Shows that it is entirely Othello's choice to interpret Iago's words, that Iago is simply an inkling that knows none, and that it is man's tendency to suspect that causes the downfall.

Touches on innocence, free will and lack of constraint, lack of morality, lack of humanity == Blake's innocence == protection from Iago

Again example why he is a creator: Free will.

Yeah, but those who would model the future for the sake of influencing it are driven to do so because they have no free well. And similarly, there are people who will patently refuse to pursue such an approach because they are driven to it by their lack of free will.

This is a good question. And we don't need to be able to predict the future to answer it.

This is a non-sequitur. Being able to predict the future is irrelevant. What matters is that whatever we do will be "determined" by the laws of physics and the state of the system at the moment of a decision.

Yup, that makes sense to me. I'm fine with that too.

Still, however, everyone is ignoring the influence of learning on our future state.

But can we? If there's no libertarian free will, then we cannot influence the future because we cannot choose to do differently than we will have done.

And that's the crux of the matter. Knowing that free will is only constructed, we can decide it would be best to not base certain decisions on its existence. For instance, how we deal with crime and punishment.

Of course, if there's no free will, then there are some people who will never accept it's non-existence.

Again, the problem here is that we can define and characterize baseball such that we can unequivocally say that a given entity either is or is not "baseball".

But we cannot do that for free will - because we cannot measure it.

Carroll is also being quite utilitarian, which is fine. My idea is that considering the utility of a concept only matters for emergent properties because they are constructed and not fundamental. The fundamentals have no utility; they just are.

Another way of saying this is that temperature and pressure are emergent properties of the more fundamental properties of the molecules of air.

The problem with applying this to free will, though, is that unlike temperature, we have no way to measure free will. If we can't measure it, I am quite comfortable in denying this analogy.

But why would they believe something so silly?

A good way to characterize free will from a purely scientific point of view.

Yes! This is very important. Recognizing that "race" is constructed rather than fundamental is the first step to recognizing the race is irrelevant, and that it can be jettisoned from our reasoning. Similarly, once we can see that "free will" is constructed and not fundamental, we can get past its philosophical shackles.

This is silly and unhelpful. How would the staff know what the laws of nature have determined without knowing more about the patron than even the patron themself know?

And there's the problem: do we really make choices? Or are we just unaware of the deterministic algorithm making the choice for us?

This is the difference between a social construct and a distinct physical phenomenon. In this regard, “time” is like “race”.

This could only demonstrate that there is no such thing as free will if a person is a distinct entity from her brain--as though the brain "decides for her" what she will do, while the "person" is merely carried along for the ride.

That's absurd, of course. The brain is the person, or anyway the most substantial part of what we'd consider the person to be, so when your brain makes a decision, you are making that decision. If consciousness is a post-hoc reconstruction of mental processes, then so much for consciousness--and if your conception of free will depends on consciousness not looking like that, then so much for free will, but it doesn't have to be that way.

Unless you don't sign up to the common conception of free will, in which case, none of your life is self-determined.

Is there a conflict here with the notion of free will (i.e. that we don't have any)? See Dennet, Harris, Coyne for alternative positions to the notion that we have any agency i.e. that in any situation we could have done something other.

This reminds me of the action of breathing and "free-will". We can freely choose to "STOP BREATHING". But to continue living in third density our bodies must breath and will KICK IN and automatically breath even if the brain has to make us black out to resume breathing!

Bounty comes from understanding the words. The Revelation is, firstly, the words (and the spiritual energy they contain).

That there are patterns in the structures of networks that cut across nature, people and technology makes me wonder about human control, free will and agency. Is life controlled by networks rather institutions, culture and choice?

free will aint free... free will has to be designed into your life, by active thinking and active doing

True. But some of us are saying something slightly different. The free software movement shares some of those principles and those go back to a rather specific idea about personal/individual agency.

Yet people assume that the issue of Free Will is a universal obsession. As per Foucault’s episteme, the notion is so strong as to restrict the imagination.