> Intellectual determinism dismisses free will as theology because for us to be truly the way we experience ourselves, we must possess non-physical minds — or s

> Intellectual determinism dismisses free will as theology because for us to be truly the way we experience ourselves, we must possess non-physical minds — or something like souls. A soul, like Hinduism’s atman, or a Godhead linking individual consciousness to a higher source conscious, could account for free will, but there’s no place for that in the contemporary materialistic model… I've never understood how a higher plane or soul or whatever would get you to free will. It seems to me that the fundamental disproof of free will is the existence of cause and effect: if you trace through the causal chain of your actions, at some point you find some cause that wasn't you (in the limit case, the big bang). If it turns out the root cause of your actions is a soul or whatever, how is that "you"? How is that free will? And then also, what causes your soul?