What is it that you are claiming to observe? Because free will is generally taken to be more than a sensory observation or feeling. After all you have to verify that an observation is actually of the thing you want to prove. I mean let's consider two possibilities.
1) What you observe is something like: whatever you decide to do after deliberation is something you can choose to do. If you think 'i'm going to raise my arm' you observe that you do in fact raise your arm.
But at best you merely observe that you can do what you decide to do which it no way shows you could have decided otherwise. So it's not an illusion just not an observation of the claim you want to support [1].
Ultimately you could point to all sorts of other observations you have but unless you directly experience a counterfactual they can never actually be of the fact that you could have done differently and you can't say they actually instantiate what you mean by free will. At some point what you mean by the word has to be brought into play.
2) Maybe you observe that you strongly agree with the sentence "I have free will"? But that's only an observation that you believe you have free will not that you have it. That makes no more sense than claiming to directly observe the truth of field theory.
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To put it in slightly different terms, is it possible to directly observe that you are a cool dude? You can observe that you feel cool or you can observe that you judge yourself to be cool. However to actually determine if you are cool we first need to determine what it means to be cool and check if you satisfy. Since neither feeling or judging yourself to be cool are what it means to actually be cool you can't just insist that you are cool by introspection.
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1: If you abandon the claim you could have done something else and merely retreat to the compatibllist claim: had I decided to act differently I would have then it might be evidence for that.
Off topic: I don't read graphic books, for two reasons: the text is not searchable, and the font is not controllable except by magnifying the entire image.
> if you can dismiss my constant observation with “That’s just an illusion,” you could just as easily dismiss all observation as illusion.
Any observation *could* be an illusion/hallucination. But some observations and styles of observation are consistently backed up. When you look at a leaf and see that it's green, you can confirm that by many processes, e.g. checking that other people see it is green, confirming the wavelength with a spectrometer, confirming that plants need chlorophyll to absorb sunlight which is also green, etc.
Some people strongly observe the presence of God in their life. They see His signs everywhere, and also just feel a constant observation like you that God is real. They feel pretty specific things to their specific religion and doctrine too, many of which are mutually contradictory, so we can say with certainty at least some people's constant observations are dead wrong.
If you can provide a stronger empirical/logical argument for free will, many people will be happy to hear it. But just saying "I observe it" is insufficient evidence.
I am still early in the book by Cate Hall but it struck me as odd that her three years of drug addiction in search of God or religious enlightenment or whatever were framed as low agency.
It may have eventually reached that point but the premise is comically high agency and basically what folks like the Buddha did.
What is it that you are claiming to observe? Because free will is generally taken to be more than a sensory observation or feeling. After all you have to verify that an observation is actually of the thing you want to prove. I mean let's consider two possibilities.
1) What you observe is something like: whatever you decide to do after deliberation is something you can choose to do. If you think 'i'm going to raise my arm' you observe that you do in fact raise your arm.
But at best you merely observe that you can do what you decide to do which it no way shows you could have decided otherwise. So it's not an illusion just not an observation of the claim you want to support [1].
Ultimately you could point to all sorts of other observations you have but unless you directly experience a counterfactual they can never actually be of the fact that you could have done differently and you can't say they actually instantiate what you mean by free will. At some point what you mean by the word has to be brought into play.
2) Maybe you observe that you strongly agree with the sentence "I have free will"? But that's only an observation that you believe you have free will not that you have it. That makes no more sense than claiming to directly observe the truth of field theory.
---
To put it in slightly different terms, is it possible to directly observe that you are a cool dude? You can observe that you feel cool or you can observe that you judge yourself to be cool. However to actually determine if you are cool we first need to determine what it means to be cool and check if you satisfy. Since neither feeling or judging yourself to be cool are what it means to actually be cool you can't just insist that you are cool by introspection.
--
1: If you abandon the claim you could have done something else and merely retreat to the compatibllist claim: had I decided to act differently I would have then it might be evidence for that.
Off topic: I don't read graphic books, for two reasons: the text is not searchable, and the font is not controllable except by magnifying the entire image.
> if you can dismiss my constant observation with “That’s just an illusion,” you could just as easily dismiss all observation as illusion.
Any observation *could* be an illusion/hallucination. But some observations and styles of observation are consistently backed up. When you look at a leaf and see that it's green, you can confirm that by many processes, e.g. checking that other people see it is green, confirming the wavelength with a spectrometer, confirming that plants need chlorophyll to absorb sunlight which is also green, etc.
Some people strongly observe the presence of God in their life. They see His signs everywhere, and also just feel a constant observation like you that God is real. They feel pretty specific things to their specific religion and doctrine too, many of which are mutually contradictory, so we can say with certainty at least some people's constant observations are dead wrong.
If you can provide a stronger empirical/logical argument for free will, many people will be happy to hear it. But just saying "I observe it" is insufficient evidence.
I am still early in the book by Cate Hall but it struck me as odd that her three years of drug addiction in search of God or religious enlightenment or whatever were framed as low agency.
It may have eventually reached that point but the premise is comically high agency and basically what folks like the Buddha did.
Bryan, you need to use your high-agency chops to quit your job since you think higher-ed is a waste of taxpayer monies and become an uber driver.