Free Will, revised

For the last while I have been reading/studying free will. I do not agree with Sam Harris or Danial Dennett, nor any of the religious. Epictetus comes close, but misses a few points. How would one test what I now believe? I am not sure if there is a way.

I believe we have some free will, but not much. Sam's test is not limited to the areas that we have free will over, in fact, the bit of free will we have is so over run with none free will in Sam's tests, so I believe his findings are correct. On that scale, we have no free will, yet we do have some free will.

Our free will can be modeled with one three way switch. Neutral, positive or negative reaction to any single proposition. That is not much free will.

First there is a problem with the mental switch, we have three choices, not just two. We can assent and reject, but there is a neutral no decision, delay, not make a decision, study it more, defer, postpone, refuse to consider, position. Nothing is a clear diapole switch. Epictetus gets around this by calling out only those things that we mostly control, yet he goes too far by including desires, opinions, motivations and aversions, which we may not have complete control over if the desire, opinion, motivation or aversion is persistent or strong. His filter need to be finer, but also there may be considerable variation between people. So my free will may be greater or less than yours, but I do not think it could be much less than I describe.

Many other things actually fit along a continuum from one end to the other, the useful nine or seven point scale, in addition to the dipolar or tripolar switch of logic. 

Having said all that, I think that the free will we do have is entirely in our thoughts, and that mainly is we can assent to or reject a statement proposition, or defer judgement. Even that some people who have not overwritten the teaching of there youth may not truly have such liberty. Anything out of our thoughts is beyond our free will, but some do not accept this.  Communication of that level is not free since it also depends on the body which is the third level. The second level is the generation or recall of thoughts, where appetites, desires, aversions, motivations, opinions, emotions and similar live.  These may come from below conscious, be rational, or just arise from chemical or situational conditions.  These come and and sometimes thrust themselves upon us. We do not therefore have true will over them, but some people have learned to control these for periods of time, to some extent, often by repeatedly rejecting these propositions.  This ability seems to vary widely among people, as does the force and frequency that these arise. We can defer until the strength reduces, return to some other defined deflection of the thoughts, emotion, or deflection. Even this second level is beyond our natural free will, and therefore can be modified in intense by the body chemistry, and therefore training.

Anything that requires the third level of activation becomes much simpler to measure but will not show free will. The use of body within the tests boundaries eliminates anything that does not include the body. As free will is totally within the mind, and only within part of the mind, anything that exceeds this small space, philosophically, will exceed free will. This model of free will requires one three way output switch, no output, positive or negative to be modeled. That is not much free will. Anything more requires additional input, which may or may not have been there by free will. Opinions could be within free will, but even those may require external input to arrive in the mind as they are, and as such may not be free will.

We are indoctrinated from birth, and some of that is false; we have just accepted it, likely because, well we depend on our parents, and we believe them, at least until we become teenagers, by which time parents have exposed there fallible nature, and so it goes.

Traditions are filled with wrong information. Religions also, if not more so. When we go back to first principals, as we did in so much derivation of structural formulas in engineering, we realize that there is no god, only logic, in everything. Life takes away choices, which reduces our ability to utilize free will. Is it free will if there is no logical choice? Is it free will if our body is demanding? Is it free will if the right choice is much more difficult or impractical given the constraints and pressures? It it free choice if the right choice goes against what the body is demanding? Appetites must be satisfied according to the body. So even if we have free will, what choices do we really have? Just in our mind, that is all we can really have.