That's not compatibilism - as long as "will" can influence the physical world, you have a non-materialist philosophy. Nothing wrong with that, but it's very strange to call it compatibilism.
For what it's worth, I don't see any reason to imagine that hard decisions are of any other quality than easy decisions. It's part of my history and experience just as much that I prefer to eat salty foods than sweet ones as it is that I sometimes abstain from eating that pizza to try to manage my waistline, or refuse that job offer because I don't want to work for a company I don't find ethical.
We are not nature? I assume you are now invoking the mystical and magical "free will" with the word "conscious"? How does saying that word change anything? Where do you think your choices originate from? A soul?
According to GEB, humans have an internal model of their own mind, ergo a conscience. This is what allows them to step out of the system - they can step out of the system within the model.
Positive and negative share the same signal. Decision determines whether a signal is positive or negative. Pain doesn’t happen, signal happens. Some people find pleasure instead of pain. Pain shares the same signal with bliss. Truth with illusion. Good with evil. Love with hate. Life and death.
The only sin is to believe a lie. Truth runs deeper in you than blood, it’s encoded to your soul: It’s your conscience. A sin is every time we lie to ourselves, because it distorts our perception of reality.
A strong understanding of reality in all its layers makes us God-like. Therefore, self-realization makes us less sinful. Self-realization is the path to superhuman. There are divine layers of life, which open up to those who learn to live without lying to themselves.
There's indeed no free will (basic physics tells us that, can be also experienced directly via LSD or meditation), but to see if there's consciousness just inflict pain onto yourself.
All this being said it's pretty clear why would humans, or any other apes, or any other species, have morals - to reduce the pain/suffering that them and others receive.
So it seems the crux of the matter is how we regard the process of a person making a decision.
A compatibilist would say that for the purposes of discussion we describe this event as the exercising of will, even though from a physics perspective the outcome could be predetermined.
Is that correct?
If so that seems similar to a recent discussion on Bohr's view of the irreducibility of biology to physics.
It wouldn't necessarily have to push it to the unconscious. Free will could be an infrequently-exercised veto power.
Which might not even be an unreasonable way to look at it. Many people make a contrast between habit and will. There already seems to be a common idea that much of the time, people do things the way they always have, and it is only at certain key moments that the will asserts itself and changes course.
The problem with this is that it infinitely regresses. If I can't control anything I do, then what's the difference if I'm empathetic and compassionate or not? Surely I'm just "riding the wave" either way.
These admonitions always start by saying we have no free will and then advising a course of action based on that knowledge, but that's incoherent.
In “the capacity to effect the determination of resolve“ isn’t the “determination of resolve” the same as will power?
My attempt is to reframe as willpower as having mental capacity to take information into account, or to lack the capacity and default to path of least resistance logic.
In all three we are assuming there’s an actor making a choice. But I think we can stay at that level of abstraction for this discussion.
My Diogenes answer would be to walk across the room and slap you: “if I didn’t chose to do it you cannot be angry at me.” That’s tongue and cheek sure, but the point I feel stands.
Free will is certainly constrained, and our material and biological conditions do matter - there’s no amount I can will to make myself fly, but they are not necessarily as rigid of constraints as many would have you believe. We can overcome our biology, our predilections, and many of our shortcomings. We have to consciously choose to do so though.
> Our free will is demonstrated by our ability to consciously choose whether and how to act when presented with thoughts and emotions.
This is nonsensical, because choice is a thought before it is an action, and we accept that we do not control the comings and goings of our own thoughts.
I doubt that 'will', as it is commonly conceived, has any meaning, or at least a very different one, for a non-conscious agent. It's similar to the way i think IIS is clouding rather than clarifying the issue. For related reasons, I feel that compatibilist positions on the issue are largely avoiding it.
Not GP, but my understanding is that free will is weak, not strong. You can suppress a desire to eat a donut (requires willpower) but can't prevent the thought/desire from arising on its own when presented with the stimulus.
Similarly, we can suppress the desire to go to war after a provocation. However, we can't choose to not feel furious, at least for an instant.
Thoughts and feeling tend to arise on their own, and free will is about whether we accept or reject them.
Spirit/will has been demonstrated to possess the necessary capability to overrule the brain. It's a choice. Maybe not an easy one to make, but a choice nontheless.
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