A man can do as he wills, but not will as he wills. – schopenhauerschopenhauer
arthur schopenhauer was a philosopher. he had a tiff with hegel, choosing to have his lectures after hegel, which were well-attended while his own were neglected. schopenhauer incorporated elem...
free will is the sense that we control ourselves. But everything we know tells us that matter behaves according to a combination of randomness or principles, i.e. physical law. An atom does not "choose" to do anything. Therefore, free will must be a concept of emergenceemergence
emergence is when a self-organizing system displays more complex properties than its constituents. hence, emergentism is antithetical to reductionism, i.e. emergent phenomena are not easily red... if it is to be sensible at all. This writeup is also good. A thorough account of free will will also have to touch on causationcausation
causation is the abstraction whereby a temporally antecedent cause drives a proceeding effect. The notion of time is therefore quite important here. Thinkers of causation include aristotl....