> But your present and future self are all helpless from that point on.
To me, "helpless" in the context of metaphysical free will means that an agent's actions are deterministic from the view of an outside observer. That is all it can ever mean AFAICT. Any sadness/frustration we may feel about this is equivalent to the sadness/frustration one feels for Heidegger's cat. That is to say, it's there, but it's philosophically incidental.
"Helpless" in the context of physical free will means the normal meaning of helpless in all its glorious ambiguity. It can mean something close to "deterministic" in certain catastrophic situations. But more often it means something like "under the rule of a tyrant," "enslaved," or even "trapped" for whatever reason. In all those cases the sadness/frustration/etc. one feels is part and parcel of the outcome-- it affects whether one decides to fight, acquiesce, cope, etc. Since nobody within physical reality has sufficient knowledge to predict the future, the problem of metaphysical free will doesn't pop up.
To me, "helpless" in the context of metaphysical free will means that an agent's actions are deterministic from the view of an outside observer. That is all it can ever mean AFAICT. Any sadness/frustration we may feel about this is equivalent to the sadness/frustration one feels for Heidegger's cat. That is to say, it's there, but it's philosophically incidental.
"Helpless" in the context of physical free will means the normal meaning of helpless in all its glorious ambiguity. It can mean something close to "deterministic" in certain catastrophic situations. But more often it means something like "under the rule of a tyrant," "enslaved," or even "trapped" for whatever reason. In all those cases the sadness/frustration/etc. one feels is part and parcel of the outcome-- it affects whether one decides to fight, acquiesce, cope, etc. Since nobody within physical reality has sufficient knowledge to predict the future, the problem of metaphysical free will doesn't pop up.