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.

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.

No, this is too simplistic; intention is the decision, whether conscious or not, to act on one desire rather than another. — John

Any mental state is a decision, because the state is what it is rather than another state.

Evolution has its own agenda. Human beings have a different agenda. For sure, contingent features of our evolutionary history can account for some tendencies and general abilities that we have. The naturalistic fallacy is the fallacy of inferring what it is that one ought to do on the basis of what it is natural that one would be inclined to do. — Pierre-Normand

Evolution also allows random mutations - so we can have any values that can possibly happen to us. But natural selection will tend to remove those that are detrimental to survival, health or reproduction.

If you have a suitably abstract view of "the universe" such that numbers and other abstracta make up an integral part of it, then, maybe, you could argue that principles of theoretical and practical rationality are "parts" of the early universe. But they are not parts of physical laws or of the initial conditions of the universe — Pierre-Normand

Why not? Physical laws and initial conditions of the universe have mathematical and logical features; they can be accurately described with the mathematical and logical apparatus of science.

It would mean, for instance, that if a friend of yours purports to have proven Goldbach's conjecture, and ask you if her demonstration is sound, then it would make sense to say that you can't know for sure until such a time when physicists have discovered the fundamental laws of nature or what the past state of the universe precisely was. — Pierre-Normand

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?

Likewise if someone would seek you advice over some moral dilemma that she is facing: She promised to return a gun that she borrowed from a friend who she suspects might make use of it to commit a crime, say. It wouldn't make any sense, in that case either, to claim that you can't know what is advisable to do until such a time when physicists have gained a more precise knowledge of the laws of nature or of the past state of the universe. — Pierre-Normand

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

I don't know any contemporary compatibilist philosopher who endorses such a simplistic conception of compatibilist free will. Can you point me to one? — Pierre-Normand

This is from Wikipedia's entry on compatibilism:

Compatibilists often define an instance of "free will" as one in which the agent had freedom to act according to their own motivation. That is, the agent was not coerced or restrained.

Rather, you have straddled all libertarians with a dilemma regarding the source of "intentions", but you have in the process misconstrued what it is for one to have an intention as if it were caused by an antecedent act of the will rather than its being itself an act of the will. — Pierre-Normand

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.

The case where humans are being influenced by principles of rationality or morality is quite different. The principles of rationality are not part of the initial state of the universe or the laws of physics. — Pierre-Normand

If by principles of rationality you mean logic and mathematics then principles of rationality are pretty much features of the universe - that's why science is so successful in predicting the behavior of nature and in harnessing the behavior of nature in technology. The behavior of nature reaches its most complex manifestation in human consciousness and thought. Morality stems from this consciousness and thought, from the feelings of joy and pain, compassion and intelligence.

In the specific case of morality, looking for its source in our evolutionary past, for instance, leads one straight to the commission of the naturalistic fallacy. What makes something worthy of being valued can not be reduced to any sort of causal explanation as to why you actually came to value it. — Pierre-Normand

We value joy and hate pain; it actually seems to be true by definition: joy is that which is valued (accepted and sought) and pain is that which is hated (resisted and avoided). Evolution tends to arrange that that which is valued is useful for survival, health and reproduction, while that which is hated is the opposite. Thus our values are formed.

Yes, I think most compatibilists, because of the metaphysical picture that comes bundled up with the uncritically accepted doctrine of universal determinism, generally have a hard time distinguishing what it is in the aetiology of human action that constitutes external constraint to our freedom from what it is that is a constitutive part of (internal to) our power of free agency. — Pierre-Normand

I don't think compatibilists have a problem with distinguishing the constitutive part of free agency - they think that free agency consists in the ability to satisfy desires, carry out intentions. But libertarians surely have this problem because of their insistence on the incoherent concept of ultimate control. And by the way, compatibilists don't require that reality should be completely deterministic; they claim that free will is compatible with determinism and that a certain degree of determinism is necessary for the exercise of free will, simply so that we can determine our actions and cause what we want to cause.

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. — John

I pointed out that humans have a higher level of consciousness than animals, with greater capacity for compassion and greater intelligence - and this constitutes grounds for their moral responsibility.

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. — Pierre-Normand

When we talk about coercion we typically mean external coercion but there can also be internal coercion such as addictions, diseases or handicaps that force us to do something or prevent us from doing something, against some of our wishes, and thus constitute impediments to compatibilist free will.

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. — Pierre-Normand

Sure, as I mentioned, humans have a higher level of consciousness than animals. This entails more capacity for compassion and more sophisticated intelligence, so we regard humans as more morally responsible than animals. Humans are also more free than animals in the sense that human intelligence enables them to find more ways or more effective ways to satisfy their desires and needs.

The intention is the choosing; whether that choosing is conscious or not. You are confusing yourself by reifying abstract notions. — John

Intention is a desire that stimulates and directs action. I don't see what you find confusing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

On my view, the action is indeed controlled by the intention of the agent (and therefore, by the agent). What makes it the case that an action is controlled by an agent precisely is the obtaining of the conditions under which the action is intentional. Granted, there arises a problem for some libertarians who believe that acts of the will only are free if the agent could have acted differently in the exact same circumstances, where those circumstances include all of the agent's states of mind and the dispositions of her character. But that's not my account. — Pierre-Normand

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. This is something that I think libertarians would have a problem with because the idea of libertarian free will seems to require a freedom that can override any determining factors.

I might go along with this. But before you were talking about one thing, "spacetime", and now you are talking about two distinct things, time and space, so you have changed the subject, divided it into two distinct subjects. — Metaphysician Undercover

Spacetime is a thing made up of space and time. The action happens in both space and time, so it happens in spacetime.

A field is a concept based in spacetime. The fact that the position of the particle cannot be determined through the use of the field indicates that there is activity outside of the field (not covered by the field), and quite likely outside of spacetime. — Metaphysician Undercover

The field interacts with a measuring apparatus and that's how the position of the particle is determined. Activity outside of spacetime doesn't make sense to me.

Sure, but do you distinguish between material things like bodies, and immaterial things like souls? — Metaphysician Undercover

Sure, I distinguished between the soul and the physical (=material) body.

Action is not confined to "in spacetime". That's why the concept of "a field" will not tell the physicist where a particle is. — Metaphysician Undercover

The notion of action presupposes time, and also some kind of space in which the action or change is defined. I don't understand how your sentence about field and particle is related to this.

The soul is explicitly "not a body", therefore it cannot be a "special kind" of body. — Metaphysician Undercover

If you disagree with the word "body" then just use the word "object" or "thing".

Since it is not a body, it is highly unlikely that it exists in space-time, because space-time is a concept which was developed to account for the motion of bodies. — Metaphysician Undercover

In new agey conceptions the soul acts, moves and evolves, so it exists in spacetime.

What sort of thing is a soul? — Banno

Ok, here is my idea of a soul that I got from new agey books. A soul is a special kind of conscious body that exists and evolves in spacetime, and in its life, movement, actions and perceptions it uses various outfits, devices and vehicles, as we would use clothes (for protection, special function or for fun), sensory aids (to enable or enhance our perception in special kinds of environment), tools, or means of transport such as cars, ships or submarines. The physical body with its sensory and nervous system is one of such outfits, devices or vehicles, that is suitable for the soul's life in a physical environment. When the physical body stops functioning, the soul returns to the world it came from and may return to the physical world in a new physical body (reincarnation). In the physical body the soul typically forgets about its existence prior to its physical birth but its memories may be renewed after it exits the physical body, during hypnosis or during a spiritual "awakening". The reasons for the amnesia in the physical body are not clear to me, but the physical body obviously has a significant impact on the soul's function. Some authors claim that the amnesia is the result of a spiritual weakness, flaw or "fall", a disability that prevents the soul from retaining conscious connection with the world it came from.

That conflicts with the meaning of possible. If it must exist, it is necessary, not just possible. — noAxioms

All possibilities are necessary :)

I can't see any relevance in what you say here. If libertarian free will is, according to rational thought, inexplicable, and you want to conclude from this that it is impossible, then although you might still have fellings of your own, and feelings about others', moral responsibility, it certainly doesn't follow that those feelings are rationally justifiable. — John

What do you mean by rational justification of feelings? How can we rationally justify compassion? It seems to be an evolved feeling that is useful in some way. It enables us to form emotional bonds with others and seems to be a part of integrative processes in our brains/minds.

You need to show how the special idea of moral responsibility which is necessarily based on the belief that human behavior is not exhaustively determined by natural forces could be compatible with its being exhaustively determined by natural forces and the idea that no human decision or act reaaly could have been other than it was. — John

The idea of moral responsibility that is based on the concept of libertarian free will is just as meaningless as libertarian free will. But I offered an idea of moral responsibility that doesn't need libertarian free will.

As Hume has taught us, there's no way to deduce apriori the effects from their causes, but you have to observe causes and effects and see if they come in constant conjunctions etc. — Fafner

But since there are stable regularities in nature that we can describe in terms of causation, we can also successfully predict effects from causes. Often there is more than one significant cause in a given situation and then the effect is caused by several causes that may be difficult to identify and thus the natural regularity may be obscured. Science is successful in the causal explanation of such cases too.

But now, do we learn by experience that every time when we have a certain sort of intention, we always find ourselves behaving in some corresponding way? — Fafner

Since our behavior is generally influenced not only by our intentions but also by other factors, our intention to do a certain act need not always be followed by that act. But there are plenty of cases where such an act occurs pretty regularly because other factors that might block it are insignificant, for example when I intend to raise my right hand I usually do it successfully.

So, I am suggesting that what makes the action intentional under such a description (i.e. "making an omelet") is the fact that the agent is pursuing that goal while being able to deliberate practically towards realizing that goal; that is, judging what the necessary means are and executing them for that reason. — Pierre-Normand

But all of this can be explained by ordinary temporal causation. Factors like the feeling of hunger, food desires/preferences, belief about what ingredients are available in the kitchen, knowledge of how to make an omelet etc. cause the agent's intention to make an omelet. Then this intention, along with other factors like the knowledge of how to make an omelet, causes the agent to perform actions like heating up the frying pan, breaking eggs, chopping up mushrooms. Logical and physical operations can also be performed by a machine - no libertarian/incompatibilist free will is necessary.

Even if we construe the forming of an intention as a purely mental act, that occurs prior to acting, and that controls our actions, there still need not be a separate act of choosing to intend in this way in order that the intention be free and that we be responsible for it. — Pierre-Normand

But then the act of forming the intention is not freely willed (since it is not controlled by an intention to do the act) and thus the act that is controlled by the formed intention is controlled by something, an intention, that is not freely willed. For a compatibilist it is not a problem, but the fact that the final act is ultimately controlled by something that is not freely willed would clash with the libertarian concept of free will.

As I also suggested, such an explanation of action looks very much like a compatibilist account. But it is crucially distinguished from standard compatibilist accounts in an important respect. If what grounds the agent's decision is her being sensitive to the features of her practical situation that make it reasonable, by her own lights, that she ought to so act, then her actions aren't determined by prior causes that have receded in the historical past and that therefore lay beyond her control. — Pierre-Normand

But what does "being sensitive" mean? It seems we can again explain it causally - being sensitive to something means being able to be influenced by something, for example by the agent's needs, habits, desires, beliefs, knowledge, intentions... These factors influence the agent's actions.

That would be correct if we were always being passively caused to acquire our beliefs through the impact of brute external events. But this would be to deny that we have rational abilities to critically assess our beliefs and their sources in such a manner as to secure genuine knowledge. — Pierre-Normand

Of course in real life the process of "critically assessing" our beliefs and their sources may be complicated, but in principle these seem to be logical operations that also a machine could perform, reducible to causal processes.

What do you mean by "phenomena" and what does it have to do with your denial that one must have control over one's freely willed action?

Does that involve will phenomena? — Terrapin Station

What do you mean by "will phenomena"?

So the support is a question-begging stipulation. Nice. — Terrapin Station

Your stipulation is question-begging. Are you saying that slipping unintentionally on a banana peel is a freely willed action?

You don't need to control the intentional action since your being engaged in an intentional action already is your controlling what happens with your own body and surroundings. — Pierre-Normand

But if my intention does not influence the action then my being engaged in the action is not controlling the action. I wouldn't even say that the action is intended (intentional).

Rather, in the usual case, your ability to intelligently come up with the correct words, on the fly, as it were, is partly constitutive of your ability to think out loud. — Pierre-Normand

I would say that my intention to express something verbally causes the related words to come to my tongue. For example if I intend to communicate to someone that I have the feeling of hunger, this intention draws the word "hunger" from my lexical memory and pushes it to the speech center in my brain which activates my tongue, lips, breathing and so on in such a way that the sound of the word "hunger" is produced. I guess this is roughly the causal neurological process.

I would rather say that your prior intention to go to Cuba, as well as your ability to reason instrumentally, is manifested in your now booking the plane tickets (and many other things that you do, or refrain from doing when that would interfere with your plans). — Pierre-Normand

It seems that the part "is manifested in" can be easily substituted with "causes".

It would be strange to say that your answer that pi isn't periodic has been caused by whatever caused you, in the past, to believe that pi is irrational. — Pierre-Normand

Why? To believe that pi is irrational means to believe that its decimal expansion is infinite and is not periodic. So that which caused me to have this belief also causes (indirectly, through the belief) my answer when I am asked what I believe about pi.

You could additionally ask:

"But why am I in this possibility-world? In fact, why am I me, this particular person? Is that by chance?" — Michael Ossipoff

It's like asking why number two is number two and not number three. What would it even mean?

What accounts for this possible world being actual instead of one of the others? That is, why is this particular possible world concrete, as opposed to one of the other possible worlds? Is it just by chance? — Brayarb

I don't even know what it would mean for one possible world to be "concrete" and another "abstract".

There are many, many constraints on actions, all we can do is try to move in a direction. — Rich

And this trying influences the movement. Even if there are other factors that influence the movement, your influence gives you at least partial control over the movement.