Free Will

me: what's free will?
N: argh, I don't want to take a 7-9 pm seminar
me: hmm
so choosing not to take it implies free will?
N: perhaps.
but I don't have many other options.
me: so no free will there
N: free will, yes
but it's a choice.... do I want to finish my masters?
I want that more than I want my wednesady nights free, i think
me: hmm*ponder* I'll get back to you
N: ok
me: is free will the choice that an individual has to overcome their predispositions?
N: possibly :-)
me: or is that just a reaction to living in the society that we do?
I mean what one society finds morally unaceeptable could be totally fine in another take for example female genital mutilation
or even circumcision
*ponder*
How does our biology weigh into this?
At some point physics steps in how far does it go? Can there be free will if at the penutlimate level everything is random? Maybe its a question of starting points but how far back do you go to be able to safely say "free will starts here". I suppose at a pratical level you have to take things in context but is it true free will if its basis is not free?
I mean there are experiments that show that peoples decisions can be influendced by environmental factors.
How do we know that the decisions we are making are not so influenced? We don't because most of the time we are not aware of those influences.
For example magnetic fields have been shown to influence choice and in hindsight those subjects believed they were making choices they made uninfluenced.
Maybe its more of a "free won't" (as stated in the Wikipedia entry courtesy of C) you have a veto power.
On the other hand:
"Therefore we see at once that there cannot be any such thing as free-will; the very words are a contradiction, because will is what we know, and everything that we know is within our universe, and everything within our universe is moulded by conditions of time, space and causality.
... To acquire freedom we have to get beyond the limitations of this universe; it cannot be found here.""

That's Swami Vivekananda a Hindu philosopher (also from the Wikipedia entry)

You know, I need to revert to what I know. I've found that in any polar debate, the truth is really somewhere in the middle the questions shouldn't be a choice between the free will or determinism the fact of the matter is that its porbably somewhere in the middle

It took these quotes (also from Wikipedia) to remind me of that:

Philosopher Chandrashekhara Bharati Swaminah puts it this way:"Fate is past karma, free-will is present karma. Both are really one, that is, karma, though they may differ in the matter of time. There can be no conflict when they are really one.
Fate, as I told you, is the resultant of the past exercise of your free-will. By exercising your free-will in the past, you brought on the resultant fate. By exercising your free-will in the present, I want you to wipe out your past record if it hurts you, or to add to it if you find it enjoyable. In any case, whether for acquiring more happiness or for reducing misery, you have to exercise your free-will in the present.""

A contemporary American Buddishist monk, Thanissaro Bhikkhu, puts it this way:"The Buddha's teachings on karma are interesting because it's a combination of causality and free-will. If things were totally caused there would be no way you could develop a skill - your actions would be totally predetermined. If there was no causality at all skills would be useless because things would be constantly changing without any kind of rhyme or reason to them. But it's because there is an element of causality and because there is this element of free-will you can develop skills in life."

I think my difficulty was with the whole concept of what free will actually is.
Especially because it appears that we give it such a high value in Western culture
But as with most important things in Western culture, there is a duality that has arisen where one camp is conviced that one veiw is correct and is unable to try to find a middle ground of truth rather both camps are convinced they are correct.