The sad truth is that we are all NPCs without free will. "Thoughts" are a non-physical phenomenon that, seemingly, arise from physical activity in the brain. The thoughts (our "experience") come after the electrochemical reaction that manifests them. How could these non-physical phenomena then turn around and influence the physical chemistry? They can't. By the time we experience a thought, the physical state for it has been represented, and that state causes the next one after it. Like a stone bouncing down a hill - chaotic but still deterministic. We're just along for the ride.
Reducing a debate that has been raging for millennia across several disciplines to three lines of text tells me you don't have enough of a grasp on the subject to draw any conclusions about it, let alone resolve it altogether.
Care to enlighten us a little? What is there even to debate? The position expressed by your parent comment is so uncomfortable that it's constantly being challenged, but that doesn't make it wrong. Or are "thoughts" some sort of magical fluff not bound by the laws of physics? Are we constantly pulling ourselves by our bootstraps? Giving birth to entirely new brain activity out of nothingness?
This is just woo woo nonsense. Until someone can find an explanation that makes more sense than "natural selection slowly gave apes the ability to think abstractly and they started thinking about themselves", I won't believe in any kind of free will, and now the meta is reaching the point where we create entirely new brains out of silicon.
Does free will exist or only hard determinism can be true? You seem to have reached a definitive conclusion. And you seem to think natural selection and evolution of species and autonomous machines prove your point.
You also seem to think that questioning the veracity of your position is engaging in magical thinking. How could I possibly 'enlighten' you if you are sure of being right?
It doesn't matter if I point out that physics hasn't been able to prove materialism. Where is the fundamental particle? Why can't we determine even through which slit did a quantum of light travel? The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics appears to directly contradict your claims of hard determinism being the only valid explanation of reality. But I must be wrong about that. Since clearly you have seen reality for what it is, and I have failed to do so.
Then again, we cannot escape this situation seeing as it is determined.
Of course I'm willing to change my mind, but so far no one has ever given a compelling argument. I just follow Occam's razor.
> The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics appears to directly contradict your claims of hard determinism being the only valid explanation of reality
OK, fundamental physics might not follow hard determinism (or not in a way that we currently understand), but please, indeterminism says nothing about free will, human thoughts, or anything related to that. If you want to say the human brain follows the same physics rules as everything else in the universe, and that this implies some indeterminism, sure. That's almost certainly correct. But where do thoughts arise from that?
If you sprinkle randomness on the process, I'll agree with you; but nothing in physics even suggests ANY link between indeterminism, superposition, etc. and thought. So my point still stands: free will as we usually envision it has no reason to exist. The fact that particles can be in two states at once does NOT contradict this.
Indeterminism does not automatically imply free will. None of the open questions of physics, including how qualia arise, could plausibly explain free will. Neuroscience is continuing to show just how deterministic and predictable brains are.
So at this point the burden is on free will proponents to offer a plausible explanation for it. Without resorting to dualism, which is great for religious people but not scientifically useful.
Also, it's funny for you to start this thread with such a disparaging and dismissive comment, then come back and act victimized that you're being questioned. If you are a self aware entity in control of your behavior, maybe you should try harder not to be a hypocritical asshole.
