As my position on the matter should be rather clear by now I shall try to refrain from arguing against the idea. Except to point out that in most cases freedom actually refers to actions which are determined by one’s will, not to the will itself.
If you answer yes, I would appreciate it if you would provide a brief explanation of what exactly you think is meant my “free will”.
BTW if you change your mind you can always change your vote. 
Unsure for now. I’ll be watching this.
Tough one, there’s always choices, but we’re hardwired to always make the choices we do. A cat will ALWAYS fight when in a corner.
Its one of those discussion points I try not to get involved in, either way you run the risk of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
I voted yes.
As much as the environment is out my control, i can control how i react to it. what is out of control, is natural bodily functions, like breathing, burning energy, and the like. and event that, at an extreme, you have a choice to end.(by suicide).
a lot of people hide behind the fact that they react naturally to something. like, for instance, an abusive man wil say he beat his wife becuase he couldnt help it, or she made him do it. nobody held a gun to his head.
When you are a child, you are at the will of your parents,teachers… but as you grow older, as you learn to control yourself, you regain your control, and hopefully, when you reach the age of leaving your parent’s home, you are sufficiently in control to not go around humping people’s legs and killing people at random with roadrage.
free will allso gives you the power to decide how you will feel about the world and the people in it. this is quite a powerfull tool. when you can master it, even people’s bitchy remarks will slide off you. i will let you know when i’ve figured out how the hell to do that.
I too voted “Yes.” While a naturalist/materialist metaphysic in its current incarnation seems to require a denial of free will (and I think no one who has thought about it for just a second will refute that it’s a deeply tricky problem), it would be premature to reject free will, given people’s ubiquitous recoiling from the idea that they are not autonomous agents. What possible purpose can be served by such a pervasive illusion if free will is indeed a fantasy? What do we gain from it?
Such a rejection is furthermore premature since there is, as yet, no satisfactory naturalist/materialist account of consciousness and mind, things on which free will depends. Lacking such accounts, we don’t reject mind and consciousness because doing so would be self-contradictory. Moreover, those who hold with strict determinism have not been paying attention to the lessons of QM, Mensuration, Computation and Chaos Theory. These areas of study provide compelling reasons to suppose that strict determinism (as Laplace had conceived it) is a chimera. This is not to deny that many processes are deterministic within certain limits of accuracy. However, there are many other processes that evolve over time to vastly different states from initial conditions that are only marginally different. All that is needed is some subtle natural effect to predispose such very sensitive initial conditions this way rather than that, and determinism flies out the window. The argument that “given sufficiently accurate knowledge, etc., it’s still deterministic” is soundly refuted by a bunch of insurmountable physical limitations on what can be known, what can be measured and what can be computed.
Personally, I am certain that there are as-yet undiscovered features of physical reality (space, time, matter, energy) that will permit an in-principle materialist/naturalist account of how mind and consciousness arise from mindless and unconscious space-time-matter-energy without having to resort to many of the strange arguments, either slippery, self-serving or non sequitur, that this problem has produced. Further, I am sure that these aspects are tied in with QM indeterminacy and non-locality. Once we understand mind and consciousness more clearly as manifestations of underlying material properties, we will no doubt also have a clearer picture of what it means to have a will, how a will can procure physical effects (e.g. making a cup of coffee, or not), and whether such a will can indeed be free.
Needless to say, the history of science is replete with examples where a material account of this or that phenomenon was held to be “impossible” only to be turned on its head later on. More pessimistically, it may also be that the as-yet-undiscovered features of physical reality that I speak of will lie forever beyond our ability to apprehend if they form the basis on which our mind, consciousness and will are founded. Presently, we simply don’t know.
In short, those who argue that materialism/naturalism undeniably requires a rejection of mind/consciousness/free will are getting way ahead of themselves and what inferences are actually warranted from what we presently know. Nonetheless, until the question is properly settled, I will remain convinced that my will really is free for the very simple reason, as it seems to me, that were it not so, consciousness itself, and self-awareness in particular, would be pretty pointless attributes to have.
'Luthon64
I voted “yes” by an act of my own volition - not due to “pre-conditioning” or genetically induced compulsion.
I voted “No” as the alternative I needed was unavailable, viz ‘limited free will’. Let me try to explain my view on something that has kept philosophers puzzled for millenia:
I:
I voted yes. I could vote no but using my free will ,my decision ,I said yes.
Thanks, I was starting to feel awfully lonely. 
Allow me to throw a perhaps uncomfortable spanner (both metric and imperial – geddit?) into the proceedings. In light of the present lack of persuasive argument either for or against free will, the decision as to whether it properly exists is ultimately an emotional one that rests on the individual with the entirety of his or her psychological make-up, impedimenta and encumbrances. That is to say, I expect that people who are more proactive and more willing to take responsibility for their actions and lives will also be more inclined to believe that they have free will, whereas those leaning towards a more fatalistic appraisal of life will tend to withhold their support from the idea that their will is free. This all is, of course, pure speculation but it does raise the question of how much free will is involved in deciding whether one’s will is free…
So where does that leave the fence-sitters?
'Luthon64
I said I was going to “try to refrain from arguing against the idea”, but I am forced to respond to this comment:
People with strong, determined wills who take responsibility for their actions and lives are more inclined to believe in free will? Are you suggesting that I am a fatalist? The way I see it determinism is the only means by which we can hope to exercise any control over our fate. I would associate the shoulder shrugging “shit happens” attitude with fatalism, not determinism.
Oh I take absolute responsibility for my actions and my path in life. Even if that is an illusion. And certainly don’t blame, for lack of another word, destiny. I’m just not so sure how any of my decisions are free from any and all constraints. When I think about it, they aren’t. Even an arbitrary what I want for dinner is based on where in the week I am and what I feel like at the time and what we had the days before and what is actually in the fridge etc etc etc.
On the other hand are we going to deny that shit happens? Is the baby born in Uganda and the baby born to Bill Gates in the same boat with the same opportunities and the same choices? Can Free Will in any way be measured? Are some choices free-er than others?
I’ll again give the dictionary definition of free will and respond to that.
Main Entry: free will
Function: noun
Date: 13th century
1 : voluntary choice or decision
2 : freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention
2 I reject completely and 1 I currently question. I have the appearance of making choices but how voluntary are they and how voluntary must they be to be deemed ‘free’?
mefiante’s two posts have been thought provoking as usual but I remain unconvinced. I also just take issue with this question she asks:
What possible purpose can be served by such a pervasive illusion if free will is indeed a fantasy? What do we gain from it?That seems like nothing more than an [i]argument from ignorance[/i]. Perhaps people who believed they had free will are more apt to actually make correct "choices" in that they actually do act as opposed to let things happen. Surely that is evolutionary advantages and apt to promote survival?
No, I am saying that I expect there to be a positive correlation between individuals’ degree of belief in the freeness of their will and the extent to which they are proactive about their lives. I used “fatalistic” in the sense of “waiting for things to happen” as opposed to “going out there and making things happen.” I think the possibility I raise would make for an interesting psychological study.
Yes, it is, as are many other aspects concerning the question of free will. However, this wasn’t meant so much as an argument for free will as it was to show that denying free will also leaves some tough questions unanswered.
'Luthon64
To clarify the difference between detrminism and fatalism: I think determinism is the belief that some system of events is entirely causal, nothing more, nothing less. In the absence of any surefire planning for such a system of causes, determinism cannot become fatalism. Thomas Clarke states:
"Since fatalism, as a response to the non-existence of free will, is a deeply mistaken response, one that confuses determinism for powerlessness, we needn’t pretend to have free will just to avoid it. Rather, we must see that the traditional notion of the freely willing agent does nothing to give us real, causal powers – the powers of desire, rationality, and skill – that we don’t already have in some measure. Actions do make a difference, in that they have effects, and the fact that we don’t autonomously choose our course of action independent of circumstances doesn’t lessen their causal efficacy. Seeing this, we accept our place in nature without falling into passivity. Indeed, we have no choice but to respond to the prompting of desire, sometimes modulated by the rational consideration of consequences, sometimes driven straight to its object. Either way, we are inevitably moved to action, and no philosophy, or philosophical mistake, can prevent it."
mefiante, may I ask your comment on the definition I provided and or will you provide a definition for Free Will that you adhere to?
I am glad you raised that question because it seems to me that the several participants in this thread are perhaps not meaning the same thing in regard to “free will.” I think the dictionary definition you gave is a good one, provided that we are clear about certain points concerning its semantics. Free will does not mean something like “I can make any choices I fancy, without any restrictions or regard for the circumstances in which the choice is to be made.” Such a position is clearly untenable. For example, I can’t choose to order sushi from a KFC menu because KFC doesn’t offer the former dish. Nor does the wording of the definition suggest such unconstrained choice.
When it says “choices that are not determined by prior causes” this doesn’t mean that there are no causes that point towards a particular choice or limit the available choices; it means only that the choice is not completely fixed by those causes and that I still exercise some autonomy over where my selection will fall, even in spite of those causes. I have a list of six books that I wish to buy with more-or-less equal urgency but my budget permits the purchase of only two of them. To say that the two titles I did buy were determined by prior causes is an empty post hoc statement unless you can show in advance (without my knowledge or involvement if need be) precisely those causes you believe will precipitate the exact choice that I will make because that is what determinism actually entails. Thus, free will is characterised by at least some measure of sporadic unpredictability.
'Luthon64
This is a nice summary. We need determinism to exercise our causal powers, without it the effects of our choices would be indeterminable.
Can’t argue with a suggestion for further study, but I think the results may surprise you. Most of the libertarians I’ve met are quite apathetic about actually doing anything.
Maybe so, but we won’t know until such a study is done. Having one’s expectations thwarted is the among the best of ways to learn something new.
Huh? What is the specific relevance of libertarians (and an anecdote about them) to the issue at hand?
'Luthon64
They generally believe they have libertarian free will.