whether there are antecedent causes or not...I know there are many times I have intended to do something and did it.
For instance...tonight I intend to have a few beers...adn I will...this weekend I intend to golf...and I will (barring rain). I have intended to cuss people out before...and did...
please refer to my post above:
and i agree that life feels to me like i am an intentional being
i'm making a distinction between the feeling and the objective (or logical) possibility of free will working in such a way as to give human beings something that, causally, functions like intention has been supposed to function.
if we can agree for a moment that free will can only be defined subjectively, then i refuse to trust judgments based on it. at that point it cannot be rational because there are too many factors, too many feelings we have, too many thoughts in our head.
but more than that--and here's the real rub--let's say i agree...like above...that it feels like we are intentional beings...so, what is the cause of your action (to golf)? your intention, right?
what i'm interested in is that some thing has to cause your intention. obviously, IMO, it is usually myriad factors that contribute to it. but. that set of factors combined necessarily caused you to intend to golf. now. those factors are largely out of your control, would you agree?
if that set of factors is largely out of your control and they necessarily cause your intent to golf, it seems odd for you to be judged for that. now, of course you might say that there's something extra added to the equation, some X factor of our personality and whatnot. but everything we stem from is completely outside our intent. all those subjective factors are just more nuanced sets of outside factors.
I've never met a retarded person who wasn't smiling.