[MD] experience

[Case]

[Case] 
> there are a variety of factors that can influence my "free will" and 
> the more of them I consider the less free my will seems. 

[Craig]

Or is it the other way?  When I have no reason to eat a bowl of worms, I
feel compelled to shun them.  But when I'm offered money, fame & a chance to
return to the reality TV program for another week, I weigh the pros & cons.
In this latter case it feels that I am exercising my free will: I could
decide either way.   
An adult sucks his thumb.  A Freudian says it's because he has an
unconscious desire to be nursed by his mother again.  What is the evidence
for this?  He sucks his thumb.
Normally, the taste of worms causes me to shun them.  But when offered
money, etc. to do so, I eat the worms. Why?  "Because the force causing me
to shun the worms is weaker than the force of wanting money."  But what if
instead I decide to eat the worms.  "Then the former force wasn't weaker."
How do we know that?  

[Case]
But see above: "I feel compelled to shun them." Compelled? 

"I could decide either way." So in deciding one way or the other what
"pushes" you over the edge?

It is more a matter of the kinds and causes of our behavior that make it
more complex the iron filings. It is not so much a matters of principle as
shear complexity that make it appear to be free. As I mentioned I am a big
fan of free will or at least the perception of free will but you have to see
its limitations.

I am not free to eat granite for example. I am not free to levitate. By the
time you get done listing the constraints on our behavior there is precious
little to get excited about.