If the intention is not freely chosen then all of the agent's actions are completely determined by factors that the agent has not freely chosen. — litewave

An intention may be constrained or influence but it doesn't mean that someone cannot try to choose movement in one direction or another. One can try but because of constraints or influences the probability of achieving is unknown. Some choices may have more probable outcomes than others (because of influences and constraints) but who knows? Outcomes are always unpredictable.

While some may couch the issue as Free to Choose Outcome, it appears that Ability to Choose Direction of Action may be a better description of human choice.

If one acts badly because one has acquired a bad habit, one often is responsible for having acquired the bad habit in the first place. — Pierre-Normand

And the acquisition of the habit was completely determined by factors that the agent has not freely chosen, whether those factors were intentions or whatever else.

One does not always act merely on the strength of one's "strongest" antecedent desire, whatever that might mean. — Pierre-Normand

Why else would he act then?

Rather, one acts on desires, values or considerations that one takes to highlight specific features of one's practical situation that are salient on rational and/or moral grounds. — Pierre-Normand

Why would he do that? If he does it intentionally then he does it because of an intention to do so and that intention controls that action.

The idea is not nonsensical at all, we all understand it perfectly well. — John

Yes, we understand it just as perfectly as we used to understand the idea that the sun moves around the earth (everybody can see that) or that the earth is flat (everybody can see that if the earth was round then those on the bottom would fall off it). These are all feelings we have but they are not an accurate picture of reality.

It is just that it is un-analyzable. — John

It is analyzable, as I showed in OP, and it leads to a contradiction. So the idea of libertarian free will is incoherent.

There is no coherent idea of moral responsibility that "doesn't need libertarian free will"; the idea of responsibility without the latter notion collapses into causal responsibility which is the same as with all natural phenomena, and you have definitely not offered any account of such an idea that "doesn't need libertarian free will". — John

But there is a difference between natural phenomena and humans: humans have consciousness and capacity for compassion, without which any notion of morality is meaningless.

But there is a difference between natural phenomena and humans: humans have consciousness and capacity for compassion, without which any notion of morality is meaningless. — litewave

Some people are compassionate and others are not. If determinism is the case then people cannot be praised for possessing, or blamed for failing to possess, compassion. If a person;'s moral responsibility depends on their feeling compassion then only those who do so could be morally responsible.

Your first point is so irrelevant and your second so lamely wrong, that neither warrants any response.

Some people are compassionate and others are not. If determinism is the case then people cannot be praised for possessing, or blamed for failing to possess, compassion. — John

They can still be praised or blamed. Praise and blame are motivators and feedback signals about whether we have done something good or bad.

Your first point is so irrelevant and your second so lamely wrong, that neither warrants any response. — John

The relevance of my first point is this: just because we have a feeling doesn't mean that the feeling is an accurate picture of reality. People have a feeling that the sun moves around the earth, but that doesn't mean that the sun really moves around the earth, even though it was almost universally considered to be so until Renaissance. I don't deny that we may have a feeling of libertarian free will/ultimate control, I just deny that we have libertarian free will/ultimate control.

Regarding my second point, you have never said what was wrong with my argument in OP. You just appealed to praise, blame and moral responsibility, but my argument doesn't depend on that.

. People have a feeling that the sun moves around the earth, but that doesn't mean that the sun really moves around the earth, even though it was almost universally considered to be so until Renaissance. I don't deny that we may have a feeling of libertarian free will/ultimate control, I just deny that we have libertarian free will/ultimate control. — litewave

The question is what is creating feeling (and all other qualia) and why?

The standard answer is that it all emerged out of the Big Bang "soup" as determined by the undefined Laws of Nature which also magically emerged out of the soup. So the essence of the determinism Genesis story is that from nothing came everything, which doesn't explain anything but does satisfy scientists who wish to study humans as mechanical robots.

But the story doesn't quite end there. For some unexplained reasons, the Laws of Nature fool is into the thinking we have Choice. It is a Buddhist-like illusion. Why? But not all of us have this illusion. Some (the determinists) see through the illusion and know they really have no choice. Why does the Laws of Nature allow some to see through the illusion and not others? Why and how? But the mystery goes deeper. Those who are determined (by the Laws of Nature) to see through the illusion are also determined to act as if they don't. Why?

Inquiring minds might question to jus Genesis story, but not Determinists. One of faith doesn't question the ways of the Laws of Nature.

For some unexplained reasons, the Laws of Nature fool is into the thinking we have Choice. It is a Buddhist-like illusion. — Rich

I think the feeling of having ultimate control comes from our ignorance about all the factors that influence us and in totality completely determine us. This ignorance creates the impression that we are ultimately in control of our actions. Even when you see through the illusion it is already so hard wired in us that the feeling remains, like when you rationally recognize an optical illusion but visually it doesn't go away or keeps returning.

Why does the Laws of Nature allow some to see through the illusion and not others? Why and how? — Rich

The illusion may be quite strong and many people just take it for granted and it doesn't even occur to them to question it because they can usually do quite fine with it in everyday life. I took it for granted until some 8 years ago when I had a discussion about free will with my Catholic friends and that compelled me to think about the issue.

I think the feeling of having ultimate control comes from our ignorance about all the factors that influence us and in totality completely determine us. This ignorance creates the impression that we are ultimately in control of our actions. — litewave

Yes, this would be very much akin to Hindu Maya. But what remains to be explained is why Natural Forces would be creating all these illusions but at the same time sleeping people yourself to see through these illusions but not people such as myself? Why are the Laws of Nature (God) playing all of these tricks and precisely which laws are at work?

But what remains to be explained is why Natural Forces would be creating all these illusions but at the same time sleeping people yourself to see through these illusions but not people such as myself? Why are the Laws of Nature (God) playing all of these tricks and precisely which laws are at work? — Rich

It is basically absence of knowledge or awareness. We cannot know or be aware of everything. In order to survive, thrive or reproduce we must focus on that which is important for these goals and not get distracted by other stuff. So there is the limit of mental capacity combined with evolutionary pressures. But when people have more time for philosophizing or perhaps undergo an extraordinary experience that makes them question common wisdom, they may realize something radically new.

Granted. There are always more questions to be asked. In my case, rather than handoff consciousness, creativity, and choice to the Laws of Nature or to God, I felt I would retain it for myself.

And the acquisition of the habit was completely determined by factors that the agent has not freely chosen, whether those factors were intentions or whatever else. — litewave

I would rather say that the relevant factors -- in this case: the fact that the agent isn't engaging in the bad habit for the first time in her life but rather has a history of doing so -- is a manifestation of her free agency that is spread over time.

My main point was to question the picture according to which acts of the human will are decisions that occur in an instant or, at any rate, over a very short period of time when the agent was deliberating. Consider the case of a criminal who plots her crime over a period of months. It is not a good defense for her to say that after having gone to such great lengths to prepare her crime she wasn't emotionally free anymore to refrain from pulling the trigger when the time came. She is not just being blamed for not having changed her mind at the last moment but also for the whole sequence of events -- the premeditation -- that shows what the orientation of her will has been during the protracted period when she was in charge of laying down her own path, as it were, and mustering up the resolve to eventually perform the deed. The very idea that the agent's own character works behind her back, as it were, from moment to moment, to compel her into performing all of her habit forming actions precisely relies on the dubious picture of instantaneous decisions that is shared by many compatibilists and libertarians alike. The picture is dubious because it is separates the agent from the very features of her mind (i.e. her character and habits) that are constitutive of her power of agency. And to operate this separation is incoherent.

One does not always act merely on the strength of one's "strongest" antecedent desire, whatever that might mean.
— Pierre-Normand

Why else would he act then?

As I explained, she acts on the basis of reasons. That doesn't mean that she acts apathetically, as it were, as Mr. Spock maybe would. Rather, the specific desire she choses to act on, among many competing desires, need not be the desire that is the "strongest" when considered in isolation, but rather the desire that she judges to be the one that it is reasonable to be acting upon in the circumstances. And such a choice is a act of practical reason. This is why when you ask someone why they did something, they seldom simply respond trough mentioning a desire except in the case where nothing more than the satisfaction of subjective personal preference hinges in the balance (e.g. why did you choose this particular flavor of ice-cream?) It is not unusual to hear as a response: "I would have much preferred doing ..., but...". What figures in the place of the first ellipse might be what the agent desired most at the time of acting (because it is an intrinsically appealing act to her) and what figures in the place of the second ellipse is something that the agent "desires" to do because she *judges* it to be best to act in this way in the light of her duties, values, commitments, etc.

Rather, one acts on desires, values or considerations that one takes to highlight specific features of one's practical situation that are salient on rational and/or moral grounds.
— Pierre-Normand

Why would he do that? If he does it intentionally then he does it because of an intention to do so and that intention controls that action.

It is no *because* of an intention that an agent acts. The reason why someone acts often is, precisely, the reason. An action shows up as intentional when it is done for some reason or another. This is why when you ask someone why it is that she is doing something, she doesn't usually answer that she intended to do it. This is an example provided by Bede Rundle in Mind in Action, if I remember: Someone asks her neighbor why she is trimming some part of her hedge. The neighbor replies "because I intended to do so". The reason why the answer isn't satisfactory is because the fact that she was doing it intentionally was assumed by the questioner. What the questioner wants to know isn't what sort of thing (e.g. and intention or neural event or something else) causes the action but rather what is the reason the agent has to do what she did. It's only though the disclosure of this reason that the actions will show up intelligibly as the intentional action that it is.

Fafner had usefully explained in an earlier post why actions and the intentions that they manifest are internally (conceptually) connected rather than them being externally (causally) connected through contingent laws of nature that we don't control.

By the way, I just finished reading a nice short paper by Chris Tucker: Agent Causation and the Alleged Impossibility of Rational Free Action. It's just 11 pages long and quite on topic for this thread.

The account of agent-causation that Tucker develops is a little thin on my view, but, to be fair, it's only presented in order to highlight some shortcomings of Galen Strawon's "Basic Argument" against free will and responsibility. Strawson is of course a hard-compatibilist while you yourself are a compatibilist. But Strawson's argument is similar to your own regress argument. It is useful to see how Strawson wields his argument against both compatibilist and incompatibilist accounts of free will. If you attempt to expose flaws in this argument such that compatibilist free will can emerge unscathed, then you may find out that you also open the door to some forms of libertarian free will. And if, on the other hand, you attempts to strenghten the regress argument just enough to rule out agent-causal accounts of free will, you may find out that compatibilists accounts don't escape unscathed either.

They can still be praised or blamed. Praise and blame are motivators and feedback signals about whether we have done something good or bad. — litewave

Of course people can still have feelings of praise and blame; I wasn't disputing that. What I meant is that without the premise of freedom, moral responsibility, and the attitudes of praise and blame that go with it, cannot be rationally justified.

I just deny that we have libertarian free will/ultimate control. — litewave

Yes, but you don't have a cogent argument for that denial, which leads to your second point again.

Regarding my second point, you have never said what was wrong with my argument in OP. You just appealed to praise, blame and moral responsibility, but my argument doesn't depend on that. — litewave

I have said what was wrong with your argument. I have said that all that infinite regress arguments show is that reality cannot be adequately modeled dialectically. I believe I mentioned that this is similar to the case with Zeno's Paradoxes of movement.

Consider another example, which is related to the ancient skeptics' denial of the possibility of knowledge. You say that you know, but how do you know that you know, know that you know that you know, and so on, ad infinitum. This is just like your infinite regress argument about deciding: if you decide, do you decide to decide, decide to decide to decide, and so on ad infinitum?

The answer to both is that before an infinite regress of knowing or deciding can be a cogent idea at all, it must first be presumed that you can know or decide. Of course, this can never be proven; it must simply be assumed before anything at all in the way of discourse or moral philosophy can even get started. The point is that as with all human discourses and sciences the ground cannot itself be grounded.That it might 'somehow' be able to be is the most persistent intellectual illusion that afflicts mankind. And your OP is a prime example of that illusion. If you are going to respond please read more carefully and don't keep distorting what I have said; it really is tiresome.

the fact that the agent isn't engaging in the bad habit for the first time in her life but rather has a history of doing so -- is a manifestation of her free agency that is spread over time. — Pierre-Normand

I agree that the fact that the agent has been repeatedly engaged in an action says something about her character (her relatively stable properties) but it still doesn't give her ultimate control or responsibility for the action. We engage in the activity of breathing all the time and it doesn't give us ultimate control of our breaths even after many years of breathing. But it says something about our nature (namely that we are breathing creatures), which we cannot freely choose.

It is not unusual to hear as a response: "I would have much preferred doing ..., but...". What figures in the place of the first ellipse might be what the agent desired most at the time of acting (because it is an intrinsically appealing act to her) and what figures in the place of the second ellipse is something that the agent "desires" to do because she *judges* it to be best to act in this way in the light of her duties, values, commitments, etc. — Pierre-Normand

Of course we have different kinds of desires - for carnal pleasures, for compassionate love, for duty, etc. - but they are all motivators for the formation of our intentions and the performing of our actions, and all of those desires (and consequently intentions and actions) are ultimately determined by factors over which we have no control.

What the questioner wants to know isn't what sort of thing (e.g. and intention or neural event or something else) causes the action but rather what is the reason the agent has to do what she did. It's only though the disclosure of this reason that the actions will show up intelligibly as the intentional action that it is. — Pierre-Normand

Sure, the questioner obviously assumes that the neighbor's action is intentional, so he is not interested to hear that the neighbor intended to perform the action. He is interested to hear what were the factors that caused/influenced the formation of the intention and consequently the performance of the action.

By the way, I just finished reading a nice short paper by Chris Tucker: Agent Causation and the Alleged Impossibility of Rational Free Action. It's just 11 pages long and quite on topic for this thread. — Pierre-Normand

The article is behind a paywall, but honestly I don't see how the so-called agent causation can save libertarian free will.

Of course people can still have feelings of praise and blame; I wasn't disputing that. What I meant is that without the premise of freedom, moral responsibility, and the attitudes of praise and blame that go with it, cannot be rationally justified. — John

Praise and blame are rationally justified as motivators and feedback signals. Moral responsibility is rationally justified as the capacity for compassionate action.

I have said what was wrong with your argument. I have said that all that infinite regress arguments show is that reality cannot be adequately modeled dialectically. I believe I mentioned that this is similar to the case with Zeno's Paradoxes of movement. — John

Sorry, I forgot about the Zeno reference. Well, Zeno's paradoxes are still regarded as genuine paradoxes? From what I remember, Zeno posited that the movement along a finite route can be cut up into an infinite number of steps (assuming that space and time are infinitely divisible, which, by the way, is denied by quantum gravity) and then he wondered how the movement over an infinite number of steps can ever be completed. The solution lies in the fact that, assuming constant speed, the smaller a step the shorter the time interval it takes. The steps form an infinite geometric series with a finite sum - problem solved.

But how could this help with an infinite series of intentions? We would still have an infinite number of intentions (steps), and they would have to take progressively shorter time intervals so that the total time they take is finite. This is obviously not how it works in reality - no one is conscious of an infinite number of intentions, even if they were squeezed into a finite length of time. Neuroscience actually shows that we are not conscious of what happens during time intervals under the scale of tens of milliseconds. The way our decision making works is that we have a finite number of intentions, the first intention just pops into our minds without our intentionally choosing it and then causes another intention or action - and so our final action is ultimately caused by something we have not freely chosen (the first intention).

Consider another example, which is related to the ancient skeptics' denial of the possibility of knowledge. You say that you know, but how do you know that you know, know that you know that you know, and so on, ad infinitum. This is just like your infinite regress argument about deciding: if you decide, do you decide to decide, decide to decide to decide, and so on ad infinitum? — John

Knowing is a conscious experience, it's a quale of consciousness. No infinite series of steps seems necessary in order to have a conscious experience. For example, I experience pain in my knee - I know there is pain in my knee. Then I might take another step and realize that I know that I know there is pain in my knee. Now I know that I know there is pain in my knee. Again, no infinite regress - I just took two steps.

The article is behind a paywall, but honestly I don't see how the so-called agent causation can save libertarian free will. — litewave

That's unfortunate. However, if you google the four separate words: "Galen Strawson basic argument "(without quotes), then the top two results are (1) a link to The Information Philosopher's page on Galen Strawson, where his "Basic Argument" is summarized, and (2) a link to Strawson's own paper The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility where one version of his argument is developed. The reason why I am pointing you to Strawson's argument is because it seems to express the same worry that you are trying to express (in the form of a regress argument) but it doesn't suffer from the same flaw. It doesn't misconstrue an intentional action as a sort of action that must be controlled by a prior intention in order for it to be intentional. And also, as I mentioned already, if you accept Strawson's argument, then it threatens compatibilist free will just as much as it threatens libertarian free will, which is instructive and may motivate you in trying to figure out what's wrong with it.

Praise and blame are rationally justified as motivators and feedback signals. Moral responsibility is rationally justified as the capacity for compassionate action. — litewave

You still seem to be missing the point; these are justifications in terms of practical, not pure, reason. The point is that you cannot produce a rational model that shows that we are both fully determined in our actions by forces beyond our control, while being at the same time morally responsible for those actions.

But how could this help with an infinite series of intentions? We would still have an infinite number of intentions (steps), and they would have to take progressively shorter time intervals so that the total time they take is finite. This is obviously not how it works in reality - no one is conscious of an infinite number of intentions, even if they were squeezed into a finite length of time. — litewave

When moving no one is conscious of an infinite number of steps that "take progressively shorter time intervals", either. My point was that the whole notion of infinite series is flawed and is a chimera of dialectical reason. Since the notion is flawed it cannot be used to prove a point against radical freedom of intention any more than it can against movement. Also, what leads you to believe that intention must be conscious in order to be free?

Knowing is a conscious experience, it's a quale of consciousness. — litewave

I would not say that knowing is necessarily a conscious experience. But in any case, equally so is the sense of freedom an experience, and certainly at least sometimes conscious. And whether and how you know anything can be doubted and questioned in just the same way as the sense of freedom; precisely by introducing an infinite regress.

I agree that the fact that the agent has been repeatedly engaged in an action says something about her character (her relatively stable properties) but it still doesn't give her ultimate control or responsibility for the action. We engage in the activity of breathing all the time and it doesn't give us ultimate control of our breaths even after many years of breathing. But it says something about our nature (namely that we are breathing creatures), which we cannot freely choose. — litewave

We can't choose not to breathe but we can chose not to lie or steal, for instance; at any rate, we can chose not to do those things unless we have some good overriding reasons not to refrain in specific instances. But although it might be begging the question against the ultimate-responsibility skeptic to say so, my only intent here was to dislodge the picture of responsible action according to which the responsibility of the agent only attaches to her momentary choice -- in the instant when she deliberates and act -- to behave badly and to yield to her bad impulse. We also typically are blaming her for having acquired the bad character that accounts for her having such bad impulses, and that also accounts for her lack of control over them. And this means that we also hold that she was free to choose a different path in the past and not indulge in the behaviors that molded her character in this fashion. That she was thus free to choose a better path in the past must also be argued for separately, of course. But it is important not to assume without argument that acting freely just means being able to make choices regardless of one's present character and motivations.

Of course we have different kinds of desires - for carnal pleasures, for compassionate love, for duty, etc. - but they are all motivators for the formation of our intentions and the performing of our actions, and all of those desires (and consequently intentions and actions) are ultimately determined by factors over which we have no control.

Yes, but I would argue that what normally terminates the chain of "why?" explanations of rational behavior need not be construed as a mental state that one had prior to deciding what to do, but rather one's ultimate reason for doing so. Hence, imagine that the house is burning and, as you escape, you have the opportunity to grab your sleeping child in her bed. If you are doing so it's because you are valuing her life, say. That would be a reasonable explanation of your action. Your intentional life-saving action is grounded on the value that you ascribe to your child's life. In order to start a regress argument, you would have to argue that you were only thus sensitive to this rational consideration because you are a person who values your children's lives. And you would also have to argue that your being such a person isn't something that you have any "ultimate" controls over.

It may be true that you don't have any such "ultimate" control over this in the sense that you were indeed lucky enough not to be raised in circumstances that would have turned you into some sort of a sociopath. A sociopath might be someone who suffers from some form of moral blindness. But it wouldn't make you any freer if you could have, in the past "freely" chosen evenhandedly between becoming a normal compassionate person or a sociopath. Hence, in order to block the regress, it is sufficient to point to the values that motivate you in acting and challenge the proponent of the regress argument to show you why your endorsing such values isn't a rational act.

If the skeptic about ultimate responsibility would rather argue that you weren't free to become such as to be motivated by those values, you can simply reply that you now are free to endorse them, or revise them, on the condition that good reasons might be offered for your doing so. And it is this ability to reassess your own values at each moment of your life (from the time when you became morally and rationally mature) that makes you free and ultimately responsible for your actions.

Sure, the questioner obviously assumes that the neighbor's action is intentional, so he is not interested to hear that the neighbor intended to perform the action. He is interested to hear what were the factors that caused/influenced the formation of the intention and consequently the performance of the action.

I was arguing that she wanted to hear the reasons why her neighbor was trimming her hedge. The question of the causal factors that were implicated in her becoming aware of those reasons is a different question. It may relate to the explanation of her having the ability to act intentionally, but not to the explanation why she exercised this ability in the present circumstances. When you ask someone why she is doing something, you don't normally mean to inquire why she had an ability to behave rationally. (That's just because she is a normal human being). You rather are assuming that she is rational and are inquiring about the specific reasons she may have in the present circumstances.

The reason why I am pointing you to Strawson's argument is because it seems to express the same worry that you are trying to express (in the form of a regress argument) but it doesn't suffer from the same flaw. It doesn't misconstrue an intentional action as a sort of action that must be controlled by a prior intention in order for it to be intentional. — Pierre-Normand

According to the Information Philosopher's website, Strawson's argument says that a free action must be the function of the agent's mental state. I don't know how else to interpret this than that a free action must be influenced by the agent's mental state. Acting for a reason means acting influenced by a reason. And at some point before the action the mental state must include an intention to act, otherwise the action cannot be intentional and thus free.

And also, as I mentioned already, if you accept Strawson's argument, then it threatens compatibilist free will just as much as it threatens libertarian free will, which is instructive and may motivate you in trying to figure out what's wrong with it. — Pierre-Normand

How does Strawson's argument threaten compatibilist free will?

You still seem to be missing the point; these are justifications in terms of practical, not pure, reason. The point is that you cannot produce a rational model that shows that we are both fully determined in our actions by forces beyond our control, while being at the same time morally responsible for those actions. — John

The kind of moral responsibility you want is itself irrational and incoherent so there is no rational model that can justify it.

When moving no one is conscious of an infinite number of steps that "take progressively shorter time intervals", either. — John

But when you intend to do something you must be conscious of intending to do it - you must be conscious of the intention.

My point was that the whole notion of infinite series is flawed and is a chimera of dialectical reason. — John

What is flawed about infinite series? It's a mathematical object.

I would not say that knowing is necessarily a conscious experience. — John

If knowing is unconscious then I can't say that I know, simply because I am unconscious of knowing. No infinite regress appears.

But in any case, equally so is the sense of freedom an experience, and certainly at least sometimes conscious. And whether and how you know anything can be doubted and questioned in just the same way as the sense of freedom; precisely by introducing an infinite regress. — John

You can stop at something that is evidently true or plausible.

We can't choose not to breathe but we can chose not to lie or steal — Pierre-Normand

Ultimately, we can't choose anything (because everything we do is ultimately determined by factors over which we have no control). If we have more time or opportunities to do something then there may be a greater probability that we will do it, but ultimately we can't choose it.

Hence, in order to block the regress, it is sufficient to point to the values that motivate you in acting and challenge the proponent of the regress argument to show you why your endorsing such values isn't a rational act. — Pierre-Normand

I say that the regress of intentions must be blocked at some point. If the first intention is caused by values, so be it.

I was arguing that she wanted to hear the reasons why her neighbor was trimming her hedge. The question of the causal factors that were implicated in her becoming aware of those reasons is a different question. — Pierre-Normand

But reasons are causal factors too. Acting for a reason means being influenced by the reason.

The kind of moral responsibility you want is itself irrational and incoherent so there is no rational model that can justify it. — litewave

I have already agreed that it is not rationally consistent with the scientific view of nature, and that it cannot be justified by pure rationality. But then neither can causality be justified by pure rationailty or induction, as Hume showed. .The radical account of freedom is not, on account of it's being unable to be modeled consistently with causality, incoherent, either. The two models, of natural action and human intentional action, are simply incommensurable.

But when you intend to do something you must be conscious of intending to do it - you must be conscious of the intention. — litewave

Not at all, humans act in accordance with unconscious intentions all the time.

What is flawed about infinite series? It's a mathematical object. — litewave

What is flawed is the claim that infinite series reflect the real. They are products of dialectical reasoning which can only model the real to a limited degree.

If knowing is unconscious then I can't say that I know, simply because I am unconscious of knowing. No infinite regress appears. — litewave

There is no contradiction in saying that you could know without knowing that you know. The sorts of problems you are wrestling with arise when you take simplistic models to be the reality.

You can stop at something that is evidently true or plausible. — litewave

Exactly, and the reality of radical human freedom is eminently "evidently true or plausible" despite the limitations of the discursive intellect to understand it. It's all about being realistic and acknowledging the limits of your capacity to understand dialectically. Freedom can neither be proven nor disproven; whether you intellectually accept it as a reality or not depends entirely on presuppositions which cannot be justified by discursive reasoning; it's always going to be a leap of faith. On the other hand you cannot really doubt your own freedom and responsibility in your heart and as C S Peirce said:
“Let us not doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts.”

Ultimately, we can't choose anything (because everything we do is ultimately determined by factors over which we have no control). If we have more time or opportunities to do something then there may be a greater probability that we will do it, but ultimately we can't choose it. — litewave

This sounds more like a hard determinist line than a compatibilist line. The sort of thing that a compatibilist might say -- someone like Daniel Dennett, for instance -- is that people can chose to perform specific actions, and avoid performing other actions, even though whenever they make such choices there wasn't any possibility for them to have done anything else. It is rather hard determinists who claim that the lack or an ability "to have done otherwise" precludes the ability to chose at all. (Although some compatibilists also assert that possession of the general ability to have done otherwise is consistent with the impossibility of its being exercised in the specific situation).

Hard determinists such as Galen Strawson or Derk Pereboom deny that free will and moral responsibility are compatible with determinism (and also with indeterminism!) but they maintain that praise and blame, reward and punishment, can nevertheless be justified on utilitarian grounds, which seems to be your position. Your position therefore seems to be identical with the position that philosophers who defend it qualify as hard determinism (or hard incompatibilism) but you would rather call it "compatibilism" for some reason.

Another option is to maintain that free will and responsibility don't require "ultimate responsibility". In order to defend such an option, you still need to contend with Strawson's Basic Argument, it seems to me. It would seem especially important that you would do so on account of the fact that your own regress argument is similar to Strawson's.

I say that the regress of intentions must be blocked at some point. If the first intention is caused by values, so be it.

Sure, this "blocks" the regress. (Rather: it terminates the regress at some point in the past where the agent wasn't responsible). But it block the regress in favor of the hard determinist, and not in favor of the the compatibilist. The compatibilist wishes to block the regress in such a manner that the agent's responsibility for her own actions isn't removed!

But reasons are causal factors too. Acting for a reason means being influenced by the reason

For sure. Whenever an agent acts intentionally in a context where she might be held (or hold herself) to be responsible for what she did, then her behavior is a manifestation of her being sensitive to some rational consideration or other. When the reason was bad, we may blame her and when the reason was good we may sometimes praise her (if there is some point in doing so). We blame her (or she feels remorse or expresses regrets) when her having had a bad reason for acting reflects badly on her character.

However, reasons thus construed as abstract features of the agent's practical situation that she might rightly or wrongly take to be justifying her behavior aren't antecedent causes of her action in the same way mental states such as beliefs and desires might be. It makes sense to say, retrospectively, that wrong beliefs or questionable motivations might have "caused" you to act badly and that they might, in some circumstances, absolve you in part of your responsibility. (You were not free to do the right thing on account of a lack of knowledge that you couldn't have had, or because of an addiction that clouds your judgement, say). But in the case where you are well informed and don't suffer (through no fault of your own) from some addiction, say, then to say that you had no choice in doing what you did because you were "influenced" by you reason for doing so doesn't seem to make sense. Freedom from rationality isn't freedom at all. It's just being unmoored.

I have already agreed that it is not rationally consistent with the scientific view of nature, and that it cannot be justified by pure rationality. — John

Libertarian free will is a logically contradictory concept because it requires that a free action be intended and not intended. Intended because we cannot control our unintended actions. And not intended because an intended action is controlled by an intention we cannot choose.

Not at all, humans act in accordance with unconscious intentions all the time. — John

If you postulate unconscious intentions you might as well say that unconscious robots have intentions too. But such an intention could hardly be the basis for free will because we cannot control an action when we are not conscious of intending to do it. At most we could helplessly watch it unfold.

What is flawed is the claim that infinite series reflect the real. They are products of dialectical reasoning which can only model the real to a limited degree. — John

You can cut up a finitely long interval into an infinite number of parts and then, using calculus, add them up to get the exact finite length of the interval.

Freedom can neither be proven nor disproven; whether you intellectually accept it as a reality or not depends entirely on presuppositions which cannot be justified by discursive reasoning; it's always going to be a leap of faith. — John

In the case of libertarian free will it would be a leap of faith into logical contradiction, hoping that a triangle is a circle.

On the other hand you cannot really doubt your own freedom and responsibility in your heart and as C S Peirce said:
“Let us not doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts.” — John

Hopefully he was not a flat earth proponent; that belief was banished from (most) people's hearts centuries ago.

This sounds more like a hard determinist line than a compatibilist line. — Pierre-Normand

In my understanding of compatibilism, a compatibilist admits that all our actions are ultimately determined by factors over which we have no control but he also claims that we have control and thus free will in the sense that we can do what we want to do or what we intend to do without feeling coerced to do it. Thus a compatibilist denies ultimate free will and ultimate responsibility but accepts free will and responsibility in a limited sense. Yeah, it is a utilitarian and pragmatic approach but it does appeal to an important sense of the idea of freedom - freedom to do what we want.

But in the case where you are well informed and don't suffer (through no fault of your own) from some addiction, say, then to say that you had no choice in doing what you did because you were "influenced" by you reason for doing so doesn't seem to make sense. — Pierre-Normand

Well, your reasons include the information you have. A person who acts for wrong (detrimental) reasons should be corrected, through advice, education, therapy, blame or punishment, or his freedom to act should be restrained.

Libertarian free will is a logically contradictory concept because it requires that a free action be intended and not intended. Intended because we cannot control our unintended actions. And not intended because an intended action is controlled by an intention we cannot choose. — litewave

The intention is the choosing; whether that choosing is conscious or not. You are confusing yourself by reifying abstract notions. I don't have any more time or energy to devote to trying to clear up your confusions, since it has become abundantly clear to me that you don't want them to be cleared up.

In my understanding of compatibilism, a compatibilist admits that all our actions are ultimately determined by factors over which we have no control but he also claims that we have control and thus free will in the sense that we can do what we want to do or what we intend to do without feeling coerced to do it. Thus a compatibilist denies ultimate free will and ultimate responsibility but accepts free will and responsibility in a limited sense. Yeah, it is a utilitarian and pragmatic approach but it does appeal to an important sense of the idea of freedom - freedom to do what we want. — litewave

Most contemporary compatibilists (I say "most", but I don't actually know of any actual exception) defend a view of compatibilist freedom and responsibility that requires more from an agent than her simply being free from the feeling of coercion when she acts. One of the main points of contention between compatibilists and hard determinists concerns the source or our desires, or of our wanting what we want, when we are indeed "doing what we want". Pretty much everyone agrees that, in cases where we don't have any sort of control over our own desires (or on our desires' effectiveness in making us acting on them) then we aren't free even if we don't feel being coerced.

The classical example concerns the nicotine addict who wishes that she would not desire to smoke but can't help but acting on this desire. If we imagine that she indeed is powerless in getting rid of her addiction (and may be blameless for her having acquired it, let us suppose) then, in a clear sense, her addiction constitutes a restriction on her freedom. And that is the case even if whenever that person lights up a cigarette nobody else is coercing her and she is doing what she most wants to do at that time.

Harry Frankfurt has famously developed a "Second Order Desire" theory of free will in order to deal with cases such as addiction. This theory ran into new problems so Frankfurt later patched it up into his more recent "Deep Self" view. You can looks those up; there is an abundant literature about them. (Many other compatibilists such as John Martin Fisher, Michael Smith, Susan Wolf and Kadri Vihvelin hold roughly similar views). I don't think any one of those compatibilist views is entirely successful, but the main point is that the mere absence of a feeling that one is being coerced by an external agent, or from external circumstances (e.g. from being locked up in a room) isn't sufficient for guaranteeing the sort of freedom that grounds rational and/or moral responsibility. And that this is the case is a point that compatibilist philosopher generally grant to the hard compatibilist.

Let me also mention another related reason why the simple form of compatibilism that would equate freedom of the will with the absence of felt external coercion, or of external impediments, is unsatisfactory: On such a simple account, mature human beings wouldn't be anymore or any less free than dogs and cows are. However, we don't hold dogs and cows morally responsible for what they do (although we may reward or punish then when this is effective). So, there ought to be something more to our own freedom on account of which we can hold ourselves responsible for what we do than merely being uncoerced by external agents or circumstances.

Well, your reasons include the information you have. A person who acts for wrong (detrimental) reasons should be corrected, through advice, education, therapy, blame or punishment, or his freedom to act should be restrained.

I'll come back to this at a later time.

Let me also mention another reason why the simple form of compatibilism that would equate freedom of the will with the absence of felt external coercion, or external impediment, is that, on such a simple account, mature human beings wouldn't be anymore or any less free than dogs and cows are. — Pierre-Normand

What you say here leads me to highlight something about litewave's determinism. According to it, there is no source of action that is not an "external coercion" or "external impediment"; whether it is "felt" or not is really a matter of indifference. The idea of a self that originates intention is simply seen as an illusion on that view. The whole notion of moral responsibility is logically inconsistent with such a view, which is what I have been, apparently unsuccessfully, trying to point out. On such a view all circumstances are extenuating circumstances.

Clearly our brains are just highly complex and messy computers, they take information in, process it as determined by their design (as set by evolution) and output thoughts and intentions.
The simply fact that ALL our thoughts and intentions can be described as coming from genes and experiences, shows that we are not the originator of our thoughts and intentions, it simply makes no sense at all to say that 'we' created them.
Our brains did, sure. but 'we' ( the conspicuous experience) simply witnessed the result, we took no part in it. just as our bodies pump blood, our brains come up with thoughts entirely outside of our influence.

i feel that this sentence really does eviscerate the notion of 'free will';

'To say that you could have done otherwise, is simply to say that the universe could have been different at that exact point in time'