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The intention to do one thing and not another does not originate in consciousness—rather, it appears in consciousness, as does any thought or impulse that might oppose it.
Am I free to do that which does not occur to me to do?
Compatibilism amounts to nothing more than an assertion of the following creed: A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.
Decisions, intentions, efforts, goals, willpower, etc., are causal states of the brain, leading to specific behaviors, and behaviors lead to outcomes in the world. Human choice, therefore, is as important as fanciers of
free will believe. But the next choice you make will come out of the darkness of prior causes that you, the conscious witness of your experience, did not bring into being.
Yes, you can do what you want—but you cannot account for the fact that your wants are effective in one case and not in another (and you certainly can’t choose your wants in advance).
You are not in control of your mind—because you, as a conscious agent, are only part of your mind, living at the mercy of other parts.15 You can do what you decide to do—but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.
You can change your life, and yourself, through effort and discipline—but you have whatever capacity for effort and discipline you have in this moment, and not a scintilla more (or less).
My choices matter—and there are paths toward making wiser ones—but I cannot choose what I choose. And if it ever appears that I do—for instance, after going back and forth between two options—I do not choose to choose what I choose.
To declare my “freedom” is tantamount to saying, “I don’t know why I did it, but it’s the sort of thing I tend to do, and I don’t mind doing it.”
Why did I stop training 20 years ago? Well, certain things just became more important to me. But
why did they become more important to me—and why precisely then and to that degree?
You, as the conscious agent who reads these words, are in no position to determine which of these bins you might fall into. And if you decide to switch bins—“I wasn’t going to buy the book, but now I will, just to spite you!”—you cannot account for that decision either. You will do whatever it is you do, and it is meaningless to assert that you could have done otherwise.
