That doesn’t really address the fundamental problem which is that if there is no free will then John would vote a certain way based on the state of John’s mind which is deterministic. John’s awareness of his actions and feeling of having made a decision is simply a post hoc rationalization. In practice John never had a choice in the matter to begin with.
That’s compatibilism for ya, it’s a strong theory (based on the Frankfurt School) yet controversial as is everything concerning the topics of free will, determinism and causation. But it does raise a point wether the knowledge of the existence (or absence) of free will can have an impact in of itself.
Right, and I’d argue that in deterministic view the impact of knowledge is already factored in. It becomes just one of the variables that the mindstate is composed of.
I think that a slightly more interesting argument is that the universe may be deterministic, but it is impossible to compute its state from within the system itself. Therefore, for any observer within the system it is impossible to predict the future state of the system deterministically. This would mean that for all practical intents and purposes we have to default to having free will.
That doesn’t really address the fundamental problem which is that if there is no free will then John would vote a certain way based on the state of John’s mind which is deterministic. John’s awareness of his actions and feeling of having made a decision is simply a post hoc rationalization. In practice John never had a choice in the matter to begin with.
That’s compatibilism for ya, it’s a strong theory (based on the Frankfurt School) yet controversial as is everything concerning the topics of free will, determinism and causation. But it does raise a point wether the knowledge of the existence (or absence) of free will can have an impact in of itself.
Right, and I’d argue that in deterministic view the impact of knowledge is already factored in. It becomes just one of the variables that the mindstate is composed of.
I think that a slightly more interesting argument is that the universe may be deterministic, but it is impossible to compute its state from within the system itself. Therefore, for any observer within the system it is impossible to predict the future state of the system deterministically. This would mean that for all practical intents and purposes we have to default to having free will.