"Free will?" WTF?

[Bowyn Aerrow]

Yes, but if we are meat machines, what we "choose" to do once we learn and consider cosequences to our actions, isn't that learning and consieration what then is causing our decisions? Without invoking ghostes [sic] how do you escape causation. The fact your deliberations are caused and the final decision is really up to your subconscious which you have no access to and can't influence? All your conditioning and learning and considering is still programing. how do you escape programing when your deliberations are themselves more programing? Causation is inescapable.

http://www.thegreatdebate.org.uk/determi...ewill.html

My approach is 'moral free will'. I view it as as long as you have the basic understanding of 'right and wrong' you can choose what you do. This goes beyond mere programing.

Someone hands me a gun and tells me I could kill any person in the room with no reprisal (killing them) then I have a choice. Its really a simple yes or no choice - kill or not kill. It is my free will to choose to kill or not kill. This is my free will, allowing me to kill or not kill.

Now lets take this in a different direction. I am attacked, I have a gun - I shoot a man in 'self defense' - I didn't have a 'choice' since I was reacting to the circumstances (Self preservation). This is cause and effect, where the cause (my being attacked) results in my self defense in killing my attacker.

Life is a large grey area, Free will is not an absolute, nor is predestination. Its all grey and it boils down to the given circumstances at the given moment.

Learning and consequences, rational thought is part of the freewill aspect of things.

Our ability to learn new things and even imagine the unlearned is what gives us 'free will'.