So, yes, but splitting it into a subject and verb feels unnecessary; a mind is a hallucination hallucinating like a fire is a flame flaming.
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Just for reference, on our last episode of “does free will exist?”:
Debunking the “Bereitschaftspotential”, the brain signal that seemed to kill off free will
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One thing to emphasize is that the “Laws of Physics” are not deterministic. It is impossible to predict exactly when an atom would decay and emit photons or particles. It is not just plutonium or uranium, something as common in our bodies and brains as carbon can also randomly decay into a different isotope and so affect its environment. There is a continuous dithering going on that randomizes physical processes. Newton’s conjecture was a good approximation, like its gravity law, seeming to work at a macroscopic level, but now we know better.
Perhaps the inherent randomness of physical processes at the microscopic level is what produces the illusion of free will.
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I think we are fine here. Obviously the phenomenon we refer to as free will cannot violate the laws of physics so the answer must be “no”
Thing is, it’s the wrong question
Are you suggesting that studying our social conditions are pointless? Or just that comparing one to the other is pointless?
It seems that studying humanity and the social worlds we build, however flawed the outcome might be, is worth engaging with and is hardly “pointless” just because we might not be able to pin that down to neat experiments and/or hard concepts/laws/theories…
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I think this is where the theological underpinnings mentioned come in. The idea that free will should mean non-deterministic actions, so being helplessly controlled by randomness, as opposed to actions determined by your own ideas, principles, knowledge, and all the other stuff in your head.
I don’t really get the value of free will in the sense of being free from yourself anyway. If somebody who knew me perfectly would be able to work out my choices, does that make them any less mine?
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Whoa, easy there! I never said anything close to that. Of course social sciences are valuable.
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I hoped so… Just wanted to get clarification on your meaning… Thanks.
But as I’m sure you’re aware, dismissal of social sciences, history, etc, is a major problem and part of how we got to where we are today.
I’ve never understood the supposed conflict between a deterministic universe and “free will.” Surely that just means that, given a specific situation, a person will consistently have a response that is predicated upon their brain state (i.e. who they are). To which I can only say… yeah? Isn’t that how we define the self? I’m super-confused by those who claim “quantum randomness” will “allow” free will. Surely that’s backwards - how can I be said to exercise “free will” if the decision is actually fundamentally random?
Now, the evidence suggests that conscious decision making mostly isn’t a thing, but that’s another issue…
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I think it’s pretty likely that the universe ‘out there’ is completely deterministic. However, current quantum theory is pretty insistent that ‘out there’ doesn’t exist independently of an observer, aka our minds.
It could be argued that in general, quantum theory is just the act of trying to determine the state of the universe from incomplete information - a series of observations.
And within that system of incomplete information based on observations the observer would very clearly and unambiguously have ‘free will’ just like we experience on a daily basis.
This is because, as far as the observer is concerned, most of the little details of the deterministic outside world are invisible and, from a quantum perspective, do not even exist until observed.
The ‘Hidden variable’ theory that proposes that the deterministic world merely chugs away in the background until it can be exposed thru observations has been demonstrated to be false thru real experiments - this means that our free-will based subjective personal worlds really do ultimately override the outside deterministic world.
Personally I like to think of it as a duality, like the wave particle duality of electromagnetic radiation. There are ways to look at the world where it is completely deterministic and ways where it is completely non-deterministic and neither viewpoint negates the other, like opposite sides of a coin.
Anyway, that’s some hardcore philosophy baked into there!! Lol
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i think the only person who could know you perfectly well is yourself. and not even your intellectual self: you as an actual embodied living thing in the current context of your life.
the only perfectly accurate map of somewhere is the place itself. people too.
( i mean even google thinks i want a new refrigerator. i don’t. i only needed the one. 
)
[eta] i don’t know if there is actually free will. but i do think the concept of being able to make your own decisions is incredibly important for one’s mental health.
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Hear me out: animal life allows microscopic processes (e.g. in brain cells and synapses) to control macroscopic behaviors. For other matter the randomness at the microscopic level averages out at the macroscopic level, while for an animal a random event occurring at the right place of a brain cell or a synapse can change the behavior of the being at the macroscopic sense. Microscopic randomness can then trigger macroscopic seemingly-random behavior.
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If the laws of physics determine everything why aren’t we all making the same decisions?
Because our brains aren’t all the same and because we haven’t had the same experiences even if our brains were the same. And perhaps the minor nondeterminism due to quantum physics but the level that that is important on the the level of neurons is questionable. But unless you want to bring in supernatural or magical causes, it is trivially obvious that our brains work by the laws of physics. That doesn’t mean that we can usefully predict our decisions by physics, though.
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I think that honestly it ends up being irrelevant whether or not there is “free will”. This is not a Pascal’s wager situation, where you can selfishly lie to yourself and the world based upon something that will never be determined.
Regardless of whether there is free will, or whether you believe in free will, you should still always attempt to exercise whatever control you do have in your decision making to achieve the best outcome for everyone involved.
Otherwise you’re a monster, regardless of how much agency you actually have. At least this way if it turns out that you do have agency you’re exercising it in a way that is beneficial
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That’s a bit like wondering why if lightening doesn’t have free-will it doesn’t always strike in the same place.
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