Free will

Free will is difficult to define except in contrast with determinism or "randomness" (although randomness is difficult to define except in contrast with determinism). What is free will free of? What is it free to do? Determinism, on the other hand, is easy to imagine. Saying there is "free will" may make a comprehensible claim that determinism is false, or it may only make a subjective claim.

This seems important with regard to how criminals are treated. If you made all the laws, how much money would you spend on keeping criminals alive and comfortable? We have limited resources and thus must choose how much of the pie to sacrifice to criminals. It seems inevitable that one will have to answer the question of how much they deserve to suffer or die, compared to the rest of us. If their actions are something that happens to them, so they are completely not to blame, one may conclude that criminals well-being is just as important as non-criminals.

From a "subjective perspective" it seems almost absurd to talk about someone's actions as something that happens TO them rather than something they do. Even a type of "evolutionary psychology" might speculate that sentience evolved as a means to influence behavior. Sentience seems completely superfluous to selection pressure, if there is no free will (except there would be no universe without an observer).

On the other hand, the emergence of consciousness could also be explained using anthropic reasoning relating to MuchVariation. In this hypothesis, sentience only exists, because in the vast majority of universes where sentience didn't exist, there is no one there to observe its absence.

Determinism and free will

According to sentientism the "illusion of consciousness" would be equivalent to consciousness and thus consciousness could not be an illusion. Could one say the same about control? Is control defined purely subjectively? In other words, is control an example of qualia? Perhaps if "control" is defined in such a way that a person has "control" at the same time that physics has "control" (or that "control" only applies to sentient beings). This leads to some non-intuitive conclusions however. If one has enough knowledge about what is happening in the brain (assuming determinism and something correlatism)), a neurological event is indistinguishable from any other physical event. It seems there must be neurological correlates of a will, a choice, a person's control, etc. With greater awareness of neurology and its subjective correlates we should learn to distinguish ourselves from these neurological events. But this also seems counter-intuitive.

Compatiblism

Deterministic Compatibilism seems flawed. Assuming causal determinism, if someone knew enough about neurological events they would see that the cause of a neurological event originates outside the brain, so it would make no more sense to blame someone for a neurological event than something that happened outside their brain.

Pre-established Harmony

Pre-established Harmony seems to have a similar problem. If we developed a technology that could predict what the person was going to do, we would have no way of knowing whether this was harmonized with their free choice or whether it was a "mental illness"... well unless Peh was to inform us of this somehow.

Indeterminism and free will

Impersonalist Indeterminism

See Impersonalism

Some have claimed that indeterminism creates a gap for free will. Even if quantum fluctuations are "indeterminate" this does not mean that free will exists. It seems absurd to claim that quantum fluctuation is "miraculously" controlled by the person when it's happening in their brain, while outside the brain quantum fluctuation is simply random. Thus free will may have been disproven by the discovery that brains are composed of the same atomic particles as unliving things.

(crazy idea: How about a form of Compatiblism for Indeterminism? Call it Indeterminate Compatiblism.)

Occasionalism

I don't see an obvious problem with Occasionalism other than lack of evidence for a god.

Fixed will

Fixed will is a neologism to describe the opposite(s) of free will. "Fixed" is intended to be nuetral, while the following two forms of fixed will, specify more:

• Constricted will could suggest that something is missing, that the person does or should feel like they have no control, that this poses some philosophical dilemmas, or something like that.
• Aligned will is similar to compatiblism in that it claims there is no philosophical or practical dilemma, although it says there is no "free will".

Free will myth

Free will may be a type of "necessary myth" to describe a paradox between subjective and objective reality.