The age old question of free will: Do we have free will?

Hello my fellow friends of role-play gateway. I am currently taking philosophy and we have been discussing the topic of free will for a couple of weeks now. I wanted to get your thoughts on this as well and make a discussion about it here. Here are some questions posed, and a little snippet of John Locke's thought experiment to get us started:

"Suppose a man be carried, whilst fast asleep, into a room where is a person he longs to see and speak with; and be there locked fast in, beyond his power to get out; he awakes, and is glad to find himself in so desirable company, which he stays willingly in, i.e. prefers his stay to goign away. I ask, is not this stay voluntary?" -John Locke'v Voluntary Prisoner

Here are some interesting questions posed by Peg Tittle:

Which should bear on moral responsibility-the voluntariness of the freedom? IS it that a person is morally responsible for doing X as long as she does X because she chooses to do X--whether or not she could have done otherwise? Or is it that a person is morally responsible for doing X only if he could have done otherwise (in which case determinism is incompatible with moral responsibility--in a determined world, we can't do other than what we do, so we can't be held morally responsible for our actions)?

Determinism = past determines the future.

Here are my thoughts on the subjects:

I believe the man perceives that the choice is voluntary. He may have wanted to stay, but the fact is he can not leave if he wanted to. He does not have multiple choice to pick from. He only has one choice which is to stay.

There are a lot of things in this life that influences our decisions such as rules and laws set by the government, moral code, and expectations. To answer the questions posted by Title, I think that we do have the freedom to pick what we want to do if we did not follow the laws and disregarded moral obligations. We can always decide whether or not do something but we are influenced to do things based on the restrictions posed by our society. So yes we are morally responsible for the choices we make because we can always pick whether or not we do something unless forced to do something like in the case of the man that is locked in the room in Locke's thought experiment. Our past is an influence, not a chain. It is up to us to let the influences rule our lives.

The problem is we view the influences as restrictions and rules against acts because of the need to be part of a society so many of our decisions are limited. Morality is something most humans live by and they consider it a rule. This rule would act like a prison on the person because it prevents a person from doing something that they would consider a moral evil so maybe we aren't really as free as we think we are. Maybe freedom of will is more of a perception on most people. The more I think about this, the more confused I get about what it is that I believe. I used to think that humans had free will and I sort of agreed with compatabilism. I still do, but at the same time, thinking about the self imposed limitations makes it feel like the only people who are really free are psychopaths.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RolePlayGateway/~3/B0hLwB7iSns/viewtopic.php

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