No, what I mean is that the choice must not be determined by the state of the universe, that would not be free will in the sense I try to define here, and it must not be independent of everything, i.e. it must not be random, because that would not be free will either. I am defining free will and I am requiring specific properties, among others non random choices, I am not looking at the properties of a given definition, for example whether choices are just random. So the challenge is, if you want to argue that this kind of free will exists, to find or invent something, that can influence your choices but that is neither the state of the universe nor randomness. It is the inability to do this - assuming we really can not do this - that proves that this kind of free will does not exist.
The example I usually use is that you are sitting in a restaurant and you have to choose between ordering steak and fish. And we repeat this over and over again by rewinding the universe to the point just before you make your choice. If you have free will in the sense I am just trying to defining with this, you will not always make the same choice in every iteration, or at least not necessarily, but maybe you really don't like fish, I wich case the experimental setup is just bad. But the important thing is that your choice it not simply a deterministic function of the current state of the universe, including your personal history and the environment you are in.
On the other hand I also require that your choice is not simply random, possibly according to a probability distribution depending on the state of the universe reflecting your past experiences with and preferences for steak and fish, maybe in the specific restaurant, maybe depending on your mood or whatever else may play a role. If it were just random, then I would not consider it free will either under this definition.
And now the challenge is to identify something that could influence your choice but that is not the state of the universe and that is not randomness. If you can find such a thing, then you can have free will according to this definition of it, otherwise there is no free will in this sense. This is obviously quite hard because there are not that many things remaining after taking away the current state of the universe and randomness.
Nevertheless you could try to come up with souls or minds or, I don't know, maybe Platonic mathematical objects that are not part of the state of the universe and outside of space and maybe even time and then you could investigate whether those things could somehow provide what is required for you to have free will in this sense. Personally I don't think you can come up with something that works and that is consistent with itself and the world as we know it, but what do I know?
EDIT: While I edited out some mistakes, I got an idea that I had not thought about before and that is not too esoteric. Your choices could not only depend on the current state of the universe but also on a past state of the universe or its entire history so that you could not necessarily predict choices by just looking at the current state of the universe. It also would not just be a random choice.
That does not, as far as we know, work in our universe because the evolution of the universe is unitary so that all past - and future - states of the universe are implicit in any one state of the universe, but one could probably imagine a consistent universe with certain laws of nature where the current state of the universe does not entail all information about the past and the future. So maybe, but certainly not obviously, that could be a path towards free will in the sense I defined it, by messing a bit with the laws of nature so that the current state of the universe looses some if its power.
Even if there is something that could influence our choice but that is not the state of the universe and that is not randomness, it would still be something, not yourself, pulling your strings, would it not?
No matter how much I think about it, I keep on concluding - against my intuitions, if not my will - that the only rationally resolvable position is that we don't have free will, in the sense that we get to make meaningful choices.
But when I think I have found the only rational answer, I ponder how apparently impeccable reasoning led Zeno so badly astray.
> Even if there is something that could influence our choice but that is not the state of the universe and that is not randomness, it would still be something, not yourself, pulling your strings, would it not?
Very interesting thread on free will! I think the key to a solution lies on a clear definition of words used to refer to the self, such as "our", "ourself", "yourself", "I", "we" and such. When you say "I"; what or who do you refer to?
I can not recommend the Yale course on death by Shelly Kagan [1] (26 lectures of 45 minutes) enough, it is really extremely good. And I think about the first half of the course is about identity and all the things like souls that could play into this.
I did not mention this topic, because I think it is only secondary for free will in the sense I talk about in my comments, because I think the hard part is already finding anything at all that could affect your choices. Only when you have identified something that fits the requirements, say a god, and the whole thing is consistent, only then you have to worry whether you want to consider that thing part of you. That might be easy if the answer is everyone has its own soul or it might be harder, that is why I choose a god as the example, because some might argue that a god is a separate entity while others might argue a god is part of all of us. I added a lengthy comment to the parent one going into more detail why I think finding anything that could possibly work is already hard.
Even if there is something that could influence our choice but that is not the state of the universe and that is not randomness, it would still be something, not yourself, pulling your strings, would it not?
It could be, for example if it was a god that influenced your choices and assuming we would neither consider this god part of the universe nor part of you. But that is also not necessarily the case, for example if your choices would be influenced by your soul assuming we would not consider souls part of the universe but still part of you.
But it is also not obvious that this is possible in a meaningful way. Whether souls or gods, they must at least be able to affect you and your choices, otherwise they may also not exist at all, at least if we are only thinking about your lifetime in this universe, they could still of have consequences in a life after death or whatever. One could also argue that you, meaning the part of you within the universe, must be able to influence your soul because in which sense would it be your soul if it were unaffected by everything you experience and do? And similarly we usually think of a god as being influenced by us by observing what is going on in the universe.
So we have at least a one-way interaction between us and the universe in general and souls or gods. And for many interesting things we want to get out of souls or gods we would even need two-way interactions. Which raises the question why we would not consider them parts of the universe? And this is the case for all supernatural things, why would we not consider them part of the universe, after all they must at least be able to influence us at least by being observable. We could exclude them, for example ghosts, because we have no understanding of how they work, but that is a rather weak criterion not unlike yet undiscovered physics.
Or we could try to exclude them because the usual laws of nature do not apply to them [1]. But in order to be able to move the curtains in the bed room or to tilt all the picture frames in the living room, a ghost must at least be able to interact with the stuff in our universe, otherwise it would remain unobservable, and therefore supernatural things can not be totally disconnected from the normal universe and how it works. So it is not obvious to me that you even can separate things into a normal universe and another realm of souls, gods, or ghosts that is however still interacting with the normal universe without this distinction being rather arbitrary. Especially if you think of the universe as all the things that can potentially interact with each other, possibly only in a one-way fashion [2], than the universe is closed under this and everything outside the universe can not possibly affect anything in the universe by definition.
To return to the original topic, it may or may not be you that pulls the strings if your choices are influenced by something outside of the universe, but I think the hard part is actually finding something outside the universe that could have an influence on your choices and that is outside of the universe in a meaningful way and not just due to an arbitrary definition like well understood things are in the universe and things we do not yet understand are outside of it.
[1] Just as in the case of the universe with its laws of nature and free will one can ask what kind of rules can, could, or have to apply to souls and gods. What can affect their decisions, what can be affected by their decisions? Is a god or soul subject to any laws of nature or at least logic or whatever? And if not, what determines its behavior, it probably should not be randomness. Note that this are very similar questions as compared to free will, just as if we only pushed the hard parts of the question out of the universe but that of course does not answer them. Even if we conclude that our choices are influenced by our soul, that just means we now have to figure out how the soul works and makes decisions leaving us essentially with the same questions as before.
[2] Radioactive decay is an example, the decay certainly affects the universe but you can not do anything to affect the decay of a nucleus. At least in the classical picture of radioactivity, the quantum Zeno effect actually allows influencing decay rates.
The example I usually use is that you are sitting in a restaurant and you have to choose between ordering steak and fish. And we repeat this over and over again by rewinding the universe to the point just before you make your choice. If you have free will in the sense I am just trying to defining with this, you will not always make the same choice in every iteration, or at least not necessarily, but maybe you really don't like fish, I wich case the experimental setup is just bad. But the important thing is that your choice it not simply a deterministic function of the current state of the universe, including your personal history and the environment you are in.
On the other hand I also require that your choice is not simply random, possibly according to a probability distribution depending on the state of the universe reflecting your past experiences with and preferences for steak and fish, maybe in the specific restaurant, maybe depending on your mood or whatever else may play a role. If it were just random, then I would not consider it free will either under this definition.
And now the challenge is to identify something that could influence your choice but that is not the state of the universe and that is not randomness. If you can find such a thing, then you can have free will according to this definition of it, otherwise there is no free will in this sense. This is obviously quite hard because there are not that many things remaining after taking away the current state of the universe and randomness.
Nevertheless you could try to come up with souls or minds or, I don't know, maybe Platonic mathematical objects that are not part of the state of the universe and outside of space and maybe even time and then you could investigate whether those things could somehow provide what is required for you to have free will in this sense. Personally I don't think you can come up with something that works and that is consistent with itself and the world as we know it, but what do I know?
EDIT: While I edited out some mistakes, I got an idea that I had not thought about before and that is not too esoteric. Your choices could not only depend on the current state of the universe but also on a past state of the universe or its entire history so that you could not necessarily predict choices by just looking at the current state of the universe. It also would not just be a random choice.
That does not, as far as we know, work in our universe because the evolution of the universe is unitary so that all past - and future - states of the universe are implicit in any one state of the universe, but one could probably imagine a consistent universe with certain laws of nature where the current state of the universe does not entail all information about the past and the future. So maybe, but certainly not obviously, that could be a path towards free will in the sense I defined it, by messing a bit with the laws of nature so that the current state of the universe looses some if its power.