Reply To: Free anything never mind free will

[PopeBeanie]

One of the silliest statements made by a proponent of free will was that free will applied only to “future” events…

I haven’t seen the program, but I think it makes sense in an important context. The more time one has to plan and rehearse, the more one is able to change the future. Whether it’s a delusion or not, when I have the feeling of Free Will, it’s in the context of what my ability is to change my own behavior and/or influence future reality. No matter how the agency is defined, it will always be “me” who I’m talking about.

This is why I emphasize that the problem of defining Free Will goes off the rails into non-reality or supernatural context, when it demands or implies such nonsense as continuation of self or “soul” after body death, or perhaps beliefs in the possibility of out of body experiences. Otherwise, for any kind of reasonable scientific reality, Free Will can only be reasonably defined as a “feeling” we have about our own agency or natural powers.