> What is 'consciousness'? It could be just experience, and different synonyms for that word (sensing, feeling, measuring, knowing etc.). if we analyze things,

> What is 'consciousness'? It could be just experience, and different synonyms for that word (sensing, feeling, measuring, knowing etc.). if we analyze things, we tend to categorize, but reality seems to be fluid like analog signals, you can't really tell were the boundaries are, maybe because they don't really exist. our minds are similar to digital aliasing, or steps (categories). > Why isn't it acceptable to define consciousness as the operating instructions of the mind? Maybe because consciousness isn't the right word, because in reality it would include "unconsciousness", or non awareness too. Your brain is an interpreter of "reality", and this might include stuff that isn't considered real. It might be just an extrapolation of reality, an intuition. > This quickly leads to another linguistic quagmire called 'free will'. If we agree that everything in our heads is governed by the laws of nature, we can agree that there are one of two possible reasons for any 'decision' we make: it was facilitated by a direct cause or it was random. There can be no other actor. I'd say experience and expectation based on experience. Experience is another of those words that can mean many related things. It could be something you have heard or seen, something like famliarity, or something that isn't based on your immediate interaction with the world. You could call it inputs. > Assuming a direct cause following our operating instructions, does this mean that there is no free will? To answer that we have to open up the word 'choice'. >Choice: "an act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities." You can relate this to experience (and it's synonyms). You can't choose something you're not aware of, or what you haven't sensed or measured in a way. If you jump straight ahead and make a choice quickly, or take your time to analyze is also based on "experience". > You define 'decide' or 'choose' any way you want to. Tell me free will is real or fake. I don't care. All I know it there are no external actors in my head and things are either 100% predictable or random. Everything else here is a very roundabout argument about the way we use English. Boring. It's all relative, free will is reducible based on experience and situation, position, options etc. You act or choose based on what you think is best, and this could just mean what's best for you based on your experience, or just what feels comfortable and easy and is the nearest thing you can grab.