A fish!

* * * Playing with Logic is just as dangerous as playing with matches!!!

sure it would...
all choices are not planned.
plus my choices planned or not can result in random occurances in others lifes as a side effect wether i or them want them to or not...

_________Example by analogy____________

An intelligent person is FREE to do as s/he pleases...
Though, only to a certain extend -- due to various social obligations!

By the same token, the choices we make are always subject to our conscious or subconscious preferrences -- as much as our choices may appear to be random, yet they NEVER ARE.* * *

Just because one isn't aware of those subconscious preferrences, doesn't mean the choice -- planned or not -- is completely random!

God doesn't play dice, and neiether are people -- though it may appear as though they do...

Well said.

Random is a specific principle, and choices are not random by definition.

*********************************
adj.

1. Having no specific pattern, purpose, or objective: random movements. See synonyms at chance.
2. Mathematics & Statistics. Of or relating to a type of circumstance or event that is described by a probability distribution.
3. Of or relating to an event in which all outcomes are equally likely, as in the testing of a blood sample for the presence of a substance.

idiom:

at random

1. Without a governing design, method, or purpose; unsystematically: chose a card at random from the deck.

*********************************

I am not saying a choice cannot be random, but choices are not by there very nature random, it takes specific intent to "choose at random". Random choice is the extreme minority of free will actions.

Random also explains little or none of the vast complexity required for a mind to be free.

... in fact, Free Will is an illusion, a philosophycal concept of the relative kind -- perceived only in relation to other issues...

* Even Randomness is possible only within a finit set:
A set of random numbers -- extended to infinity -- will, sooner or later, acquire a certain pattern.

Nevertheless, to a certain degree, we are Free to exercise our Wills... (But only to a certain degree -- permitted by law! )

P.S. After all, there's a system to every madness!

Well I do not think free will is an illusion, unless your definition is the all to common definition that requires free will to be the opposite of deterministic causation. In which case its a categorical confusion that creates a situation where in order to make free will real one must ignore cause and effect, or allude to some unknown random thought generator, some god-scape, some spirit sauce, some metaphysical plane of mind, or other such vacuous ideas.

The fact of the matter is that choice is real, if you don't confuse free will and make it something other then choice its easy. Yes our choices are based on millions of variables that at the moment of the choice all come together to create the choice, and the effect precedes the combination of causes in a wholly deterministic way.

Another reason people confuse free will and determinism is becuase they confuse determinism. Determinism is wholly an ontological descriptor of a causal relationship between two events. A causal relationship is an irreflexive, antisymmetric and transitive binary relation between two events.

Such that:
no event can be the cause of itself;
if a is the cause of b, then b cannot be the cause of a;
if a is the cause of b, and b the cause of c, then a is the cause of c.

If determinism is not confused with epistemic descriptions, such as prediction then it has no truck with free will, this includes the so called predetermination which cannot exist along with choice, its the fate card so to speak.

Its natural for these concepts to confuse individuals who have not spent adequate time exploring the relationship between what can be known and what is, the relationship between causation and correlation and the common confusions created when categorical errors are made in reference to these terms.

I stand corrected -- certainly your right regarding Free Will -- I got carried away in referring to it as an illusion... Neverhteless, considering a highly relative nature of the issue -- a philosophycal concept of the relative kind (i.e. perceived only in relation with other issues) -- the difference between actual and illusory becomes less significant!

The larger question would seem to be that of whether we actually have the mythical attribute known as 'free will' or do we live in an unrecognized Calvinistic construct in which all things are pre-ordained? Until that's resolved, all else is moot.

But of course, everything is pre-ordained! Nevertheless, we prefer fooling ourselves into thinking we have a free will...

In fact, "free" and "will" are antonims!

The even larger question then becomes: 'Does free will allow randomness?' ... Aye, laddie, there's the rub ...

As I mentioned above,

The issues are completely disassociated for one allowing another!

(1) Why?

(2) How?

*1) Because when just about anyone talks about Free Will they are referring to making choices that could have been otherwise.

2)Random choices are not choices of the will, they are choices from randomness, like spinning an arrow on the table to point to the dish you will eat . . I can safely say that does not require free will, you could automate a computer (or create a machine) to decide that and most everyone agrees scripts (Machines) are not conscious and do not have free will. So a random choice machine is clearly not conscious, and consciousness is clearly not random. A willed thing is a desired thing, a random thing is without desire, without want, without order.

I am unclear how anyone can make randomness requisite, in fact a causal mechanism in the process of will.

*Free Will requires things to be changeable. If events must play out a certain way then indeed there is no free will. If I throw a brick at your head, and you duck, and you could not have chosen to not duck, then it was inevitable. If you do have a choice as to whether you will duck or not, then it was evitable.

I posit somethings are evitable, and other things inevitable, I do not see how randomness is causally required for that to be so.

I think the whole randomness = free will is just a lame attempt to say QM solves the consciousness problem, which clearly no solution has been achieved, in fact no consensus has been reached by the high priests of physics as to if the ontological causative actions of QM are even really random. There are three camps, the we dont knows, the its hidden determinism, and the its magic camps.

I am a computer/software engineer, I do not pretend to know.

Thanks, dear redonkulous! (couldn't have said it better!!!)

Some people, it seems, are stuck in an Infinite Loop of logic...