/sci/ - Science & Math

What does it mean to say that rapists and murderers commit their crimes of their own free will? If this statement means anything, it must be that they could have behaved differently-not on the basis of random influences over which they have no control, but because they, as conscious agents, were free to think and act in other ways.

To say that they were free not to rape and murder is to say that they could have resisted the impulse to do so (or could have avoided such an impulse altogether)-with the universe, including their brains, in precisely the same state it was in at the moment they committed their crimes.

What does /sci/ think of free will?