I have frequently come across the argument while discussing free will that saying “I don’t have free will” is a performative contradiction. That is to say that I am contradicting myself by saying it, because free will is required to say so.
My counterargument is that this argument is question begging, it should have no power to persuade anyone, since anyone who believes there is no free will obviously believes that saying anything does not require free will. You are presuming free will to prove free will. (or more accurately: presuming that free will is necessary for action to prove that free will is. Ans since all who are opposed to free will in general are also against free will in action you have a problem.)
I am only attacking the argument here by the way, not the conclusion, there might still be a free will.
Does anyone know where this (first) argument originated? And what do you think, which one of these is the best argument?
Free-will is not even a concept. It’s two words that should never have been put together. Will comes before choice…
You cannot engage in any voluntary activity without first believing you are free.
Intentional activity can only come from consciousness, because the intention is a result of experience. You experience, and you effect your experience (as well as others’).
Believing you are free happens due to the idea that you are not free.
Believing is like claiming or requiring conviction or certainty that you are able to have the freedom to act. It’s the demand buried in the belief that’s preventing the freedom of action. You are always trying to convince yourself that you are able to act freely.
Belief is what gives survival to thought and thought’s only purpose is to maintain and protect itself. You cannot use the experiences created from thought to get out of the trap created by it. You only end up reinforcing it.
Volchok: I agree with you and do not believe there to be a contradiction, nevertheless this has been a regular argument made in serious literature on the subject. I guess I am asking because I too see it as a very bad argument. My counterargument is made to try and remove it from the fray. Those who are proponents of the argument would obviously believe that you did need free will to say anything at all, not just will. So we need to say something more than just “you are wrong” to them.
Faust: Indeed, yet I can hear the argument coming from them already “but it required a human with free will to program these things to say so”.
So if i do not believe that I am free I have no intentionality? I do not believe so, yet I do insist that i act intentionally. It is only that that intentionality is ancored in physics and not in a free agent.
Finishedman: I am not sure I understand you. Sorry But I do feel that I am not always trying to convince myself that I am acting freely, it might in fact be the other way around.
But I do feel that I am not always trying to convince myself that I am acting freely, it might in fact be the other way around.