Yes you do.
which implies some kind of unmoored Cartesian ego selecting one alternative or another
"Implies". Hmmm... no. You're stubbornly insisting in the wrong mental frame that muds the waters, where the self is outside nature. That's a relic of religious thought. That vision has no support from science at all.
Quite the opposite: that what we experience as will is actually an after-the-fact event
That doesn't follow my question, just returned to your absurd premises and described what you think it happens based on them.
What does that mean?
We're not free in a vacuum means that we don't get to choose that we like food, sex or games. It means that we get to choose our behaviour to feed, have sex or play at different times or delay gratification to optimize satisfaction for our whishes.
Actually we're also free, to a certain extent, to change ourselves, to refine our tastes, to train our body, to increase our will power observing how it works and controling our reactions predicting them.
Do you have any evidence that, given the same circumstances, I could have chosen to do something differently?
The same circumstances!!! Do you realize how absurd is what you're asking for? So freedom for you consist in the ability to contradict nature laws? No wonder you think it doesn't exist.
The Stanford encyclopedia link is a great read.
Fine, you're not going to get bored.
That's still tautological. What does it mean to choose? What is the "I" that is doing the choosing? Those are the crucial questions that underpin the whole idea which you aren't explaining.
Even taking what you said at face value, almost every animal exihbits this behavior. Do all animals have free will? And what makes these a free choice? If you're saying that, assuming I have food and sex readily available, and I choose food, that I could have chosen otherwise given the same circumstances?
> So freedom for you consist in the ability to contradict nature laws? No wonder you think it doesn't exist.
Of course not. I'm merely restating the problem.
From here it seems that you're being deliberately obtuse. You reply to a phrase in my comment without considering the thread of questions and answers that led to it and ignoring the rest of the comment where I previously answered the very same question.
The "crucial" questions have no interest at all. I use the terms in their common colloquial sense. There's no explanation needed: we are intelligent animals, complex machines that select the options that we perceive as more favourable for us and reject the worse ones. Choosing is the fact that we selected lemon ice cream instead of orange ice cream. "I" means the 80 kg of biomass, the brain in particular, that is typing this comment.
Do all animals have free will? And what makes these a free choice?
Freedom is the absence of obstacles. Compared to humans, animals have a more limited set of choices, a lot more obstacles to overcome and less understanding of what they are and who they are. So they're less free.
If you're saying that, assuming I have food and sex readily available, and I choose food, that I could have chosen otherwise given the same circumstances?
Again? You asked for a definition of choosing and it's you who's mixing two different concepts to reach confusing conclusions.
"Giving the same circumstances" is the trap. If I get to choose food or sex, the outcome will depend on my tastes and the circumstances: Do I like the sex partner? Had I any sex in the last month or year? Am I really hungry? Do I like that food? Is it any good?
Freedom means that if presented with an attractive partner and disgusting food I can choose sex. Nobody forces me to do what I don't want to do. Your frame is so absurd that you try it to mean the opposite: that I'm free to eat disgusting food instead of having sex with an nice attractive woman.
We're not "free from ourselves", we're free (or not) from external interference. We weren't free to choose our rising environment and once the circumstances of it internalize, that's part of us and our will.
That's very different from what most people when they say "I", because they're thinking of their ego, the little voice narrating to them their thoughts. If you're willing to reduce "I" to this definition, then yes, that solves a lot of problems.
> "Giving the same circumstances" is the trap. If I get to choose food or sex, the outcome will depend on my tastes and the circumstances: Do I like the sex partner? Had I any sex in the last month or year? Am I really hungry? Do I like that food? Is it any good?
The reason I asked the question was to pin down the variant of compatibilism you were subscribing to. You seem to be effectively arguing for a minimalist compatibilist view.
When you say things like:
> Freedom means that if presented with an attractive partner and disgusting food I can choose sex. Nobody forces me to do what I don't want to do.
> We're not "free from ourselves", we're free (or not) from external interference. We weren't free to choose our rising environment and once the circumstances of it internalize, that's part of us and our will.
You are redefining the definitions of "free" and "will" such that of course it is obviously compatible with determinism, because you have (rightly) watered down the words "freedom" and "will" until they were much, much weaker than most people who believe in free will at all. It doesn't make much sense to call it free will anymore, at that point. And that's what my original post was about: I prefer to call a spade a spade, while some compatibilists prefer to argue down from the old superstitions until they rationalize the history of thought down to an approximation of reality, and still call that by the old "free will" term.
To my reading, you did not address what it actually means to choose, which implies some kind of unmoored Cartesian ego selecting one alternative or another.
> And "not a will"? Oh, come on! What is your definition of will? Something that has no causation? Of course our will is caused, by instincts based on natural needs: food, sex, group bonds, in the aspiration to dignity, improvement and solidarity.
Quite the opposite: that what we experience as will is actually an after-the-fact event that occurs after a decision is already made in the brain as a consequence of how it synthesizes different instincts and stimuli.
Anytime you think to yourself "I'm going to do this", that decision was already made before you were even aware of it.
> We're not free in a vacuum, but free to decide what means lead more effectively to goals and a personality that are given to us.
What does that mean? Do you have any evidence that, given the same circumstances, I could have chosen to do something differently? Or it is just a bunch of hypothetical navel-gazing?
The Stanford encyclopedia link is a great read.