How much power do you have, to force someone else to do something?

[Tiberius]

By that logic it is impossible to force anyone to do anything.

 

[Elioenai26]

You are mistaken you forcibly placed your girlfriend's arm on top of her head you did not force her to put her arm on her head. A huge difference. You did it not her. You do not have the power to make her do it herself if she decides she will not. It is a common fallacy among bullies that they have power to make others do things.

This is exactly the point I was making in my previous post.

There seems to be a misconstrual of what a "free" act is.

We would also do well to remember that there are many naturalistic thinkers who deny that a "free" act is even possible.

This is becoming popular among many naturalistic proponents of biological evolutuion by natural selection.

So this mindset of others must be taken into account as well, even though most people have taken the existence of free will for granted for centuries, there are some who would want us to believe that we have no choice in our decisions.

Clarence Darrow was one of the first to champion this idea of diminished responsibility in a court of law. He argued on behalf of two gentlemen who killed a boy for the "thrill" of it.

He maintained that the murderers were not responsible for their actions because evolution had predetermined their dispositions and proclivities towards violence, and were therefore not culpable.

 

[quatona]

Clarence Darrow was one of the first to champion this idea of diminished responsibility in a court of law. He argued on behalf of two gentlemen who killed a boy for the "thrill" of it.

He maintained that the murderers were not responsible for their actions because evolution had predetermined their dispositions and proclivities towards violence, and were therefore not culpable.

A short look into Wikipedia suggests that this is not true.

ETA: Then again, http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/leoploeb/Accountoftrial.html appears to support your description of his line of reasoning.

 

[Gottservant]

You are mistaken you forcibly placed your girlfriend's arm on top of her head you did not force her to put her arm on her head. A huge difference. You did it not her. You do not have the power to make her do it herself if she decides she will not. It is a common fallacy among bullies that they have power to make others do things.

Great thought!

Very sensible.

Bullies *ugh*

 

[Noxot]

If a person's volitional capacity is temporarily abrogated, then the person's capacity to choose between options is nullified.

If a person is knocked unconscious over the head, taken somewhere and bound by ropes and is raped, of course this person has no control over the other person who is committing the act against them. And of course this is not the victim's will!

To clarify, the victim has not been forced to do anything against his or her will because their capacity to choose has been temporarily abrogated. I.e. they have no choice in the matter. Therefore it is not a matter of will, and therefore your example of rape is misapplied.

good stuff.

lets say God gives you 2 choices: A punishment or B obey Him. what if you don't want either of those things but God says pick A or B? is that still free will?