider whether there really is any other kind of possibility. What argument would you put to Leibniz to convince him that there is? — Mongrel

I'd point out that possibility is a complementary modality to necessity, and then I'd have him read Kit Fine's paper: http://philosophy.fas.nyu.edu/docs/IO/1160/necessity.pdf

Neither of you offered a reason to allow some kind of possibility that is distinct from logical possibility.

... If the human being cannot impose any restrictions whatsoever, on the external world, in what sense can you say that it has free will? To have free will, it must be logically possible that P, or not P, thus the human being must be capable of imposing the necessary restrictions to make this logically possible. The human being cannot make "P or not P" logically possible simply by asserting that it is logically possible, or else I could make it logically possible to grab a hold of the sun, by asserting that it is logically possible to do such. — Metaphysician Undercover

Do you take this to be an objection to the Leibnizian conception of freedom, specifically, or to compatibilist accounts of free will generally? I myself don't accept accounts of either kind mainly because of the Kantian objection that I mentioned. It is not sufficient for one to be free in the sense that is relevant for the possibility of genuine agency and responsibility that the principle of the action of the agent be "internal" to her (in the manner compatibilists usually understand "internal" to relate to desire or motivation). The source must also be rational/intelligible rather than merely natural/mechanical. Further, I don't take the possibility of rationally intelligible actions to be consistent with universal determinism.

Are you familiar with the Fine paper already? There's no way you could have read and digested it in the time since I posted the link. It's a difficult paper, and you would have had to read at least 5 pages per minute (given the time between my post and your reply)

I didn't read it. Should I?

Wasn't that my answer?

Why did I post the link otherwise?

I don't know.

Unfortunately, there's no way you're going to understand Fine's paper if you can't understand why I posted the link, haha. Fine's paper explains the varieties of necessity in some detail. Possibility and necessity are complementary modalities (in modal logic, for example). So it would follow that if necessity has anything like the variety that Fine argues for, so would possibility.

Explain how modal logic possibility is distinct from logical possibility.

Are you interested in really learning about alternate views?

There is neat explanation of Leibniz's compatibilist account of free will in this SEP article. The discussion of Caesar crossing the Rubicon makes it clear why Mongrel's unqualified identification of Leibnizian freedom with mere logical possibility is too quick. Caesar is free to cross the Rubicon or to refrain to cross the Rubicon (i.e. it is possible for him to do both, in the sense of possibility relevant to freedom) if there isn't anything in Caesar's nature that makes it necessary that he would choose either options. Only if you accept Leibniz's metaphysics of substances, where individuals possess "complete individual concepts", and if you thereby rule out "possible worlds" where an individual acts in a way that contradict its individual essence, can you equate "logical possibility" with physical or metaphysical possibility, or so it seems to me.

On edit: actually, reading further into the SEP article, it seems that logical possibility isn't sufficient for freedom, according to Leibniz; one also needs to act in accordance with one's complete individual concept (as determined by God -- who ensured that the best possible world was actualized) and this actuality is certain albeit logically contingent. See the last paragraph in section 4 of the SEP article linked above.