Research and brain scans indicate that your choices are already made and decided in the decision making portion of your brain before you’re even consciously aware that you have a decision to make in the first place. The sum total of individual experienced reality is just your brain post-hoc rationalizing your sensory input and reactions.
I consider free will to be the concept that whenever you make a choice A/B you as in a subjective consciousness have the power to decide any way and are not bound by a deterministic system to always give one output for the same input.
For example if we were to decide the universe is deterministic except for the conscious beings that are humans it would mean the universe looks exactly like it does in all timelines after it’s start but those timelines diverge once free will enters, since the deterministic system gets random input from free will.
basically. well you see like you said you can define some higher order that could exert some control over your will and that could be physics or something metaphysical. in case of some religions that is a devine force, while others say devine forces relegate the power of free will to humans and in most cases they don’t interfere with the decision making processes of people. i would say if any sort of higher order retains perpetual control over your decision making process that calls the concept of free will into question. if you believe your brain is the sole source of your decisions and is bound by deterministic physical processes then that’s not free will in it’s purest form. you could say it’s free will in the sense that no other being of the same level can accurately predict or manipulate your choices but i would say that only grants the illusion of free will.
i personally believe that the source of consciousness and as such free will is metaphysical in nature and is not generally manipulated by any process, so it’s free will as per my definition.
edited in everything after ‘basically’ because i decided i had more to say
If you can predict, but not controll what I’ll do, I still consider that free will.
Research and brain scans indicate that your choices are already made and decided in the decision making portion of your brain before you’re even consciously aware that you have a decision to make in the first place. The sum total of individual experienced reality is just your brain post-hoc rationalizing your sensory input and reactions.
Free always needs a qualifier… Free from what? Free from other people, for now… Free from physics? No.
I consider free will to be the concept that whenever you make a choice A/B you as in a subjective consciousness have the power to decide any way and are not bound by a deterministic system to always give one output for the same input.
For example if we were to decide the universe is deterministic except for the conscious beings that are humans it would mean the universe looks exactly like it does in all timelines after it’s start but those timelines diverge once free will enters, since the deterministic system gets random input from free will.
So free from physics
basically. well you see like you said you can define some higher order that could exert some control over your will and that could be physics or something metaphysical. in case of some religions that is a devine force, while others say devine forces relegate the power of free will to humans and in most cases they don’t interfere with the decision making processes of people. i would say if any sort of higher order retains perpetual control over your decision making process that calls the concept of free will into question. if you believe your brain is the sole source of your decisions and is bound by deterministic physical processes then that’s not free will in it’s purest form. you could say it’s free will in the sense that no other being of the same level can accurately predict or manipulate your choices but i would say that only grants the illusion of free will.
i personally believe that the source of consciousness and as such free will is metaphysical in nature and is not generally manipulated by any process, so it’s free will as per my definition.
edited in everything after ‘basically’ because i decided i had more to say
wait till you get one of those neuralink chips and you’re forced to like all of elon’s tweets