Intention is a mental state, a desire that stimulates and directs action. If the intention was not caused by an antecedent act of will then it was not intended - it formed in our minds without our intending to do so and thus without our control. — litewave

I can grant you that there does not occur an intention, or an intentional action (in progress), without an act of will. But the content of the act of will isn't any different than the content of the intention. If you intend to walk to the corner store in order to buy a dozen of eggs, then what might the content of your "act of will" be such that it would "stimulate" the intention? That seems confused. The intention and the act of will just are two names for the very same thing. Can you imagine an act of will that would somehow fail to constitute the corresponding intention?

I have no idea what you meant here. Computers - causal machines - can perform logical and mathematical operations, so why would humans need something non-causal to perform such operations? — litewave

I wasn't here arguing that human beings "need" something non-causal. I just pointed out what ought to be uncontroversial, but that you seemingly are overlooking: And this is the fact that knowledge of actual physical laws, or of past historical facts, isn't required for one to assess the soundness of a mathematical demonstration. Do you disagree with my example? Do you hold that our judgments regarding the soundness of a putative proof of Goldbach's conjecture ought to be held hostage to potential new discoveries about the laws of physics or about the distant historical past?

We act based on the limited information we have. That doesn't mean that our thought processes are non-causal. — litewave

What I am arguing is that the limited information that we have regarding our present practical situations often (or at least sometimes) is sufficient for us to make sound rational of moral judgments. And in those cases where such knowledge is sufficient, any sort of information about the fundamental laws of physics (if there are any), or the distant historical past, generally is irrelevant to the correctness of our judgements. They may be relevant to the explanation how it came about that we acquired our abilities to think rationally, and to be swayed by moral considerations, but they don't have any relevance to our evaluation of the validity and soundness of our judgments.

We act based on the limited information we have. That doesn't mean that our thought processes are non-causal. — litewave

I am not arguing that our thought process is non-causal, or causal. I am not talking about any sort of process. The working of our brains is causal and "mechanical", in some way. But our judgments are constrained by norms. To know how our "thoughts" are caused doesn't tell us whether those thoughts constitute sound judgments anymore than knowing the physical principles that govern the behavior of a computer tells us whether or not the program that it runs is buggy. Appeals to rational or functional norms are irreducible to causal explanations. And that's because things that flout norms (buggy computers or irrational agents) still obey the laws of nature perfectly (or rather, their material constituents do). Judgments can be right or wrong, but laws of nature just are what they are. This is why you can't learn right from wrong through studying the laws of nature or the manner in which material things are governed by them.

Some inherited agressive tendencies, which may contribute to explaining why some people commit murder or rape, may have had evolutionary advantages in the past and have been selected for that reason. That doesn't make rape or murder moral. Just because a form of behavior has a tendency to promote survival and reproduction doesn't make such behaviors moral. — Pierre-Normand

Evolution promotes values that are beneficial to survival, health and reproduction. Not all of those values can be regarded as moral. Morality is based primarily on one of the values that evolution promotes: compassion. It is an important value that facilitates emotional and cooperative bonds between people and seems to be part of the integrative processes in our minds.

I had asked you if you knew a contemporary compatibilist philosopher who endorses such a simplistic conception of an act of free will. — Pierre-Normand

The Wikipedia article gave the essense of compatibilist free will: it is the freedom to act according to one's motives without obstruction. You can analyze and differentiate what the "motives" or "obstruction" are but compatibilist free will remains compatible with the fact that everything we do is ultimately determined by factors over which we have no control, while libertarian free will is not.

If you intend to walk to the corner store in order to buy a dozen of eggs, then what might the content of your "act of will" be such that it would "stimulate" the intention? — Pierre-Normand

It would be an intention that stimulates an intention. For example, you have the intention to eat eggs. This intention, along with other factors, may stimulate your intention to go to the corner store to buy some eggs.

The intention and the act of will just are two names for the very same thing. Can you imagine an act of will that would somehow fail to constitute the corresponding intention? — Pierre-Normand

If the intention to do an action and the intended action itself are one thing then I don't see how we can have control of our actions. It seems we would have no time to plan the action or think about it in advance because when we intend to do it it is already happening.

And this is the fact that knowledge of actual physical laws, or of past historical facts, isn't required for one to assess the soundness of a mathematical demonstration. — Pierre-Normand

So what? Even when we don't know physical laws or the past state of the universe they still influence us and everything we do we do within their context.

Appeals to rational or functional norms are irreducible to causal explanations. And that's because things that flout norms (buggy computers or irrational agents) still obey the laws of nature perfectly (or rather, their material constituents do). — Pierre-Normand

But norms are just another factor that causally influences us. They are simply values or habits that influence our mental and physical actions.

Evolution promotes values that are beneficial to survival, health and reproduction. Not all of those values can be regarded as moral. Morality is based primarily on one of the values that evolution promotes: compassion. It is an important value that facilitates emotional and cooperative bonds between people and seems to be part of the integrative processes in our minds. — litewave

You can't cast the content of moral thought solely in evolutionary terms. If you are going to grant that evolutionary pressures account for both moral and immoral tendencies, then you have thereby failed to account for our ability to distinguish between those two sorts of tendencies. And yet, we are able to do so.

While it may be the case that some of our naturally evolved cognitive abilities and emotional tendencies (e.g. a capacity for empathy) are required for sustaining our ability to make moral judgments, those evolved tendencies aren't guaranteed to yield sound moral judgments, or even to have sound moral judgment as their aims, and they indeed often don't. The only ultimate aim that they have is reproductive fitness, and this is something distinct from the aim of morality.

The Wikipedia article gave the essense of compatibilist free will: it is the freedom to act according to one's motives without obstruction. You can analyze and differentiate what the "motives" or "obstruction" are but compatibilist free will remains compatible with the fact that everything we do is ultimately determined by factors over which we have no control, while libertarian free will is not. — litewave

This is only a negative characterization of "compatibilist free will". Of course, saying that one is a compatibilist just is to say that one holds that the capacity of free will isn't inconsistent with universal determinism. When you want to go further than that and specifies what it is about free will that characterizes it a such (i.e. as being "free" in the relevant sense) and that is being alleged to be compatible with determinism, then the overwhelming majority of philosophers stress the essential connection of freedom with responsibility. This is also the ground for denying the ascription of free will to non-rational animals; and the reason why absence of compulsion doesn't cut it as a criterion.

The SEP article that I quoted makes this clear. Interestingly enough, while I don't know any contemporary compatibilist philosopher (as apparently you don't either) who doesn't stress this essential connection between freedom, in the relevant sense, and personal responsibility, there are a few libertarian philosophers who seem not to bother too much with it. This is why libertarian accounts sometimes run into the 'luck objection' or the 'problem of intelligibility'. But if your own account of "compatibilist free will" happily dispenses with the necessary connection with responsibility, then that would seem to make it indistinguishable from some crude libertarian accounts. If our deep motives can be necessary outcomes of the impersonal laws of nature then they may just as well be the contingent outcomes of random quantum fluctuations. It wouldn't seem to make any difference as far as our freedom and responsibility are concerned.

It would be an intention that stimulates an intention. For example, you have the intention to eat eggs. This intention, along with other factors, may stimulate your intention to go to the corner store to buy some eggs. — litewave

When you do X in order to do Y then your doing X can be construed as a manifestation of your intention to to Y. If you are breaking eggs in order to make an omelet, then your breaking eggs isn't merely "caused" by your intention to make a omelet. It is rather part your action of making an omelet. This is why Elizabeth Anscombe explained intentional actions (in progress) as exercises of practical instrumental rationality. Actions and their "parts" are internally structured by means-end relationships. Furthermore, the instrumental rational abilities that are being exercised while acting are constitutive of those abilities to act intentionally at all. If you don't know that (and how) you must break eggs in order to make an omelet then you don't know how to make an omelet either.

So, the sense in which the intention to Y "causes" the intention to X, in the case where you are intending to do X in order to do Y doesn't refer to the same sort of causal relation that holds between throwing a rock at a window and the window breaking. It is a manifestation of instrumental rationality, and this rational ability is internal to the agent's own ability to Y. So, saying that intending to Y causes your intending to X is rather like saying that your believing that 102 is an even number causes your belief that 102 isn't a prime number. This is misleading, at best. It is better to say that your knowledge that even numbers above 2 aren't prime is constitutive of your ability to judge that 102 (or any other even numbers above 2) isn't prime. In any case, it should not be construed on the model of causation between events in accordance with natural laws.

So what? Even when we don't know physical laws or the past state of the universe they still influence us and everything we do we do within their context. — litewave

I am not arguing that the laws of nature, and whatever may be happening in my brain, or my past education, experience, etc., don't "influence" what I do (whatever those "influences" on my thinking may amount to, exactly). What I am saying is that *all* of those influences and "causal factors" are utterly irrelevant to the question of the validity and soundness of the mathematical demonstration that you are purporting to evaluate. Your only guidance for doing this is your knowledge of sound principles of mathematical reasoning. If someone is going to challenge your understanding of those principles, or the manner you are bringing them to bear to a specific problem, then it is only incumbent on that person to make a rational argument. The laws of physics and the past "causes" of your mental states, whatever they may be, are irrelevant. Only the rational 'form' of your thinking is relevant.

Again, some of those causal antecedents may be necessary in accounting for your having developed the necessary cognitive skills. But when you have developed them to a point sufficient for your becoming intellectually autonomous -- for your having acquired an ability to think rationally -- then, from that point on, what it is that is relevant to governing your thinking are the rational principles that you have come to understand. And those principles are not hostage to any sort of future discovery about the deep workings of the physical universe or the specific inter-connectivity of your brain cells.

But norms are just another factor that causally influences us. They are simply values or habits that influence our mental and physical actions. — litewave

This is incorrect because the manner in which norms of sound reasoning (either practical reasoning or theoretical reasoning) govern our behaviors and our thinking when we understand them is categorically different from the manner in which physical events cause physical effets in accordance with laws of nature.

One intuitive way to highlight this categorical difference between laws and norms is by appeal to the idea of direction-of-fit that has been popularized by John L. Austin and his student John Searle, but that apparently traces back to Aquinas. The main idea is very simple. The Earth is caused to orbit the Sun along its actual trajectory in accordance with Newton's laws of motion and of universal gravitation. If, however, there is a deviation between the "laws" and the actual trajectory, then there is something wrong with our understanding of the laws. Our knowledge of them must be revised (although, oftentimes, a merely apparent violation of the laws can be accounted for by some external influence). In any case, the Earth is not breaking any actual law of nature. On the other hand, if a computer, a cat, or a human being behaves in a way that fails to accord with a norm of design, a biological norm, or a norm of reasoning, respectively, then that doesn't show that there anything wrong with our understanding of the norms. That may rather show that the computer is buggy, the mouse is sick, or the human being is irrational.

This is in part why our sensitivity to norms of sound practical reasoning don't account for our behaviors being in accord with them (or failing to be in accord with them) in the same way laws of nature account for material effects following material causes in accordance with them.

You can't cast the content of moral thought solely in evolutionary terms. If you are going to grant that evolutionary pressures account for both moral and immoral tendencies, then you have thereby failed to account for our ability to distinguish between those two sorts of tendencies. And yet, we are able to do so. — Pierre-Normand

If evolution produces desire for sex and desire for sugar does that mean we can't distinguish between these two desires? Of course not. Evolution produces different values and we can distinguish them. Compassion and morality are just one of them.

The only ultimate aim that they have is reproductive fitness, and this is something distinct from the aim of morality. — Pierre-Normand

Morality is related to that. As I said, compassion facilitates bonds between people and is part of our ability of mental integration. These are abilities that also facilitate survival and reproduction.

This is only a negative characterization of "compatibilist free will". — Pierre-Normand

"Without obstruction" is the negative part. "According to one's motives" is the positive part.

But if your own account of "compatibilist free will" happily dispenses with the necessary connection with responsibility, then that would seem to make it indistinguishable from some crude libertarian accounts. — Pierre-Normand

Moral responsibility is the ability to behave compassionately. Since it requires a high level of consciousness (including compassion and intelligence) it is primarily expected of humans rather than animals. It becomes a value when evolution reaches human level.

So, the sense in which the intention to Y "causes" the intention to X, in the case where you are intending to do X in order to do Y doesn't refer to the same sort of causal relation that holds between throwing a rock at a window and the window breaking. — Pierre-Normand

I see no reason to postulate a different sort of causation. The causation between mental events happens in our heads but it boils down to electromagnetic forces that also work outside our heads. Even if the causation in our heads or minds was based on a different kind of forces it still wouldn't affect my argument in OP.

So, saying that intending to Y causes your intending to X is rather like saying that your believing that 102 is an even number causes your belief that 102 isn't a prime number. — Pierre-Normand

I see no problem with it. One thought (mental state) causes another through neural forces. Computers can perform such mathematical and logical operations too.

What I am saying is that *all* of those influences and "causal factors" are utterly irrelevant to the question of the validity and soundness of the mathematical demonstration that you are purporting to evaluate. — Pierre-Normand

But we are able to perform such an evaluation thanks to those causal factors. We cannot do it without them.

Your only guidance for doing this is your knowledge of sound principles of mathematical reasoning. — Pierre-Normand

And this knowledge is encoded in neural states that exert causal influence on other neural states.

This is in part why our sensitivity to norms of sound practical reasoning don't account for our behaviors being in accord with them (or failing to be in accord with them) in the same way laws of nature account for material effects following material causes in accordance with them. — Pierre-Normand

Human behavior can be very complex because it is influenced by many factors. The norms that are incorporated in our minds exert causal influence on our behavior just like gravity exerts causal influence on objects in its field. Just because we may not behave according to the influence of the norms doesn't mean that the norms don't exert causal influence on our behavior. Just because a helium balloon rises and thus goes against the influence of gravity doesn't mean that gravity doesn't exert causal influence on it. It just means, in both cases, that also other causal factors are involved in the situation and the resultant behavior is the result of the joint influence of all factors involved.

The idea that the possible validity of the concept of Free will should be considered as contingent on the truth or falsehood of whether humans could be capable of an irreducible autonomy of choice per se is perhaps an over simplification. For example, no one would dispute that my ‘descion’ as to whether I will commit an act of theft involves the ‘choice’ on my part as to whether or not I will observe a morally based injunction whereas my ‘descion’ as to whether for example I will comb my hair to the left or to the right involves no such consideration.
Regarding such a distinction that might plausibly additionally influence my ‘choice’ of action there then immediately occurs the question as to how I might ‘know’ an act to be immoral and in this connection it can surely be observed that there exists in practice ‘degrees’ of moral awareness. As an example, the novelist Dostoyevsky was absolutely opposed to the idea of capital punishment on the grounds of a personal experience he underwent which, he avowed, had imparted him a knowledge of the nature of this act as a reality which he could not otherwise have vicariously suspected:
As is well known, when a young man, Dostoyevsky along with some comrades was sentenced to death by firing squad for a political crime. Of course no external observer could vicariously suspect the degree of terror which this prospect had then inculcated within those sentenced during the weeks approaching their execution date. - Dostoyevsky vividly subsequently described for example the trance-like state of himself and his comrades during the grisly process of head-shaving and being made to put on mortuary gowns that occurred the night before the appointed execution. – The following morning of course, at a prearranged moment when the firing squad were about to pull their triggers, an emissary from the Tsar theatrically appeared to proclaim that their sentence had been commuted to imprisonment and thus that the prisoners should be untied from their stakes - by which time one of the members of the group had succumbed to insanity from which they were never to recover.
Dostoyevsky thereafter maintained that he absolutely knew as a result of this experience that his life-long implacable opposition to capital punishment as an act constituted a type of objective moral knowledge regarding its’ iniquity capable of transcending what in others might effectively be unconscious influences on their personal perception of its justification.
Multitudes of individuals will of course by chance have encountered various such profound experiences relating to all sorts of moral dilemmas, most of them being anonymous and unreported. But on the basis of such reported experience there does exist a theory that the idea of a moral autonomy ultimately capable of transcending neural determinants may be valid and therefore that the free will problem regarding moral choice is really one related to the nature of moral knowledge rather than causality. The convoluted and less significant question of amoral autonomy is regarded by this theory as being a logically distinct matter the investigation of which is more suited to neural science than philosophy.
Did this a bit rushed – but my excuse is I’m plumb out of time right now! 

But on the basis of such reported experience there does exist a theory that the idea of a moral autonomy ultimately capable of transcending neural determinants may be valid and therefore that the free will problem regarding moral choice is really one related to the nature of moral knowledge rather than causality. — Robert Lockhart

I don't understand why Dostoyevsky's aversion to death penalty would need a non-neural or non-causal explanation. Isn't it obvious that it was caused by his terrifying experience?

The idea is that the moral knowledge of the reality of, for example, capital punishment acquired by personal experience confers an understanding if it's nature that cannot be vicariously acquired - ex by an intellectual analysis - and that such a type of knowledge could supercede unconscious neural influences (like how you might say have a disposition towards capital punishment borne of cultural values or borne of an innate instinct in your personality towards severity) thus conferring a capacity to defer from the act consequent on an objective knowledge of its actual nature and independant of primitive neural instincts - The same principle applying regarding any experience acting to confer personal knowledge of the reality of any act having moral relevance. Moral autonomy - i.e . - the ability to perceive moral values independant of unconscious influence - being de facto free will. If you were ignorant of the actual reality of a morally relevant act and such knowledge could in principle only be acquired through personal experience then - even if in principle it were the case that you possessed a personal capacity for autonomy regarding amoral acts - how could you know what moral choice to make, whereas such knowledge even if the idea of amoral autonomy be false perhaps could, if the claims made by individuals such as Dostoievsky to possessing unqualifiiable moral awareness based on their personal experience were valid, supercede the otherwise determining effects of unconscious neural influence in perceiving objective moral values.

Well, by acquiring knowledge our understanding and abilities expand and that may help us in living a more fulfilled life, in finding more effective ways of satisfying our desires and needs, or in being more compassionate and moral. That would be an expansion in compatibilist freedom.

The fundamental principle of this theory is that any putative capacity of Free Will - as this concept relates to the possibility of moral as distinct from amoral autonomy – would be descended from moral knowledge and that it is logically impossible for an individual to wilfully assent to an act he thus personally knows to be immoral, with the caveat that moral knowledge is not a type of understanding susceptible to being acquired intellectually - and by extension vicariously - but only by means of personal experience. The theory reconciles the principle of irreducible individual moral autonomy with the principle of Determinism by regarding personal experience as the causal element from which such autonomy subsequently would be descended.

Consequently this theory regards any attempt to investigate the possible validity of Free Will by means of a type of causal analysis – ex by considering issues related to the complex and perhaps inseparable interplay occurring between individual neural idiosyncrasy and environment – to be appropriate only to the question of free will as this is related to amoral choice and to be a methodology irrelevant to an investigation of the possibility of moral autonomy, the latter problem being viewed as a subset of the problem of moral knowledge.

In this regard, the questions viewed as relevant to the consideration of the possibility of moral free will are:

1) Is the idea of objective morality in terms of there existing a set of objective moral values meaningful? - The theory considers the principle of moral relativism to be irreconcilable with the concept of moral free will.

2) Given the validity of the concept of moral objectivity, in terms of what then would such objective moral knowledge consist?

3) How in principle could such knowledge be acquired and then permit a capacity of irreducible personal moral autonomy? - The idea is that such moral knowledge by virtue if its specific nature could be demonstrated to be inimical to qualification by neural idiosyncrasy in that the latter may determine impulse only capable of displacing casuistic intellectualy accapted values as distinct from being able to displace this particular type of non-intellectual knowledge gained by actual personal experience.

Consequently this theory regards any attempt to investigate the possible validity of Free Will by means of a type of causal analysis – ex by considering issues related to the complex and perhaps inseparable interplay occurring between individual neural idiosyncrasy and environment – to be appropriate only to the question of free will as this is related to amoral choice and to be a methodology irrelevant to an investigation of the possibility of moral autonomy, the latter problem being viewed as a subset of the problem of moral knowledge. — Robert Lockhart

How so? The experience causes moral knowledge and the moral knowledge causes moral behavior.

1) Is the idea of objective morality in terms of there existing a set of objective moral values meaningful? - The theory considers the principle of moral relativity to be irreconcilable with the concept of moral free will. — Robert Lockhart

Assuming that human minds or brains are similar in a significant way - enabling a high level of consciousness characterized by sensitivity to suffering and joy and by compassion and intelligence - we can generalize moral values as universal human values.

2) Given the validity of the concept of moral objectivity, in terms of what then would such objective moral knowledge consist? — Robert Lockhart

It would consist in sensitivity to suffering and joy, in compassion and intelligence.

3) How in principle could such knowledge be acquired and then permit a capacity of irreducible personal moral autonomy? — Robert Lockhart

The human mind in general provides capacity for moral knowledge but this capacity might need to be complemented by reason and experience.

litewave. Your first question is the most pertinent :

While a capacity for moral behaviour is in principle contingent on possessing experientially gained moral knowledge, so that the latter is effectively the ‘cause’ of the former, nonetheless such knowledge, even though it renders moral transgression on the part of the individual impossible and moral observance inevitable, does not in practice ‘causally determine’ morally observant behaviour, but in reality enables the individual to autonomously elect such. (The distinction is a little beyond the scope of this post.) Thus a description of the type of non-causal relation existing between moral knowledge and behaviour would not be susceptible to the methodology of causal analysis, appropriate as the latter type of reasoning is to an investigation of the question of amoral autonomy – Like whether I might be able to autonomously choose to bake pasta tonight.

-Thought I’d point out another example of how in practice personal experience can perform the ostensibly paradoxical trick of ‘causing’ a capacity for individual moral autonomy. – For this example I’m thinking of the rules governing the conduct of religious worship in a mosque:

As a prelude to commencing the Islamic act of worship every individual is of course first required to kneel and then to bow their head until they are physically touching the floor, this requirement on the part of the individual also requiring, as it does, to be practised in the company of serried anonymous ranks of others similarly prostrating themselves. The act unavoidably entails – backside inescapably stuck up in the air and all that - the adoption of what is to each individual a personally and explicitly undignified and rather ignominious posture. But of course, that is part of the very point of the exercise – through the acceptance of such a requiral assenting thereby to the personal disavowal, without such acceptance having a bearing on personal self-respect, of the visceral instinct we all possess towards achieving superiority over others and so via such personal education towards acquiring a moral attitude transcending our neural ‘programming’. The idea is that experience of such type does not act to 're-program' instincts within the individual but that instead it acts to provide knowledge capable to release the mind from its previously programmed state and substitute instead a conscious awarness of values enabling a moral autonomy. – A monks tonsure is an obviously analogous act.

The crucial point about all this is that it is personal experience itself which is conferring moral awarness, such knowledge being in principle inimical to being perceived by intellectual reasoning.

NB. Of course motive in an act determines it’s ultimate validity. – The acts referred to could for example be practised as no more than a badge of ‘gang identity’.