Free Will and Determinism: From "Subjective Option Freedom" to a Meta-Critique of the "Arena"

Abstract This organized text begins from the question of whether freedom consists in one’s own acknowledgment, and gradually narrows into a definition of subjective option freedom / formal freedom: freedom consists in currently subjectively knowing two or more actionable options, with the final action executed by the subject and not replaced by physical compulsion; the severity of consequences, coercion, and the origin of preferences do not enter the judgment of freedom. It is further claimed that choice under coercion is still freedom, because the subject can, under new information, “change which option one wants to choose”; whether preferences are distorted and whether coercion is justified are also “just changing which option one wants to choose.”Another line of analysis points out that this position is internally consistent, but it only answers “whether the process of choice is executed by me,” not “whether the formation of preference is autonomous” and “whether another person’s alteration of the choice situation is justified.” Therefore, three levels must be distinguished: formal freedom, autonomy, and justification.The discussion then moves to the meta-level: it imagines “only one actual path, and even the judgment of whether one is free is determined,” which may become a self-referential pseudo-problem; it also proposes that “everything is determined” and “freedom” are fundamentally incompatible, and that when they are forced into one problem, they attack each other and produce a large number of “reaction by-products.” This is mapped onto category mistakes, the dead end of incompatibilism, and metaphilosophical dissolution. Ultimately, the problem of free will and determinism is seen through as a “room” or “arena” maintained jointly by linguistic binary opposition, intellectual vanity, ideology, and academic interest, rather than a genuine “problem” awaiting solution.