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by armitron 2420 days ago
You are mixing up definitions. You use "you" to mean "brain". Under that model, of course you can't disprove free will. But the model you are using is not at all useful, as you illustrate in your confusion.

The idea of free will is typically assigned to a "conscious self-model", not just a brain. The self-model generally accepted to be an emergent construct of the brain.

Thus, in the "conscious free will" model, if the brain makes a decision and hands it over to the "self-model", there is -obviously- no free will. The conscious self-model is simply an observer after the fact. Any notion of agency that it experiences is an illusion.
2 comments
cortesoft 2420 days ago
I don't think I follow... even if we think of the "conscious free will" as being an emergent property of the brain, it would still be made up of brain waves within the brain.

What else would free will be but an aspect of your brain? There is nothing else for it to be?

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armitron 2420 days ago
Think in terms of a layered system (subsumption architecture is useful [1]).

Sure the substrate is the brain and is common to all layers, but the layers are functionally different.

The self-model, "you" is a high-level circuit. The low-level circuits make all decisions and relay the results to the higher levels.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsumption_architecture

[2] https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=9000

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cortesoft 2420 days ago
From your second link: "Will and perception do not cause the firing of neurons; they result from it. By definition, everything we are conscious of has to be preceded by neuronal activity that we are not conscious of. That’s just cause/effect. That’s physics."

I guess that is the part that I have trouble with... especially the first sentence: ""Will and perception do not cause the firing of neurons; they result from it"

They don't cause it OR result from it... they ARE it. Everything that is us (including our free will) is made up of those neurons. Our thoughts are neurons firing. Everything we think and believe and experience and decide is contained in those neurons, their state, and their connections.

I always thought the question of free will (at least since I was a philosophy undergrad) was about whether our brains (and the universe) are deterministic or not. I feel like the more we learn about quantum mechanics and physics, the more it seems like the world is NOT deterministic. The uncertainty of the universe means the neuron behavior is NOT deterministic, and that non-determinism is where free will lies.

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mcguire 2420 days ago
The neat thing about layered systems is that they don't really exist. The sin of the "layering violation" is everywhere.
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mcguire 2420 days ago
And if the "self-model" is "the brain" that makes the decision?
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