As far as predicatibility goes -- well, fine. So, proximally and for the most part, you can predict what someone is going to do, and the better you know that person, the more accurate your predictions. But just because people are predictable, doesn't mean that they don't have free will. It just means they're predictable.
So, we are just atoms? But because of quantum indeterminacy, the behavior of atoms cannot be predicted with total accuracy. (In any case, even if you're an bald naturalist about mental phenomena, it's not atoms, but electrical impulses. But I digress).
And yes, our choices are influenced by feeling. They're influenced by a lot of things. That's why they're choices. If choice was merely random, it wouldn't be free will.
It's probably good to note that I am not proposing here that free will is incompatible with determinism. Nothing I've said contradicts the compatibilist position. Now, if it turns out that, as a condition of possibility for morality, free will needs to be radically free, compatibilism will turn out to be false. But I've not said anything that would necessarily lead someone to that conclusion.
__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."
"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
|