[hashr8064]

> It's not just that our decisions (will) are random instead of predetermined by a cascade of material interactions.

You seem somewhat knowledgeable about this topic, so maybe you or someone else can answer this.

Why can't free will just be a complex system feedback loop and name for the way we humans perceive our own decision making process in this loop. I mean why can it not be that "free will" is the decision making process which is influenced by unconscious processes and in turn influences those unconscious processes? It could be deterministic and random or the universe could turn out to work differently at some level and it really wouldn't matter.

Is something like this a standard view in this whole debate on Free Will?

[newacctjhro]

This is called compatibilism and yeah it seems to be a mainstream view in the academic debate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/

[naasking]

More than mainstream, it's the majority view among philosophers (59% Compatibilists, the rest even split among 3 other possibilities): https://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl

[monkeydreams]

I wonder if it is mainstream because it is functional rather than because it mirrors reality. The ability to ascribe a moral weight to a choice and then punish or reward an individual for that choice, resolves issues such as nudging people toward "appropriate" behaviour, enacting some vengeance against people who do harm to others, etc. It appears to me to be a neat legal fiction but, perhaps, not the most effective tool.

[naasking]

First, I think it's important to distinguish justice from moral responsibility. Punishment and rehabilitation are about justice. Free will is about identifying who is morally responsible. So accepting free will doesn't automatically mean you can punish wrongdoers.

Second, I'm not sure what you mean by "mirrors reality". The debate surrounding free will is about defining the term and its properties and how it's a factor in moral responsibility. To do so, it must provide a justifiable framework for moral reasoning and our moral language to make sense of how we use the term. Compatibilism convincingly meets the necessary criteria, and that's why it's the majority view.

The holdouts are people who insist free will must have certain properties that Compatibilism probably doesn't have, but they haven't been able to argue this convincingly enough to persuade a majority.