So "free will" is a power or an ability, a "faculty" to do something ie. to make (moral) choices; every human with the capacity to understand a choice has "free will" or has that "ability" by virtue of being human, and this regardless of what those choices will entail or in reality what makes you favor one choice over the other. Thus someone can "encroach" on your free will with threats cohersion but nobody can take it away from you, any more than someone can take "woman" away from an adult female.
[quote="
Zzyzx"]
This seems to contradict the definition supplied by CARM[/quote]
No it does not. Lets look at the main clause (without the modifier)
Free will is the ability to make choices. [stop there] There you have a complete thought (clause) it is independent ie it stands alone and does not depend on another thought to be accurate or understood. To clarify let's look to various sources (I will remind you CARM is a religious information site not an online dictionary)
So the dictionary definition of
FREE WILL is the ability to make (independent) choices. I underline "ability" because an ability isn't lost because you have no opportunity
to exercise it.
In a similar way, free will is the ability to make choices. It's really quite simple
If you make a decision under duress, you haven't lost the ABILITY to make a decision, you have decided to bow to the pressure or you have lost the freedom
to exercise (act in accord with your chosen course). The only way to take away your power/ability/capacity to decide is to take away your mind, which is the point of the Pete Segar song.
Coersion: With or without?The CARM definition muddies the waters by including a dependent clause "without external coersion".
While this is true, its bad writing because it might mislead readers, that do not have a good command of English or are not careful enough in the reading to understand that this dependent clause is the independant, taking it to mean:
free will only exists if there is no coersion, ie. A person coersed loses his ability to make choices.That is NOT what the definition is saying. It is saying that a person has the ability to make choices even if there is no coersion. In other words its the ability to make independent choices even in the absense of someone telling or forcing you what choice to make.
It's the difference between
- humor is the ability to laugh .
- humor is the ability to laught
without jokes being toldLook at the two definitions above:
** If there are no jokes do you lose your sense of humour? No
** If there are jokes do you lose your sense of humour? No
The dependent clause (without...) is NOT saying that if you laugh at jokes you don't have a sense of humor, its saying you have the ability to laugh even in the absense of jokes.
CARM is simply adding information, its saying free will is the ability to "make decisions in the absence of coersion not that the presence of coersion means the ability is lost. Granted the ambiguity of the CARM definition is more trouble than it's worth which is why I have included several alternative (read: clearer) definitions.
