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I have yet to hear a definition of free will that makes any sense.

• KennyCason 9y ago
  Agreed. I actually wrote a short paper walking through determinism and non-determinism to ultimately demonstrate that we can’t describe a system in which we have control as any system with rules governing it directly violate the possibility of control. My conclusion was not that free will is impossible, but that it at very least can not be defined. I may upload it if I get some more peer review first.
• vinceguidry 9y ago
  Try this one. Consciousness as an emergent phenomenon. All the rules and laws by which the brain operates are completely constrained by physical laws, but they create an emergent 'field' in which it is not mathematically possible to predict the behavior of the field. In other words, causation easily flows into the brain, but not outward from it. Here's a link if you're curious: http://www.informationphilosopher.com/knowledge/emergent_determinism.html http://www.informationphilosopher.com/knowledge/emergent_det... The brain has its own set of rules that it uses that is only partially attributable to the rest of the world around it. It can create it's own rules and operate 'under it's own steam', in the same way that North Korea manages to operate largely autonomously of the world around it. It's certainly constrained by geopolitics, but its internal behavior manages to remain free regardless. I used to want to reach for quantum mechanics to explain the brain, now I'm happy with "plain old" electromagnetism.