Free will?

Following the advice of Julie Andrews in “The Sound of Music,” we need to start at the very beginning: an axiom. I restated the definition given by a philosopher “An axiom is a proposition that defeats its opponents because they have to use it in any attempt to deny to it.”

Free will is an axiom. Any attempt to deny it requires its use. 

If the conclusion is about determinism, then a non sequitur. None of the premises even mention determinism.

I am assuming you are wanting to know about any problems with this argument? Your second premise is the conclusion, so not at all convincing.

Free will is a construct humans convince themselves to be unconstrained.
Each conscious being is constrained by natural forces. 

What you are essentially saying is

Free will allows conscious beings to act without constraints.
Conscious beings are constrained.

Your evidence is not convincing either. The fact that we give in to our desires is not evidence against free will—it is evidence against will power. The evidence you present is that people are generally (statistically) weak-minded.

You also argue that "Life has deterministic features beyond our control." Again, this is not evidence against free will. If we know that everything was deterministic, then we can say this is evidence. The fact that some things are deterministic (i.e., "deterministic features") still leaves room for free will.

Just an overall note, I am not arguing for freewill as I don't think we have it. I am just saying this is not a good argument against it.

You start with: “Free will is a construct humans convince themselves to be unconstrained.”

To keep my comment within some sort of bounds, I’ll restrict it to that. Sorry this comment is as long as it is. Once I get going, I just can't stop. Sort of like potato chips.

Part of the problem may well be in the definition of “free will.” I think you and I use the term differently.

When speaking in a philological or epistemological context, I use the term “free will” in the term's broadest sense. I define it as the doctrine that holds that man can perform actions that are not determined by forces outside his control; that man has the power to make choices that are, causally, primaries—i.e., not necessitated by antecedent factors. 

As an aside, to forestall some immediate criticism, yes, many factors can affect our lives, such as criminals, wars, economic collapses, and other catastrophic events. As individuals, in such circumstances, we may have no power whatsoever. That is not the metaphysical focus of the discussion about free will. Metaphysically speaking, the fundamental ability to choose is the focus, and I want to stay focused on that point.

The nature of choices, to what human faculty they pertain, how they operate, and their limits—are issues on which various theories of free will differ. Still, they all revolve around the principle of volition. 

Notably, the principle of volition rejects the doctrine that man’s thoughts, desires, actions and character are ultimately imposed on him by physical, psychological, environmental, or divine necessity. In its older form, people called it “fatalism.” In modern terminology, we call it “determinism.” The doctrine of determinism in any form is the opposite of free will. 

I will take the liberty to restate your proposition to something I believe is easier to grasp yet has the same meaning. In that case, it reads: Humans use the idea of free will to convince themselves they are unconstrained by predetermined forces. 

Putting aside all other aspects, I want to focus only on the “convince” part of your proposition.

In this context, I read “convince” as a synonym for “persuade.” Which leads me to the question: If humans do something to convince (persuade) themselves of anything, then isn’t that a recognition that humans have the choice not to be convinced? 

If so, in turn, does that not require free will?

Bo’s motto is “Expose an irrational belief, keep a person rational for a day. Expose irrational thinking, keep a person rational for a lifetime.” Much of his work is in education—not teaching people what to think, but how to think. [From his webpage.]

How can one teach anything to another if everything is predetermined? Actually, the situation is worse. No knowledge, none, is possible, and one cannot tell fallacy from the truth.

Let me explain what I mean. Assume for the moment that which a man does, he had to do. That which he believes, he had to believe. If he focuses his mind, he had to. If he evades the effort of focusing, he had to. He couldn’t help it. No one can help anything. Such is the determinist thesis, no matter what variant of determinism we examine.

Under this scenario, no fact or theory could claim greater plausibility than any other—including the theory of determinism—and knowledge is impossible. 

In general, I like to ask two critical questions: (1) what do you know? and (2) how do you know it?

A short definition of knowledge is the correct identification of the facts of reality. To know that the contents of your mind constitute knowledge, to know you correctly identified the facts of reality, we require a means of testing our conclusions. The means is the process of reasoning, logic, continually testing our conclusions against reality, and searching for contradictions. It is thus that we validate our findings.

This is part of Bo’s motto: “Expose irrational thinking, keep a person rational for a lifetime.” The correct identification of the facts of reality is an ongoing lifetime process. 

This validation is possible only if the capacity to judge is free. (Again, let me forestall some immediate criticism and say I am discussing people with a normal brain function.) But if the capacity to judge is not free, there is no way to discriminate between the correct identification of the facts of reality (beliefs) and hallucinations or dreams. 

Which brings us to the solemn question: How do an advocate of determinism claim to acquire his knowledge? What is the validation? 

I have seen some advocates of determinism insist that their choice to think and their acceptance of reason is conditional. It is dependent on factors outside their control. But this means that they are not free to test their beliefs against the facts of reality. If they cannot test their beliefs, they cannot claim to know that their theory is true. They can only report that they feel helpless to believe otherwise. Nor can they claim that their theory is “highly probable” because they were predetermined to say so. They can only acknowledge the inner compulsion that forbids them to doubt that it is highly probable.

In discussions, I found some advocates of determinism have sought to escape this epistemological dilemma by asserting that, although they are determined to believe what they believe, the factor determining them is logic. But by what means do they know this? 
  
As they present their proposition, their beliefs are no more subject to their control than a lunatic’s. They and the lunatic are equally the pawns of deterministic forces. Both are incapable of judging their judgments.

Psychologists tell us that one of the defining characteristics of psychosis is the loss of volitional control over rational judgment. Yet, according to determinism, that is our normal metaphysical state. 

I see no escape from determinism’s epistemological dilemma. Perhaps you do, and, if so, can explain it to me.

If a mind is not free to test and validate its conclusions, I can have no way to tell the logical from the illogical, no way to ascertain that which compels and motivates it, no right to claim knowledge of any kind. 

The very concept of “logic” is possible only to a volitional consciousness. An automatic consciousness does not need it—and could not conceive of it.

The concepts of “logic,” “thought,” and “knowledge” do not apply to machines—living or not. A device performs the actions its builder sets it to perform and those actions alone. 

If we were merely a super-complex machine, engineered by heredity and operated by the environment, pushed, pulled, shaped, and molded by our genes, and toilet training, then no premise and no conclusion reached could claim truth. 

One who expounds determinism must either assert they arrived at their theory by mystical revelation—and thus exclude themselves from the realm of reason. Or they must claim they are an exception to the very theory they posit—and therefore exclude their theory from the realm of truth.

The fact knowledge is possible cannot be contested without self-contradiction. It is a truth that must be accepted, even in the act of seeking to dispute it. Any theory that necessitates the conclusion that humans  can know nothing is self-invalidating and self-refuting by that very fact. Yet, such is the conclusion to which the theory of determinism inescapably leads.

BTW, one cannot have a “rationally espoused determinism” because it is a contradiction in terms.