I've got a hazy idea of what you mean. Could you apply that to my example so I can see how it works?

EDIT: Is it that my choice is determined, because I'm hungry and want one of those cakes, AND free, because I don't mind which one?

EDIT2: I think there are two choices, the first is the decision to have one of the cakes, and this is determined by my hunger and desire. The second decision is which cake to have, and this is free, as I don't mind which one I have.

From my perspective, by linguistic convention I should at least say that "you have a choice as to what you eat" with respect to the imprecise situation you put forward.

But is what I am saying a claim about yourself, or is what I am saying a mere figure of speech that linguistic convention dictates to be a permissible description of the imprecise observable situation that you put forward?

Supposing you now reveal that you have an allergy for cream. Then i might now say "it appears that you don't have that much of a choice relative to my previous understanding, given your newly admitted allergy for cream"

The question is, does there exist an absolutely precise and exhaustively describable circumstance that you can describe, or that I can observe, under which I am at least permitted to say without fear of controversy, that you have absolutely no choice but to take one of the presented options?

And whatever I am permitted to say here, would this now be a claim about yourself, or again would it be merely a figure of speech in relation to the imprecisely defined concepts 'exhaustive' and 'absolute'?

Compare your question to other borderline questions that are in relation to vague concepts:

Is this adolescent an adult?
Are these grains of sand a heap?

The only reading of that collection of contradictory quotes that makes sense to me would be to see them all as instances of a contemporary attempt to tie the concept of 'free will' to christianity — csalisbury

That's about right, but things are complex. Arendt, for instance, fudges a bit Paul's role in the whole thing. She cites Paul as having 'discovered the Will and its necessary Freedom', but in truth not even in Paul does the term 'will' appear anywhere. Rather, he prepares the way for the term insofar as his conceptual 'innovation', as it were, was to insist upon a certain 'voluntarism' of human action that was quite original to Paul, elaborated in the context of the necessity of God's grace. Dihle:

"This difficulty about a term for will, so badly needed in St. Paul's entirely voluntaristic interpretation of man's life and salvation, results from its very nature: the notion, although not the term, of will occurs, with substantial changes and variations in function and meaning, in the discussion of theological, soteriological, and ethical questions. ... Perhaps it is the great variety of different aspects under which the phenomenon of intention and will is considered that prevented St. Paul from inventing a definite term. Each of these aspects could have demanded a separate set of terms to denote the results of speculation. St. Paul's theological reflection embraced his own and his people's religious experience as well as the needs and purposes of practical, above all congregational, life." (The Theory of the Will in Classical Antiquity)

As for the '2nd century thinkers' Bobzien cites, she herself is a bit fudgy about that too (though she's probs just being intellectual honest):

"Presumably in the early 2nd century, and as a consequence of combining Aristotle's theory of deliberate choice with his modal theory and with his theory regarding the truth-values of future propositions, this concept was interpreted as implying freedom to do otherwise. Who exactly was responsible for this new indeterminist understanding of that which depends on us is unclear, but it seems to have been accepted thereafter both by some Peripatetics and by some Middle- Platonists.

...Alexander [of Aphrodisias] stops short of a concept of free will, due it seems in part to the fact that he believes the human soul to be corporeal. The need of a free will becomes pressing in Platonist and Christian philosophy, in the context of the problems of how vice entered the world, and how god's providence and foreknowledge of the future is compatible with human responsibility. But this is no longer in the context of a physical theory of universal causal determinism, characterised by principles of the kind "like causes, like effects." Rather the determinism is now teleological only, and the context theological." (The Inadvertant Conception and Late Birth of the Free-Will Problem)

The road to 'free will' was long and complex, but the brutal condensation is this: it's emergence involved a change from the I-can to the I-will. From Aristotelian potentiality to Christian willing. One of the factors that enables this shift is the disembodiness and omnipotence of the Christian God: evacuated of body, he becomes sheer 'will': only bodies have capacities that can be excercized this this or that manner, in this or that differential context. The Christian God, shorn of body, has no 'need' for capacity, and becomes ephemeral and immaterial word and will. Augustine, who then takes seriously the fact that man is made in the image of God, then transplants 'will' from God to Man, and thoroughly fucks human understanding of freedom for the next few centuries.

Already in 1962 - a decade before any of my previous citations - Deleuze will write that "We create grotesque representations of force and will, we separate force from what it can do ... inventing a neutral subject endowed with free will to which we give the capacity to act and refrain from action". (Nietzsche and Philosophy). Spinoza being the ultimate reference for freedom without will, freedom engendered from necessity, which 'moderns' find utterly perplexing ("Waaaa revisionism!").

But Cicero wrote about determinism and free will (for the sake of moral responsibility) in 44 BC.

Nope. Bunch of mistranslated bullshit. You won't find freedom articulated with the will in any of Cicero's writings - the liberum voluntatis or arbitrium voluntatis. Bobzien again, reflecting on the use of in nostra potestate which is what Cicero discusses in De Fato:

"Our texts (Cicero, Gellius, Plutarch) do not allow us to establish in what way exactly the phrase 'depending on us' or 'in our power' (in nostra potestate) was understood. But they contain sufficient information to rule out [certain interpretations] ... First, there is nothing in our sources [that] the concept of moral responsibility ever connected with a belief after the deed that one could have done otherwise, or with feelings of guilt or regret that one did what one did. ... Second, there is some evidence that speaks against such a concept: ... Cicero ... attach[ed] moral responsibility to the fact that the agent is the main causal factor of the action—not to the idea that the agent could have done otherwise". (Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy)

Dihle reckons Cicero was simply pretty casual with his terminology and writes that Cicero mashed-up both Latin and Greek cognates without paying all that much attention to the differences: "Cicero, however, used the word voluntas not only to denote what was called προαίρεσις or βούλησις in Greek. Sometimes, even in philosophical texts, voluntas means desire or spontaneous wish rather than deliberate intention,' and in other passages the impulse itself (ορμή), which comes from deliberation or from conscious moral attitude, is called voluntas." The large semantic area which is apparently attached to the word in Cicero's philosophical vocabulary corresponds to the general usage of his time. So he does not seem to have seen any difficulty in the identification of "intellectuaustic" βούλησις and "voluntaristic" voluntas, since he presupposed their identity even outside philosophical discussions." (The Theory of the Will)

Augustine even has a go at Cicero for not having anything like this notion of free will: "The concession that Cicero makes, that nothing happens unless preceded by an efficient cause (cause efficiens), is enough to refute him in this debate... It is enough when he admits that everything that happens, happens only by virtue of a preceeding cause (causa praecdente)" (City of God).

That's how much 'free-will' fucked everything up. We can't even read pre-Augstinian philosophy - or Augustine, apparently - without slapping anarchonisms onto it.

So you see the idea of free will as emerging like a mutation instead of evolving gradually out of a stew if ideas.

Or do you think it's both?

Don't really think that imagery is helpful or useful. The point is that free-will responds to a very specific problematic, and marks a massive transformation in how we think about freedom. That transformation remains, while it's motivation has been entirely lost, rendering it a totally incomprehensible notion. Worse, because it dominates the prevailing discourse on freedom, it makes trying to think through the idea of freedom almost impossible. Worst still, Augustine concocts free will to bind us ever more tightly to God, to make us better servants of God. And people think this is how we ought to secure our 'freedom'? :vomit:

Don't really think that imagery is helpful or useful. — StreetlightX

But it describes the way you see the emergence of this particular idea: as a break with the past so profound that we must struggle to understand the people who came before.

Like Newton's gravity.

From my perspective, by linguistic convention I should at least say that "you have a choice as to what you eat" with respect to the imprecise situation you put forward. — sime

Yes, I have a choice. I've tried to make the situation precise as we need. Yes, it is idealised and perhaps unrealistic, but I'm trying to keep things simple.

What I'm suggesting is that there are two kinds of choices, those that are determined and those that are not. StreetlightX has suggested that just because a decision is determined by a process of deliberation, does not make that decision any less of a choice, nor does it imply a lack of freedom. And I agree there are choices like that, and that they are correctly called choices. He goes on to say that free will (perhaps in the sense of an undetermined choice) is a pernicious relic that we do not need any more. I'm suggesting that there are, at least in principle, undetermined choices. These are choices where we don't mind which alternative we choose. My cream cake example is one. But perhaps these situations never actually arise in reality, just as perfect circles never occur. Perhaps there is never, actually, a choice about which someone is wholly indifferent to the result. But even if that's the case, the concept is still a useful one - there are decisions that are more or less arbitrary, and these are approaching instances of free will.

Supposing you now reveal that you have an allergy for cream. Then i might now say "it appears that you don't have that much of a choice relative to my previous understanding, given your newly admitted allergy for cream"

The question is, does there exist an absolutely precise and exhaustively describable circumstance that you can describe, or that I can observe, under which I am at least permitted to say without fear of controversy, that you have absolutely no choice but to take one of the presented options? — sime

Assume I've given all the relevant information, for the sake of discussion. In the scenario, I am very hungry and want one of the cakes. I have a choice whether to eat a cake or not (according to street). The deliberation involves feelings of hunger and desire (nothing else). I eat one of the cakes. Not eating one of the cakes in this circumstance would involve other factors which I have not given (i.e. madness, cream allergy, diabetes, obesity, hallucination etc). My choice to eat one of the cakes is highly determined.

However I really don't mind at all which cake I eat. I make a choice and eat the jam doughnut. The question is, is this decision determined or not? I don't think it is. I think it is a free arbitrary choice. Is this even possible do you think? It's logically possible. Is it metaphysically possible? Physically possible? Psychologically possible? Or is there always a determinant?

Regarding vagueness, indulge me with this idealised scenario, which I grant might be impossible to actually exist. Just as the non-existence of perfect circles does not stop us calculating using assumptions of perfect circles when designing machines, I want to contrast the concepts of free and determined choice by using an idealised scenario.

Is an insignificant choice - quite literally, a choice that has no significance, makes no difference - meant to be a mark of our... freedom?

A mark of our free will.

A mark of our freedom is being free from unwanted constraint (I guess, off the top of my head).

Assume I've given all the relevant information, for the sake of discussion. — bert1

sure, - of course my point is to say that it is impossible to given an exhaustive account of all the potentially relevant information that necessitates an action; the consequence being that free-will and determinism cannot be absolute polarities but are terms used for the relative comparison of two or more specific situations.

In the scenario, I am very hungry and want one of the cakes. I have a choice whether to eat a cake or not (according to street). The deliberation involves feelings of hunger and desire (nothing else). I eat one of the cakes. Not eating one of the cakes in this circumstance would involve other factors which I have not given (i.e. madness, cream allergy, diabetes, obesity, hallucination etc). My choice to eat one of the cakes is highly determined.

However I really don't mind at all which cake I eat. I make a choice and eat the jam doughnut. The question is, is this decision determined or not? I don't think it is. I think it is a free arbitrary choice. Is this even possible do you think? It's logically possible. Is it metaphysically possible? Physically possible? Psychologically possible? Or is there always a determinant? — bert1

At least according to the compatibilist logic of Hume, a 'free willed' action must at least be superficially describable as being 'caused' by one's will; the charge of determinism being avoided, by understanding the concept of necessity as referring to states of psychological compulsion as opposed to causal relations per se that merely comprise of an inferential attitude in relation to a previously observed conjunction of events.

Another source of compatibilism, as i'm trying to point out, lies in the indeterminacy of the very meaning of determinism, as contradictory as that might sound.

Regarding vagueness, indulge me with this idealised scenario, which I grant might be impossible to actually exist. Just as the non-existence of perfect circles does not stop us calculating using assumptions of perfect circles when designing machines, I want to contrast the concepts of free and determined choice by using an idealised scenario. — bert1

Isn't the concept of the perfect circle also relative to the situation? 3.14159 being a 'more' perfect description than 3.141 regarding the circumference of the circle on my monitor?

Analogously, is there a notion of perfect determination that applies in every case?

Do we need an alternative account of freedom and moral responsibility which is easily comprehensible to the philosophically uneducated? I have said that the logic of personal moral responsibility and culpability seems to be that we would have been capable of doing other than we did. That certainly seems to be all that separates the way we think about human moral action on the one hand and the actions of natural phenomena on the other.

The problem I see is that if you tell ordinary people they are morally responsible then that will only be acceptable to them if they believe that they could have done otherwise than they did. I predict it would pretty much universally be felt as unfair to hold someone responsible for anything they couldn't help doing. We have the ideas of extenuating circumstances and diminished responsibility, but on the assumption of strict determinism, all circumstances are extenuating circumstances and all people have diminished responsibility.

Can we come up with an alternative account of freedom and responsibility that is simple enough for everyone to understand and consistent enough with ordinary notions of fairness such as to be acceptable to everyone? I have yet to see any such account. I have not yet seen any coherent alternative account that is consistent with ordinary notions of personal responsibility at all, whether simple or complex.

I guess the alternative would be to simply tell people that if they do something morally wrong people will judge them for it; it may not be fair, but bad luck! And if you do something unlawful, you will be punished; it may not be fair, but bad luck!

In older cultures that had no notion of free will in the libertarian sense our conceptions of moral responsibility are based upon today, there was also often (or even mostly perhaps?) no concept of justice other than that of revenge.

Can we come up with an alternative account of freedom and responsibility that is simple enough for everyone to understand and consistent enough with ordinary notions of fairness such as to be acceptable to everyone? I have yet to see any such account. I have not yet seen any coherent alternative account that is consistent with ordinary notions of personal responsibility at all, whether simple or complex. — Janus

There are lots of models of ethics and responsibility that make no use of free will. Ancient ethics, to take one example (internally differentiated, insofar as isn't really one big 'ancient ethics') had robust accounts of ethics, responsibility, and freedom, that largely tuned upon our capacities to do: freedom as capacity or ability (I can) and not freedom as will (I will). In these models, our actions follow from who it is we are as people (our 'natures' or 'essences' to use the vocabulary of the Stoics and Spinoza), defined roughly by our ability to do certain things.

Importantly, what could be worked upon was precisely 'who we are': an ethics of the self as a matter of self-fashioning and self-care (the self as a work of art - Nietzsche, Foucault), all the better to act 'in accordance with our natures' and thus act freely. Hence the seemingly strange alignment of freedom with necessity (Stoic 'destiny') that is often found in ancient texts of ethics, incomprehensible to many modern ears. From this also follows an 'intellectualist' orientation of ethics in which ethics requires understanding ourselves and the world around us, such that for someone like Socrates, evil was a function of a deficiency in knowledge. The Stoics and Spinoza will take up this thread in their ethical injunction to act 'according to Reason'. Hence also an alignment of freedom with discipline and pedagogy, such that one learns how to be free.

One feature which I find overwhelmingly attractive about such approaches to ethics is its situatedness of the self in wider contexts and environments, which can enable and cultivate, or inhibit and stifle such understandings and development of capacities. There is a way of conceiving an entire ecological scaffolding of ethics, which underpins our ethical development or regression. And this is where politics meets ethics, at the point at which we find ourselves in a world with others, which itself can be worked upon to better cultivate (or debilitate) our ethical being. The work of the self becomes incomplete without a concomitant working upon our environments. Only in this way does ethics return to its roots as ethos - a manner of dwelling.

All of this in radical distinction to the solipsism of the fucking will, which bursts out of nowhere from some inner who-knows-what, engineered to be deliberately and radically distinct from any environment or world, meant solely to lash us ever more tightly to God least we burn in hell for not following his dictates. Hence Deleuze's remark that the will in 'free will' is the equivalent to a 'denial of existence itself' and a depreciation of all that does exist. Contrary to this, the ethical tendencies which I've outlined can be found scattered all through - at least - the Western cannon (long before the advent of free-will), and have been picked up by plenty of contemporary authors, if one wants to find them. Our pop-discourse about ethics and freedom remains utterly destitute however.

(They've been like six or seven threads on free will in the past week or so on the forum alone, each consecutive one more miserable than the other).

All of this in radical distinction to the solipsism of the fucking will, which bursts out of nowhere from some inner who-knows-what, engineered to be deliberately and radically distinct from any environment or world, meant solely to lash us ever more tightly to God least we burn in hell for not following his dictates. — StreetlightX

That's great wordage.

(They've been like six or seven threads on free will in the past week or so on the forum alone, each consecutive one more miserable than the other). — StreetlightX

I'm in one of them lately. We're at the point you hinted at, as a revelation even from a free willer that 'free will' has no definition beyond the trivial ones of no coercion and random.

Be sure not to go against God's will, or else…

Quick note: it’s worth considering those ethical moments which follow from necessity: “why did you save the child from drowning?” “I couldn’t do otherwise”. In such a case, responsibility is taken on in the guise of necessity: ‘doing otherwise’ would be seen as an abdication of responsibility, a shirking of ethics, and not its condition of possibility. Further, it is precisely the sense of being driven by necessity that qualifies as freedom from the blind contingency of events: I can't sit idly by and watch the child drown, I must intervene: in this way, I exercise my freedom (or: my freedom is exercised - I am a passive subject of my freedom, which can be traumatising for me), one aligned with what I am able to do, and not with what I 'will'.

A machine is a predetermined compound of abilities - so would you equate man with machine?

In addition, explain having laws - as they would have no sway without the subject possessing the freedom of will, otherwise said, the freedom of self-determination.
Likewise what's the point of the Egyptian ceremony of weighing the heart against the feather of Maat - in other words - what you did versus what you should have done?

Funnily enough, for Aristotle, who had neither the word nor concept of 'machine', slaves were what he called 'animate instruments' (ktema ti empsychon) or 'instruments for instruments' (organon pro organon) (in the Politics). This was precisely in contrast to the free man, or master, who was distinguished by his use of slaves. One of the things this kind of approach brings out what counts as free or not free is not a metaphysical distinction, but a mobile one: that freedom is not coextensive with man as such, but with some men and not others.

Aristotle's analysis of slaves notwithstanding, the takeaway here is that there is no reason to think that man can't be equated with machines, if certain conditions of freedom are not upheld. But thinking in this way would would mean, once again, having to give up the incredibly stupid idea of free will as some kind of a priori metaphysical guarantee of human freedom, served on a plate to man by God. It would require, again, looking at the world, observing conditions, making at effort at understanding, and acting provisionally and with risk. This no doubt offends the sensibilities of those who think humans are in any way special, which can only be a good thing.

In any case, your questions at this point are just poo-lobbing from the monkey pen. They're unthinking knee-jerks beneath response. If you have something substantial and interesting to say, say it. No one gives a fuck about Egyptian ceremonies.

In addition, explain having laws - as they would have no sway without the subject possessing the freedom of will, otherwise said, the freedom of self-determination. — Shamshir

The Devil (the word has a Persian origin) is an image of primal defiance; the existence of a will counter to God's. The message of Genesis is that humans screwed up by listening to the voice of the Devil and should leave behind a free will in favor of a will united with God's. But a person who is all good in every word, thought, and deed would seem to have no will of her own. So in this scenario the idea of a substantial self is directly tied to wrong-doing. The self is a problem, but not the source of good or evil. The sources are out in the cosmos.

This conception of will is similar in some ways to the Stoic version which identifies all evil as a state of disease resulting from straying from the ways of Nature. For the Stoic, evil is always self-correcting because the tree that fails to grow toward the light dies. There's no need to punish it.

In both of these outlooks, laws are divine in origin, which means they come from human discernment, not human judgment. We learn to judge by recognizing the truth of the laws.

Do you think the Egyptian version is like that? Or different?

Funnily enough, for Aristotle, who had neither the word nor concept of 'machine', slaves were what he called 'animate instruments' (ktema ti empsychon) or 'instruments for instruments' (organon pro organon) (in the Politics). This was precisely in contrast to the free man, or master, who was distinguished by his use of slaves. One of the things this kind of approach brings out what counts as free or not free is not a metaphysical distinction, but a mobile one: that freedom is not coextensive with man as such, but with some men and not others. — StreetlightX

Funnily enough I wasn't asking about Aristotle, I was asking you - and without fail, you produce a tangent and no answer.

Now here's a little lesson for clarification.
The word Robot finds its roots with the Bulgaro-Slavic word Rob - meaning slave.
It's in contrast to another similar word - Rab - which means worker.
The difference being in that a slave has no rights, obviously - whereas a worker does, though he serves those higher in rank.
The worker if he wishes to, may stop working - forfeit his rights, and seek his fortune elsewhere.
The slave cannot, as he possesses no rights - he is worked to the bone, metaphorically and literally.

The point of all that being - that the distinction is in the willingless of men to toil, meaning that freedom is in custody of all men, but not exercised by all men.
Which is why it appears coextensive with merely some, rather than all - and has nothing to do with some proprietary status.

So when you say:

This was precisely in contrast to the free man, or master, who was distinguished by his use of slaves.

Neither is it in contrast, nor is that a distinguishing feature - but a proprietary status.

Aristotle's analysis of slaves notwithstanding, the takeaway here is that there is no reason to think that man can't be equated with machines, if certain conditions of freedom are not upheld. — StreetlightX

The certain distinction between machine and man - is that man is fully autonomous.
That would mean that although both could share abilities and freedoms - the machine cannot self-determine, i.e will. It requires an operator, because it is a puppet.

And so it's clear - whether the machine is operated by an artificial intelligence or human intelligence, is irrelevant.

So there you go, that's the difference between you - supposedly a man, and the machine you use to write down all this babble.

But thinking in this way would would mean, once again, having to give up the incredibly stupid idea of free will as some kind of a priori metaphysical guarantee of human freedom, served on a plate to man by God. — StreetlightX

No it wouldn't mean any of that gibberish, you're squeezing in here everytime, to spite something you supposedly don't believe in.

You could have fredom without will, like you could have will without freedom.
What the combination 'free will' suggests is the magnitude of difference between the human psyche and that of an ox, for instance.

It would require, again, looking at the world, observing conditions, making at effort at understanding, and acting provisionally and with risk. This no doubt offends the sensibilities of those who think man is in any way special, which can only be a good thing. — StreetlightX

It would require effort to ride a bike, simply reading a tutorial on riding a bike won't do.
So for you to understand free will, ever, would require the effort that stubbornly refuse to put in thus far.

And man being anything special, isn't only a good thing - it's a thing laden with responsibilities, and those can turn awfully sour.

In any case, your questions at this point are just poo-lobbing from the monkey pen. They're unthinking knee-jerks beneath response. If you have something substantial and interesting to say, say it. No one gives a fuck about Egyptian ceremonies. — StreetlightX

And you being the unthinking knee-jerk decided to respond. Alright.

No one gives a fuck about Egyptian ceremonies?

"A remarkable example of classical Egyptian philosophy is found in a 3,200-year-old text named “The Immortality of Writers.” This skeptical, rationalistic, and revolutionary manuscript was discovered during excavations in the 1920s, in the ancient scribal village of Deir El-Medina, across the Nile from Luxor, some 400 miles up the river from Cairo. Fittingly, this intellectual village was originally known as Set Maat: “Place of Truth.”"

Rest of the article details how the Egyptians were likely the progenitors of Greek philosophy. 'Tis good stuff. — StreetlightX

Could've fooled me.

If you're ever willing to get off your soapbox - from which you, mimic the Inquisition which you ironically dislike, persecuting and mocking anything you dislike - telling people to hang themselves and the like - then come and speak to me.
Until then you're just some whiny brat, who wouldn't dare get his hands dirty, but has the gall to call me out on things you're utterly and worse yet maliciously clueless about.

The Devil (the word has a Persian origin) is an image of primal defiance; the existence of a will counter to God's. The message of Genesis is that humans screwed up by listening to the voice of the Devil and should leave behind a free will in favor of a will united with God's. But a person who is all good in every word, thought, and deed would seem to have no will of her own. So in this scenario the idea of a substantial self is directly tied to wrong-doing. The self is a problem, but not the source of good or evil. The sources are out in the cosmos. — frank

The message of Genesis isn't actually that humans screwed up listening to the Devil - and neither is the Devil implied within the Genesis story. The Devil is a title similar to Satan - in that it means misleader - and it is a title that is implied for many angels, both fallen and not fallen.

The message is actually that the manmaker kept his promise in procuring free will for his creation.
If he were to disallow mankind to make mistakes, he would disallow them free will - so he would have to do what he did with Job, and more or less gamble - having them figure it out themselves.

That said, the Genesis account gets progressively more conflated and chronologically disordered.
It's presented in such a manner that merely reading through it, you're unlikely to understand anything.
There's omissions such as the two Adams and Adam's family prior to Eve.
Whether that's intentional or not - decide for yourself.

That the sources are out there in the cosmos is a good take on things - similar to how the ingredients are out in the field, but the problem of preparing them lies with the cook.

This conception of will is similar in some ways to the Stoic version which identifies all evil as a state of disease resulting from straying from the ways of Nature. For the Stoic, evil is always self-correcting because the tree that fails to grow toward the light dies. There's no need to punish it. — frank

It's also the stance Paracelsus held.
And implied in the proverb: Hurrying to his grave.

In both of these outlooks, laws are divine in origin, which means they come from human discernment, not human judgment. We learn to judge by recognizing the truth of the laws. — frank

Their origin is indeed based on discernment, though their prescription is based on judgement.
The laws of physics are discerned - obviously; but whether they are prescribed to a specific something, falls to judgement - singularities being an obvious example.

Do you think the Egyptian version is like that? Or different? — frank

I would equate the Egyptian version with the Japanese Right way of Being, often conflated with Chinese Taoism.

Really? A quote taken from somewhere else entirely with no relevance to the discussion is a supposed to... have relevance to the discussion? Yeah, nah. And no, for the record, I don't tend to answer one-line 'gotchya' questions, and when I do, I give them responses proportionate to the little squirts of thought-ejaculate that they are.

As for everything else - my point was that the assumption built into your question about man and machine was faulty, or at least in dire need of some semblance of substance. Going ahead and further assuming the significance of the distinction via a little etymology lesson is not an argument but just more assumption. As for speaking about the 'rights' of slaves, one can only laugh at the complete historical anachronism at work here. The very language of 'rights' was invented literally more than a millennia after the time of Aristotle, so to speak of a slave 'not having rights' is about as true as speaking of them as not having iPads. True, but also hilariously misplaced.

And if what I'm 'clueless about' is some kind of boat on a horizon that is logical and also intuitive but can't be argued for - the closest you've got to having said anything of substance about free will - then I fully assume being clueless about a non-sense.

The message of Genesis isn't actually that humans screwed up listening to the Devil - and neither is the Devil implied within the Genesis story. The Devil is a title similar to Satan - in that it means misleader - and it is a title that is implied for many angels, both fallen and not fallen. — Shamshir

So what are we doing? Theology or anthropology? I'm not interested in theology because I'm not a Christian, Jew, or Muslim. If we're studying human society, we look to how the text has been interpreted for the last few millennia, and so we know the Devil is most certainly mentioned in Genesis (newsflash: it's the snake) and the word Devil is Persian in origin. It has the same origin as deva, and it referred to the gods of the nomadic people who eventually became the Indians.

It's like we're having a contest to see who can be most belligerently wrong about human history.

The message is actually that the manmaker kept his promise in procuring free will for his creation.
If he were to disallow mankind to make mistakes, he would disallow them free will - so he would have to do what he did with Job, and more or less gamble - having them figure it out themselves. — Shamshir

Again, you're doing theology, not anthropology. Plus your theology gives rise to the famous puzzle that God apparently set humanity up to fail and then punishes them for it. God the psychopath.

So what are we doing? Theology or anthropology? I'm not interested in theology because I'm not a Christian, Jew, or Muslim. — frank

Neither am I; though it doesn't matter.
That said, one goes hand in hand with the other - whether it's ancient Theology contrived as Mystical Teaching, opposed to modern Theology contrived as Scientific Teaching.

If we're studying human society, we look to how the text has been interpreted for the last few millennia, and so we know the Devil is most certainly mentioned in Genesis (newsflash: it's the snake) and the word Devil is Persian in origin. It has the same origin as deva, and it referred to the gods of the nomadic people who eventually became the Indians. — frank

And I told you, over the last few millenia it's been interpreted and misinterpreted to the extent of debilitation.

No Devil, I reiterate, has been mentioned in the Genesis account - only a serpent, and then that serpent has been interpreted and misinterpreted in volumes.
Mind you it's not the Devil but a Devil, since it's a title, I reiterate, like Satan, or Cherub, or Seraph.

The word is also not of Persian, meaning Avestan origin - and neither did those people produce the Hindu populace. It doesn't refer to the gods of nomads, nor any gods at all - but to teachers, which is what now dubbed gods, was back then.
If you actually say Daiva with a V in front - Vdaiva, it means savvy.

Again, you're doing theology, not anthropology. Plus your theology gives rise to the famous puzzle that God apparently set humanity up to fail and then punishes them for it. God the psychopath. — frank

It's a practical explanation.

God gave instructions on what you could and couldn't do - in the same way a parent instructs their children.
He also didn't tell the serpent to go and trick the two - in the same way a parent wouldn't instruct someone to trick his children with 'free candy'.

No, what he did - was give them time and space to grow up, and they - due to their inexperience - committed to peer pressure and made a rash decision, bringing on the consequences.
As aforementioned in the excerpt about the Stoics - they were punished by their actions, not for.

Unless you're going to call parents psychopaths for giving their children some space, then it doesn't follow that the character in question would be one.

Avestan origin - and neither did those people produce the Hindu populace — Shamshir

Of course Hindus are descendants of the Avesta people. You're quickly sliding off my list of people worth responding to. :(

Take a deep breath and realise that Hindu culture precedes Persia.

Take a deep breath and realise that Hindu culture precedes Persia. — Shamshir

Yes. Hinduism is timeless. :roll:

I agree with you that the libertarian notion: 'free will' in its fullest expression as 'absolutely unconditioned will' is absurd.

What I was looking for though was an account of ancient ideas of moral responsibility which could be rationally consistent with modern ideas of justice. My understanding, such as it is, is that ancient ideas of personal responsibility were, by and large, rationally consistent with revenge models of justice. You would be thought to be responsible in just the way a tiger, or a bolt of lightning, would be thought to be responsible, insofar as humans do, and refrain from doing, only what they can, according to their nature.

The other issue, which is related I suppose, since we are all conditioned to think about personal responsibility and justice in modern "democratic" terms, is whether an alternative model would be firstly understandable, and secondly acceptable, to the person in the street.

So, does the idea of grounding personal responsibility on "can" instead of "will" find a way to be consistent with a logical distinction in kind between human intentional acts and animal acts or natural events? In other words if a human cannot do other than they do, how can human acts be considered to be different in kind from animal acts and natural events, such as to allow rationally justification for imputing moral agency, and the responsibility and culpability that goes with it?

If human acts cannot be rationally distinguished in kind from animal acts and natural events then the whole idea of moral agency seems undermined. I get what you're saying about self-cultivation along Spinozan, Foucauldian or Nietzschean lines, and of course those who can, and want to, cultivate themselves like this will do so, just as those who are able to, and want to, refrain from murder, rape, torture, theft and so on will do so, even assuming determinism. (Saying "can and want to" highlights an interesting point: under the assumption of determinism there would be no distinction between "can" and "want to", because people would always be doing what they want to, unless externally constrained. Also under the assumption of determinism individuals can only want what they want).

But the question of holding people responsible for their actions, not merely because they performed them, but because they could have done otherwise, which seems to be the ordinary, just or fair way of understanding personal responsibility, remains.

So, in short, do you

To begin with the question of justice, I'm not that convinced that there really is any univocal understanding of 'modern' justice. I say this insofar as I'm cognisant of the raging debates that take place in modern philosophy over exactly this question, and understand it to be a rather open field. — StreetlightX

Do you think there are alternatives to the "free will" model of personal responsibility which would be acceptable to the person in the street, i.e. be easy enough to understand and seem consistent with common modern notions of justice and fairness?

To begin with the question of justice, I'm not that convinced that there really is any univocal understanding of 'modern' justice. I say this insofar as I'm cognisant of the raging debates that take place in modern philosophy over exactly this question, and understand it to be a rather open field. Still, I get the drift of your question (a rough shift from revenge to fairness), and I'd point first and foremost to the pedagogic aspect of human freedom that I mentioned previously: the idea that freedom is learned, that we are inducted into more or less mastery over our capacities in a way that equally allows us to disavow or disregard our ethical education.

This capacity for learning is largely (but not altogether) particular to the kind of animals that we are. We have to be put in touch with our natures, as it were. Importantly, it is the necessity of such a discipline of freedom that opens up the moral dimension of human life, in a way largely inaccessible to other animals and say, tidal pools. This is something you'll find for instance in Kant, for whom "man only becomes man by education". Or else for someone like Spinoza for example, it is living 'according to reason' that puts us in touch with (our) nature, and enables us to 'act from virtue'. But it is also the case that we don't always do that, and can act in ways contrary to our reason, and with it, nature.

The big question that gets raised is then over nature itself, and how one can act contrary to nature. That requires a whole discussion in itself, but the main takeaway is that there is definitely room to accomodate the intuition that there is a specificity to human morality that distinguishes our actions from those of hurricanes. In the terms above for instance, we can understand how it is that we might not hold a mentally ill person culpable for their actions: at the limit, such a person might be in-capable of understanding what he or she has done (or is doing), having not had the opportunity to educated into moral sphere. And we can say this without having to recourse to a vocabulary of the 'will' according to which he or she did not 'will' their action.

My understanding, such as it is, is that ancient ideas of personal responsibility were, by and large, rationally consistent with revenge models of justice. — Janus

What ideas would you be referring to here?

Certainly in traditional hunter-gatherers, justice is variably treated as either definitional of the community (ostracisation - "your actions do not belong here") or healing (the removal of "evil spirits" usually). Revenge is, to my knowledge, hardly ever considered a recourse for justice, but a state of competition. The worst example of revenge culture is probably the Papua New Guinean tribes (although much about them is possibly massively overblown). When there is an attack, or a murder, the return attack is spoken of as a matter of pride, of demonstrating status. It's entirely internal to the tribe doing the responding, no judgement is made of the tribe which originally attacked.

So basically, I don't recognise this 'revenge model' of justice. It seems that the problem is with the notion of 'justice' itself. Ancient people (if modern hunter-gatherers are to be used as a proxy, a whole other massive problem!) may not have had a concept of bringing about a 'just' state of affairs at all, only an expedient one.

If true, then what you're looking for is probably not there. The modern notion of justice as related to moral culpability is inextricably linked to the idea of personal, not communal/environmental, responsibility. We still haven't cast off the ideas of Sunday School. All that secularism has done is to put the revenge in the hands of society instead of God.