[pdonis]

> it likely is a cause and effect system

Of course consciousness is a cause and effect system like everything else. I have never claimed otherwise, and the viewpoint I am defending certainly does not require otherwise.

> My definition of free will is the common understanding of free will

The common understanding of free will is that people can make choices and that those choices affect what happens to them. That can be true even in the deterministic universe you say you believe in.

[Layke1123]

It is not free will in the sense that you can spontaneously decide it for yourself. I can choose to eat vanilla yogurt or plain yogurt. That is the narrative my brain hallucinates. The reality behind the illusion is that the choice was made before I even am aware of the "story I tell myself" that I chose one or the other.

[pdonis]

> It is not free will in the sense that you can spontaneously decide it for yourself.

If "spontaneously" means "outside of the laws of physics", then of course I agree. I just don't think that kind of "free will" is the only possible kind of free will, nor do I think that impossible kind of free will is the kind of free will that matters.

> I can choose to eat vanilla yogurt or plain yogurt. That is the narrative my brain hallucinates. The reality behind the illusion is that the choice was made before I even am aware of the "story I tell myself" that I chose one or the other.

Of course this is true in the sense that, as far as we can tell, the brain process of you being aware of your choice happens either at the same time as, or after, the brain process that makes your choice. But so what? All those processes are still happening in your brain.

Compare what you just described with this scenario: you want vanilla yogurt, but I force you to have plain yogurt instead because I believe it's healthier for you. Here there are still processes happening in your brain, which, if I weren't there, might well have led to you eating vanilla yogurt--but because I am there and I force you to eat plain yogurt, your brain processes do not determine what kind of yogurt you eat--instead, my brain processes do.

Do you see any meaningful difference between those scenarios? I sure do. (And note that I think that difference is meaningful even if it is true that the plain yogurt would be healthier.) If you don't, then we have a fundamental disagreement that I don't think any discussion can resolve.

[Layke1123]

You can't redefine what free will means and expect people to take you seriously. Free will means you have the ability to choose, and if you agree with me that the universe is deterministic, then you have to admit that making a choice is only an illusion. I can make choices in the same way that a neutron chooses to move toward more massive objects. I eat vanilla ice cream over dirt because I have taste buds that allow me to taste the difference between the two. Eating dirt instead doesn't prove I had a choice, because now I'm not eating dirt for taste, but to win an imaginary argument about free will. It's not the external world I'm reacting to now, but the internal one.

Your scenario is irrelevant because you admit that those processes, which you don't control happening in your brain, are still you. But if they are you, and you don't have control over them, you only become aware of them after the fact, then you JUST ADMITTED you don't have any choice. The choice was already made by something you have no control over, but only watch as a passenger. Your heart beats without your choice. You will pass out and have to breath because your brain will force you to at some point stop holding your breath. You will remove your hand from an external heat source that you did not expect AUTOMATICALLY, and only then become aware that your body moved milliseconds after the stimulus has already short-circuited through your PNS and not your CNS. If you think that the distinction doesn't matter, then you are still willfully lying about the reality, or intentionally want to deceive people about the physical world and how it works by redefining any word you need to to maintain your hallucinated reality.

[pdonis]

Please stop getting hung up on the term "free will" as an excuse to avoid answering my actual question.

You proposed a perfectly clear scenario, and I proposed a perfectly clear second scenario. In scenario A, causal processes in your brain determine that you eat vanilla yogurt. In scenario B, causal processes in your brain determine that you want to eat vanilla yogurt, but causal processes in my brain determine that I force you to eat plain yogurt instead.

I see an important difference between these two scenarios: the first allows your brain processes to determine what kind of yogurt you eat; the second does not, it has my brain processes determining what kind of yogurt you eat.

Do you think that difference is important? Yes or no.

[Layke1123]

In both scenarios, no free will exists. I didn't trigger my brain processes, only observed them. Neither did you.

You are trying to paint a single scenario in which there is an important distinction and then ignore any other scenario where your reasoning fails.

For instance, if I chose to kill myself, and you stop me, and I later thank you for stopping me from killing myself, is that difference important? Yes or no?

[pdonis]

> In both scenarios, no free will exists.

Not by your definition, no. It does by mine. As I have repeatedly remarked in various places in this discussion, please stop getting hung up on that term; I purposely did not use it at all in my description of the two scenarios in order to avoid that.

> I didn't trigger my brain processes, only observed them. Neither did you.

Your brain processes are part of you, just as my brain processes are part of me. So to say "you" didn't trigger your brain processes is nonsense.

> if I chose to kill myself, and you stop me, and I later thank you for stopping me from killing myself, is that difference important?

You mean the difference that you thanked me afterwards? As opposed to telling me you wished I hadn't stopped you? Yes, that difference is important, because it tells me whether or not my choice to stop you was the right one.

However, your implication that my reasoning "fails" in a situation like this is incorrect. I have never claimed that respecting other people's free choice is the only value, or that it should automatically override all other values. One can always find cases where different values clash, and there is no way to resolve any such case without violating some value. So pointing out that my viewpoint is vulnerable to this proves nothing. So is yours. So is anyone's.