[MD] Free Will

[craigerb at comcast.net]

[Craig, previously]
> I prefer ski area X.  Then I try a new ski area Y.
> Before I didn't consider scenery important, but Y is so beautiful that
> I now prefer Y to X.  That's my choice--it wasn't already a preference.

[Steve]
> Please demonstrate your free will by willing a change in some such
> preference.

[Steve]
> Your example doesn't work.
> You didn't set out to will a new specific preference and attain the
> new preference by mere force of will as requested.

Hah! You've changed the request. First it was "willing a change in
some such preference"; now it is "attain the new preference by mere
force of will".
I demonstrated free will by WILLingly changing my preference.
Whether I used "mere force of will", who knows (& as the term implies
"FORCE of will" is in any case irrelevent to FREE will.)

[Steve]
> Do you prefer chocolate or vanilla? Ok, now will yourself to prefer
> the other.

As I said previously: some preferences we can choose to change & some
we can't. The ski area is the former; ice cream/food taste is the latter.
Of course, the existence of cases of the latter do not show the
impossibility of the former. 

[Steve]
> [preferences] just don't change as a
> matter of squinting your eyes and focussing really really hard on
> changing them as matter of willing them to be so.
Now I see why you can't exercise free will--you're going about it all wrong.
Craig