Free will oxymoron
As free as you know you aren't
If causation dictates all, then free will cannot exist. Your neurons are wired a certain way; your synapses follow neural pathways that form your mental architecture, a predictable result of genetics and random life experiences within circumstantial environments. Everything you perceive, analyse and conclude must go through your mental processes. Your whole sense of reality relies not on objective senses but on your unique individual neural network.
To have will means to be bound by your brain’s parameters. To will is to serve your self-framework. You are a mouse free to roam in his maze.
Free will cannot exist… Perhaps this realisation is the only measure of free will we can attain - and maybe that’s good enough.
The freest slave is he who understands he is a slave. Slaves with delusions of freedom are forever bound by servitude and blissful ignorance.
This is not a deterministic message, nor is it one of denial of agency or accountability. Far from it. If anything, the delusion of free will is what denies self-accountability by driving you to claim false credit for things you did not objectively earn or deserve. How self-accountable can you then be?
« The freest slave is he who understands he is a slave. » YES
«Slaves with delusions of freedom are forever bound by servitude and blissful ignorance.» NO, first a slave can be released, so he can hope to either escape one day or be released.
To be precise, because the subject is complicated, we can assume that most human beings have free will, this to some extent, because we depend on our biology, our nature (brain abilities).
Nothing allows us to affirm that we all have this innate ability, think of the disabled, people with mental disorders, brain (dysfunctions...).
Let’s not forget the conditioning from childhood, but not excuse the responsibilities.
Our capacity for introspection, reflection, objective analysis (therefore sincere), advanced reasoning, allows us to affirm that free will exists, and that we are therefore responsible for our actions, not necessarily of our nature, unless we amplify voluntarily, for x reasons, our inclinations, deviations etc. But as long as these do not harm anyone, there is no real problem, except perhaps for the person himself, being a prisoner of this attraction leading to repetitions.
I still have to read the other post on this topic.