Larry Sanger

I'm not going to go into all of the details here.

I'll just make this point—

I have a definition of free will, which I think is the common sense definition, which is that we are free to the extent that we can rationally deliberate on actions that we might take and then act on the actions.

So we act with free will if...

Our actions flow from a decision that we make that we could have deliberated about, is generally the idea.

The thing that makes us responsible for our actions, therefore, is precisely the fact that we...

think things through, or at least capable of doing it, we are therefore answerable, and therefore also we can be praised and blamed for our actions.

So that's the general idea.

And the idea is that that is precisely what we mean by rationality, essentially.

Deliberative rationality.

That's the thing that gives human beings creativity, gives them intelligence, allows them to...

basically participate in the creation or the development of the world you know so you you and your friends made this here right so that was your little piece of creation so to speak obviously you didn't make the materials or anything like that but you know

So that is the way in which you are free, in which we are free.

And that's actually really essential then to being the sort of level of creation that we are.

In other words, we simply would not be human and we would not have the value that we have as human beings unless we had free will.

Because, again, free will is essentially the same as our ability of rational deliberation.

Right.

Precisely.

That's the relevance of that.

As soon as you start talking about freedom, then you really cannot have freedom unless you have the freedom to do evil.