Which is nothing more than making a choice. That in itself doesn't qualify as free will.
Yes but its the depth of choice, the quality of choice. There are choices and there are real choices. My choice of everyday things like flavour of icecream may not have the same conscious attention as something more meaningful that we can reflect on. Its this inflection and introspection that gives us deeper awareness of what is going on for which we can make meaningful choices that make a difference. That can change the course of things.
Naturally. Remove the brain and you won't be conscious any more. Seems to be a link there somewhere...
Thats like saying remove the radio reciever and you remove the reality of radio waves. Also there has been studies showing consciousness still exists when large parts of the brain are missing or a person is unconscious or even clinically dead. So its not necessarily a case complex brain activity producing consciousness.
What you can do is ask them why they made the choice they did. Was it random or was it for a particular reason? Was it what they actually desired? Based on all the factors that they were aware of (and most they are not)?
Yes this is the best way as your asking directly the person who is having the experience that they believe they are agents and have some control. I think you will find that most people will say they believe they have some control with their choices. Those who don't its usually because they have been subsumed by the antecedents of life and have lost their agency and control.
So things that determine our actions of which we are not aware do not necessarily determine our actions. Can you explain how we overcome influences that we don't know about?
We we cannot know what we cannot know. But that doesn't mean that we cannot override what we cannot know by coming to know or have insight into ourselves and the situation that we can make informed decisions that can influence situations. I would say most of what happens at the subconscious level are to do with practible everyday stuff we don't think about like mapping out territory for threats. We develop patterns of thinking and it comes natural.
But as conscious beings we can become aware of a fair amount of stuff even that we are not aware and this all goes into the pot where we can have deeper insights, intutions that reveal reality for which we can make meaningful choices about. We are not completely driven by unconscious and subconscious processes. There are also experiments which can reveal some of those subconscious processes like Blindsight.
So what are you making decisions on? On what basis, for what reason do you decide to do A instead of B?
I think theres a whole bunch of stuff in the mind that goes into how we decide from, physical processes, instincts, cultural influences, and knowledge from our conscious experiences of reality. I think we have this sense, call it intuition where we can know when something is the right decision or not. That doesn't just come down to mechanical processes.
Its like a sixth sense and maybe thats our agency, our inner sense which overrides the deterministic antecedents. Often people may not be able to explain exactly why but know its the right thing to do or the right reading of the situation.
Again, what are you basing your choices on? Look, it's not being argued that every single condition is directly responsible for making a decision. It seems that if think that if you can overcome some desire or compulsion that that exhibits free will. It doesn't. Quite often you have desires that contradict each other. I want a cigarette but I want to be healthy. I want to finish this book but I need to make dinner. You need to make a choice. You always need to make a choice. But that doesn't equate to free will. I mean, if it was that simple then there wouldn't have been arguments about this from antiquity onwards.
Plato: There's no free will.
Cephalus: But I just made a conscious decision not to have another glass of wine.
Plato: Darn it! So there IS free will...
That would have come as a surprise to Darwin, whose book title included the phrase ...'and the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life'. Likewise Spencer would have been confused as he coined the term 'Survival of the fittest'.
Yeah its a complex topic and I don't think anyone has a clear answer or explanation. Thats why it sort of comes back to asking the subject, the person having the experience of being an agent. Its something we deeply believe and know is true in ourselves because we know who we are and we know we are more than passive blobs pulled along by outside forces.
We see this evdience across life. For example speaking of evolution Darwins theory is inadequate for explaining human behaviour as behaviour cannot be reduced back to proteins and DNA. Not completely anyway. The MOdern Theory relegates the creatures behaviour as like an epiphenomena byproduct of natural selection and random mutations.
Yet much of behaviour is is not subject to natural selection and infact creatures are sort of artificial selectors playing the role of natural selection in the choices and behaviour they engage in. So they are not passive players but active participants in their own evolution directing evolution and their own survival or extinction.
The classic theory like in classic physics could not fully explain behaviour and the role a conscious mind plays as it was gene centric or based of deterministism and reductionism which much of mind and behaviour did not conform to or could be explained by.
For example evolution claims creatures are shaped by environments where only those who have been adapted to those environments by the outside force of mutation and natural selection will survive. But the evidence shows that much of this adaptability comes from creatures changing environments rather than environments changing creatures. That puts the creature and their minds in the driving seat rather than deterministic processes.
So this flips the classical view from creatures being passive players suchject to deterministic forces to aagents playing a central role in directing their own outcomes and not completely fixed and controlled by nature.
