[Adam]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Adam, we don't have to explain why someone may choose a particular option as more preferable. All that is necessary is to explain that we cannot choose that which is least preferable.

There is absolutely no need to explain that. It's baked into the definition. You can ask around, but I'm pretty sure no one needs this explained to them.

You think, based on the conventional definition.../

Hold up. There's a "conventional" definition, and it differs from Lessans' definition? You've assured me - repeatedly - that Lessans' definition is not idiosyncratic. Now you're telling me that his definition is not the "conventional" one.

Let's make up our minds, here. Was Lessans using conventional definitions or not?

..that there has to be some predictive power, but there doesn't have to be to prove that man's will is not free.

There has to be some sort of explanatory power in order to rescue this mess from triviality, and there is none. I don't know where "prov[ing] that ...will is not free" came from. We weren't talking about that right now. We were talking about whether or not the observation that the definition of choice precludes choosing anything other than one's preference is anything but trivial. You haven't offered any arguments here that don't boil down to either "Is so!" or the insistence that it's really important to accept this because it's crucial to Lessans' "proof" that will is not free, and that's only the first step in Lessantlaogy.

Again, his entire argument consists of, first, idiosyncratically defining "free will" such that the ability to choose something other than our own preference is essential to it and, second, the tautologically true observation that, by definition, we cannot choose other than our own preference. We were discussing the second bit.

Here's the thing, though. Just because you might choose to define free will such that it requires squaring a circle, you don't just get to point to the impossibility of doing so and declare victory. At best, you've proven that Lessantological Free Will does not exist. Since no one else actually gives a damn about Lessantological Free Will, no one really cares. That's the problem with idiosyncratic definitions.