I just fundamentally disagree with you. I do not think there is any value in speaking about "responsibility." You are attempting to shift the burden of a flawed economic system onto individuals, which is right in line with neoclassical economic ideology.

In my opinion, it is preferable to place the responsibility with the party who is in a better position to do something about the problem.

As far as this line, I find it highly ironic, because if I was to adopt a view which atomized individual actors in the market place, and respnsibilize them, I would read this exactly opposite how you do in your next line. The rich and higher up in the economic hierarchy are obviously in a better position to "do something about the problem." Just thought I would mention this because it highlights the stark divergence in how we perceive the world.

Well, we have been livestock for the rich and powerful since economic hierarchy came into being. In fact, we are actually heading towards a dystopia as I type this, the precursors of which are gross wealth inequality, deaths of despair and the resurfacing of diseases once held in check, the disintegration of the political process, and the radicalization (towards fascism), that we see in the disenfranchised population. Capitalism is in its death throws, climate change being the most obvious symptom, and capitalism's eggs have been layed inside our collective stomachs, as the neofeudal alien readies itself to burst forth and finish consuming human life as we know it. At least we get to use the internet for the time being.

People have generally taken "god" to mean whatever created all this stuff we seem to be experiencing. That being said, it is amorphous enough a concept that it will just transmute from person to person, sufficiently obscuring any attempt for people to arrive at some consensus on what it means. Incidentally, this problem applies to many words and concepts in the human language, like capitalism or socialism for example.

Thank you for laying out your case. Instead of dissecting your post and nit-picking it, I am simply going to engage your argument, if you do not mind. Could you elaborate on what you mean when you say "freedom?" I want to make sure I understand clearly the basics of the case you are laying out

Yes that is a very good passage. I do not think I made the argument that science gives us "the truth." I was arguing basically what the passage suggests, that science gives us a more reliable picture of the world than our own subjective experience might, and the inherent human bias in everyone, is mitigated through the scientific method.

Yes I am familiar with the idea of reality behind reality, ie brain in a vat, simulation theory etc. So I do not really want to keep quibbling on minutiae. Can you just lay out your fully formed argument for why you think free will exists and why you think your subjective experience is an equally viable methodology for arriving at correct conclusions about the world we inhabit? all the quoting every other sentence and picking them apart ... I just don't have the energy to keep doing that

But if you repeat an experiment, and get the same results, those results are only the same in the subjective perspective of each experimenter, right? Repeatability means that different people, doing the same thing, experience the same outcome. That is true for experiencing free will.

The problem with the free will is that the experiencer and the experimenter are the exact same person, and as you acknowledged, with no reference point but their experience. This is why I brought up physical analogues.

As far as the rest of your comments, the scientific method accounts for subjectivity. Is science done by subjective beings, yes. I honestly do not even understand why you are arguing that our subjective experience (like experiencing the earth as flat, from our limited subjective experience) is the same as the scientific method. The only reason I can imagine you are making this argument, is to elevate the reliability of your experience.

I do believe the scientific method gives us more reliable information about "reality."

I consistently experience myself as having free will, and others do likewise.

This is the whole problem isn't it? You can simply redefine repeatability to make your claim appear to be coherent in a scientific sense, but that does not work, which is the argument I have been making this whole time. The problem is the subjective perspective. I can perceive myself as a continuously solid being, that does not negate the fact that 99% of the atoms comprising me are empty space. Do you see the problem with referring to your experience? If your experience is constructed as a byproduct of brain activity, why would you refer to it as trustworthy. This is why I refer to it as an illusion. Again, we are back to the same thing as before, is free will something you experience or something that actually exists. I would argue it cannot exist given what we know about cause and effect.

Ok, so basically physical evidence? It doesn't make sense to ask for physical evidence of free will since, as was noted before, there is no reason to expect such evidence.

It is not easy to have these conversations through these comment sections. When you say, "as noted before," I can't dig through a pile of comments to find what the argument was. To put this in context, I was describing what separates the scientific method from personal experience. The separation is in having physical references for the hypothesis being tested. If the hypothesis is both the product of subjective experience, and also being subjected to testing by that subjective experience, all you have is a circular argument, a self-referential, non-scientific grounds. Again, the whole point of me invoking the scientific method, and by extension, this appeal to physical analogues, was to show that when you can interact with things outside of yourself and compare them to other subjective being's experiences in interacting with those objects via the same method (repeatability), you have grounds on which to arrive at a non-circular theory to explain a phenomena. Your argument is basically, "I experience it, therefore it is real. It is real because I experience it." You are only providing a circular argument.

Only by asking the counter question: How could we possibly know? There is not a time any human can remember when they "discovered" causality. It seems to develop in some children somewhat graudally, but whether that is from the brain developing or the brain receiving external input is impossible to say.

I honestly do not follow your line of thought here. Perhaps you could phrase this in a different manner.

I am not really sceptical that we are "correctly" perceiving reality, in the sense that you might be sceptial about correctly identifying a fata morgana. It's more that physical reality is only part of the universe hat I inhabit, and I see no reason to elevate it above all else. In that sense, I am equally sceptical of free will. I am not claiming free will is "more real" than physical reality either, just that we don't know either way.

First of all, I do not think acknowledging cause and effect is "elevating it above all else." I am glad you said this because this is the whole rub of our disagreement. You seem to not really care what is "really real," only what you experience. This is exactly how every human lives their daily lives. Everyone operates on a pragmatic level. If you want to the analysis to end there, fair enough. I want to take it one step further and ask, what is producing these experiences, and is it possible that these experiences in themselves have some sort of dissimilarity to the "really real reality." In my opinion it is more interesting to posit this latter question, but if you only really care about pragmatic subjective experiences, I do not see that a inherently problematic, it would just appear that we have run out of things to discuss since we just have fundamentally different views.

Thank you :)

I do not think I framed it as "accountability." I believe I framed it as taking a pragmatic approach to isolating dangerous elements of a system. So if you have a robot that is going haywire, you move it away from the general population and quarantine or take it to the repair shop. You do not need to assume the robot is "causing itself to go haywire through agency," in order to do something about the issue.

The same is true for humans. Agency is just an invention. Sure, if your goal is to "account for a breach of a moral code based on chosen actions," you will need to invoke agency in order for that line of thinking to be "self-coherent." But I have taken a different course to not throw what humans normally call "justice" out the window on a deterministic world view. It is basically Sam Harris' argument, that if there is a bear roaming the streets, you will act upon the knowledge of a bear which could hurt you.

If you have someone who enjoys flaying humans and wearing their skin, and they appear to have no remorse and wish to continue doing it, locking them in a cage forever is viable. You do not need to add the extra element, "the reason we are locking them in a cage is because they are an agent who we must hold morally accountable." in my opinion it's an unnecessary extra step, let alone the fact I do not even think it is a correct description of how humans function.

Can you explain how free will is repeatable? By physical analogues, I mean we can have a theory for planetary motion, and then look through a telescope and see a physical analogue to the theory.

Could you please explain how it is not possible to know if causality is "how things really are?" In my opinion, if you are going to be skeptical as to whether or not we are correctly perceiving reality, how can you not also be skeptical of your experience of free will?

Ok thanks for explaining that. I would disagree with the characterization of the results of any scientific experiment being beholden to the subjectivity of the observer. I agree completely, what you experience has been structured by your brain, omitting certain information, and we are not really "seeing out there," but more or less "seeing" the model our brain creates.

That applies to your notion of free will also. The difference between your subjective experience of free will, and the subjective position of the observer relative to the scientific method, is repeatability, and physical analogues.

I do not think "causality" is just in your head, the same way free will is in your head, unless humans the world over have collectively hallucinated the reliability of things we have learned through science.

you are right I will be more careful with how I frame things. absolutizing language is not helpful

I do not agree. Doctors might do good things occasionally, but the profit motive and private insurance schemes completely obscure the moral goodness of that institution, and perverts the value. You may object to my absolutizing, but until we have an equal society not based on reducing humans to working units chasing money, it's corruption all the way down.

why do you conclude that freedom is incoherent because it can not physically manifest as freedom?

Because the type of "freedom" humans care about, human actions, cannot possibly meet this criteria. If you want to talk about some abstract "freedom" that's fine, but I am thinking in terms of what matters to humans. I answered your question on what it looks like to me.

But I do experience freedom subjectively.

I am referring to knowing something epistemologically, not having self referential conclusions with reference to subjective perspective.

But scientific testing will only reveal causal connections, because causality is one of it's core assumptions. It only provides a constructed reality, albeit a very useful one.

I was answering the question of how can you know something to be true. I said scientific method is a good way to know things about reality, and account for fallible subjectivity. I am not saying science is infallible.

In my internal experience, I have freedom. But from an external perspective, e.g. yours, there is only a causal chain of brain-states. The question is, why would we call one of these perspective an illusion?

That's a good question. What you refer to as "external experience," e.g. "my perspective," or to say it in a more precise way, the argument which was typed onto this forum by the user called "rlclauer," my argument is not based on my subjective or "internal perspective" as you referred to it, experience. My subjective experience is that I am a free agent, I feel like a driver of a biological suit, giving the body commands and seeing it respond, etc. My subjective experience happens to be wrong, as shown by Libet experiment, "Pantyhose experiment." These experiments show that the reasons we conjure up to explain why we "did" something, are just post hoc rationalizations. It follows that our experience of the "self, will, agency," are all just like this. This is not even invoking material cause and effect, which once those are factored in, it's pretty obvious to see that the notion of "an agent performing a free action," is completely incoherent. So, you framed it as me calling "one of these experiences" false, but your framing is incorrect. Without thinking of whose perspective is being discussed, let's examine what is actually happening here, and not frame it as me being biased toward my own perspective.

I think there is a difference between having a subjective perspective on objects and experiencing yourself as a subject. The observer is not part of that which is observed.

I do not even know what this means, sorry. I am just a working class person, not a philosophy degree holder.

if the material conditions are generating the mental illnesses, in my opinion, it also follows that the logic entailed in those conditions (capitalism, labor for income, artificial scarcity, rugged individualism) would be reflected in the values of the institutions which are generated. Thus, while there may be well intentioned people who work for a mental institution, the logic from which the institution arises is based in the material condition. If we agree that these material conditions are problematic, the institutions which arise to reify the values of those conditions, the values of that system, they are illegitimate and not serving humanity, but they are serving the system from which they arose.

I probably could have phrased my comment a little better. Anthony's comment is much better thought out, but he was saying what I was trying to see, albeit, his comment was less lazy and more eloquent. I do reject your idea that our institutions are based on some model which is beneficial to humans, as I feel the material conditions we find ourselves in actually drive a lot of these mental illnesses

wow, that was brilliant. thank you

In the context of the conversation, I think this is irrelevant. I have already posited that mental phenomena are really just products of material causes, an illusion that our brain generates, so suggesting that there is a distinction between causal chains and chains of logic does not mean anything to me. You are just reasserting your claim using philosophical jargon.

the whole idea of a "psychotic recovering and returning to normality" is a modern construct. our society requires certain behaviors to get by. in order to hold a job, in order to be considered neurotypical, certain expectations are placed on human behavior. in my opinion this is just a modern bias, it has nothing to do with some "objective normal state." I do not remember where I heard this argument, but I have seen some argue that a schizophrenic in an old tribal society would have been considered to have a unique insight, and may have been a shaman. in recent times, they just spray you with pepper spray and arrest you or medicate you or institutionalize you.

in my opinion, the "non-normal" people are the one's who believe modern life is just peachy, and humans competing against each other for money is a fine way to organize a society.

Right. I am asking you to do a thought experiment though. Assume that, metaphysically, true freedom is real. How would it manifest physically?

It would manifest as an action free of prior causes. This is why I think free will (or true freedom as you put it) is an incoherent concept.

But how do you know what's real? If both the internal perspective (freedom) and the external perspective (causality) are constructs, neither is real.

You do not "know" what is real, if you can only experience it subjectively. If you do scientific testing, and continuously get the same result, you can conclude that there is probably a real property which is affecting this outcome. I do not really know what you mean by "internal perspective" vs "external perspective." In my opinion, there is your perspective, which is subjective and therefore fallible, and there is the world we inhabit, which seems to be real, and we have discerned some properties about this world, but the discovery of those properties requires placing a check on our subjectivity, namely the scientific method.

Markets might be valuable in distribution, although, price mechanisms are not required. You could simply have an information mechanism, like the ink level on your ink cartridge. I am not necessarily suggesting we should make arbitrary centralized decisions. As you indicated, these are vague notions. Even Paul Mason, a leading thinker regarding "post capitalism economics," says it is difficult to imagine. I also think that as labor for income becomes less feasible with increased automation, price as a means of distribution allocation will no longer be sustainable. In that system, the government becomes the largest consumer in the economy (through financing UBI and the like), and price seems to become less meaningful. Kind of like how monopolies obtain unchecked control over setting their prices by being the only producer, when you have 1 consumer dominating, its like a consumption monopoly

I personally do not see a distinction between a chain of causation and a chain of logic. Fatalism may not be correct because of quantum indeterminacy. However, QI does nothing to support the notion of free will

thank you, I appreciate your insight and your kind words. I agree, suppressing our own trauma requires us to project agency onto the suffering of another, that is to say, it is somehow, their fault.

Well, I do not think there is a problem with a punitive course of action in the case of the drunk driver. Just like the AI which learned Go, learned by playing itself, no agency, no consciousness. We can introduce information into the system which alters the components of the system (individual brains), and the notion of agency, is completely unnecessary for this. In fact, as I argued earlier, agency obfuscates the reality, in a terrible way.

Take the case you provided. You can look at her as an agent, who because of her moral depravity and "evil" nature, decided, after conscious deliberation to get drunk and then drive. It would be easy for someone to conclude, "I hate that miserable person, look at the harm they caused!" Exactly as Sam Harris argued, the logic of hate dissolves when agency is scrutinized through the lens of cause and effect.

Your story illustrates that the capacity for compassion can be realized in the case of knowing the causal chain of behavioral production. If people knew the back story, they would probably be a bit more sympathetic, although overcoming the horror of someone getting run over (especially by a drunk driver - which most people think of consuming alcohol as 100% a choice, whereas, if someone had a stroke while driving and hit someone, they would not be horrified), is almost impossible in this case.

I can appreciate the case you laid out, because it attempts to show that some things are within control and some things not, while placing these in the context of moral responsibility. I just think yes, punishing a drunk driver is fine, because they can be dangerous. However, assuming there is a ghost in the machine driving the behavior is worse in my opinion, because it inflames that aspect of human psychology associated with retributive justice. Recognizing the lack of agency lessens that sting, so to speak.

To me it sounds like your motivation for preserving agency is its utility in punishment. In my opinion, this is not needed. I probably have not convinced you of that, but I do not think there is justification of invoking this agency, when it is a spurious notion to begin with, and it is not needed to establish order within a criminal justice sense. Therefore, we do not need to invent a God to prevent people from doing bad things, we do need to invent a free will, or a causal agent to have order within society, and separation of peaceful living and dangerous chaotic elements.

Let's assume an action is, in fact, free. How would you tell from the outside?

There are no "free actions." if you want to define free as uncoerced, which is a loaded word, fine. There is not a guy with a gun to my head. But this does not capture the idea of the causal chain of material factors which generate what we perceive as "conscious deliberation." Consider the Libet experiment and the "pantyhose experiment."

But if everything is constructed, it makes no sense to call one construct "illusion".

It makes sense to call something an illusion because of the disconnect between how it actually is and how it is perceived. The only "constructed" element here is the perception, not the real.

Perhaps the point of accountability is to establish what you are not accountable for? After all, if we were to just eliminate possible causes of danger, we'd never stop.

I do not disagree with that. I think it is usually framed positively, (what one is accountable for) because of our commitment to agent causation.

I think when determinism is introduced, a lot of the things we blame or praise people for now will just be considered as outputs of deterministic inputs. The part of your model I disagree with is

hould they just excuse it because he had not choice (this seems to be the implication of your position)? No. We know he could have chosen differently had he been less reckless, or considered others, or any number of things.

Adding, "could have chosen differently," just muddies the water. should we promote good outcomes and mitigate bad? yes, but agency is irrelevant to that. In fact, I would go one step further. I would argue the idea of agency allows us to come to conclusions which are far less moral. For example, if someone is set up for failure by having a terrible childhood, their ACE score is 8/10, and they end up homeless standing on a street corner screaming at passing by cars, the notion of agency causes people to say, "well what's wrong with that guy? why doesn't he just choose to get a job or choose to stop drinking?" people are actually less sympathetic because we ascribe agency to people.

even under comptaibilism the choices are determined, so I do not see what is relevant or interesting about "free will." it is incoherent as a concept

While I agree with what you say, it is indeed possible that consciousness is indeed how you describe, I would simply say the reason consciousness appears as a problem, is because we are not recognizing that it is simply a trick our brain pulls, like connecting the dots of an imagine, or other wising rendering its model of reality. I would argue that deliberation is similar. Just the product of brain activity, a kind of post hoc connecting of the dots.

I agree with everything you said, except I do not even think the price mechanism as a means of making distribution more efficient is a strength of capitalism. There are so many distortions in the market, what the price mechanism purports to accomplish is undermined.

The two AIs DO have a causal role, just not a conscious one - since they aren't conscious. The critical issue is that there's no basis for holding them accountable. (more on this later).

Without getting lost in the weeds on the causal aspect, could you elaborate on why you believe the AI's cannot be held accountable, and why do you think the human brain and nervous system is different than a cybernetic neural network? To me this sounds like a anthropic bias.

You don't need agency to HAVE compassion. You need agency to act on this compassion.

I disagree. Instincts are something everyone would agree is an automatic action, which require no agency to be instantiated. I am simply saying all action looks like instincts when you have enough information.

You're analyzing an instance of an optical illusion - which are notable only because they are exceptional. I'm talking about sensory input IN GENERAL. You don't skeptically analyze all the objects you encounter in the course of your everyday life simply because of the possibility you are misperceiving them.

It really is irrelevant if our reality is not composed of mostly optical illusions, although there can be an interesting conversation about how the brain is really constructing what you perceive, you are not really perceiving "out there," you are perceiving your brain's model. The reason your point is irrelevant, is because my argument is not based on the commonality of illusion, but rather, whether a particular thing actually is an illusion, which it seems obvious, that the phenomena of self, will, and consciousness, are all just mental constructs, not some spooky thing which floats to the left of your prefrontal cortex.

My position is that "free will" is a concept associated with responsibility and accountability.

Sure, that's what all compatibilists argue. I just think it is an unnecessary maneuver. A rapid dog has no "agency, or free will," but you would shoot it if it was attacking your baby. Invoking free will in order to have accountability is an artifact that is no longer needed.

It makes perfect sense to hold someone accountable for their actions: the action one takes are a consequence of one's beliefs, genetic dispositions, environmentally introduced dispositions, one's desires and aversions, the presence or absence of empathy, jealousy, anger, passion, love, and hatred. These factors are processed by the computer that is our mind to make a choice. If the consequences of that choice cause harm to someone else, how SHOULD others respond? Should they just excuse it because he had not choice (this seems to be the implication of your position)? No. We know he could have chosen differently had he been less reckless, or considered others, or any number of things. By doing so, that person becomes less likely to repeat the mistake - because he will have learned something. In effect, his programming will be changed because consequences provide a feedback loop that changes him.

You are just arguing against a straw man. I never made such an argument. I never once said I am advocating for undermining any notion of responding to someone who may be harmful to someone else.

Suppose the AIs in your example could experience pain, pleasure, regret, empathy, love, hate, and if it had desires that it worked to fulfill for the positive feelings it would experience, and aversions that it avoided because the negative feelings it would experience. Also suppose it could relate its choices to the consequences including the emotions it invoked, and that it could reprogram itself so that future choices would produce more positive and less negative outcomes.That would be closer akin to the "free willed" choices of humans. Whether or not we call it "free will" is irrelevant - my point is that accountability and responsibility comprise a feedback loop that we should acknowledge exists, and be glad of it. You weaken or break the loop when you deny accountability.

This is just an extension of your learning argument, which I already responded to. I do not think learning something or having code or neural networks altered does anything for the notion of free will, which is why I invoked the AI example in the first place.

well it looks like our world views are in stark contrast. let's just agree to disagree because I don't think anything can be gained through continuing to engage.

I just do not agree with the way you frame this. Why do you need to invoke agency in order to have compassion? If compassion is a byproduct of information pertaining to the material conditions which generate outcomes, and that information can deterministically alter the way a particular brain interprets outcomes of individuals given material conditions, it is a completely superfluous step to invoke an agent, who analyzes the information and makes a decision. The argument I just made applies to your example of learning as well. If you have two AI's interacting with information and with each other, and those interactions alter their code, given certain deterministic programming and overseeing supervisory programs, are you gonna say that if the code is altered the AI is now a conscious agent. No, of course you would not make that argument. You only do it in the case of the human being because there is a dominant narrative in the strain of human thought which requires agents in order to be coherent.

As far as acting on your senses in a natural and non-deductive analysis, your point dissolves as information is obtained. If the first reaction to an optical illusion is to naturally believe it, then information which discloses the nature of the illusion is disclosed, now deduction will be applied to the viewing of phenomena similar to the optical illusion. This simply means that once deduction is introduced, naturally relying on sensory information no longer totally explains how that information is interpreted by the brain. Therefore, invoking natural responses dissolves as information is gained, and thereby, invoking it as a bit of evidence for free will, also dissolves.

A brief comment on compatibilism. Compatibilism simply redefines free will, and is only a viable argument given a lack of information about the system. Therefore, libertarianism and compatibilism are equally incoherent, as compatibilism acknolwedges causal determinants, but kicks the can into unexplained territory, and then claims, see free will must exist in this space!

Vision produces beliefs about the world; some of the beliefs may be false: illusions.

Why think the perception of deliberative control is an illusion? This seems like arguing for solipsism. Like with solipsism, it can't be proven false. But also like solipsism: nobody actually believes it. We actually innately believe there is an external world with other minds, and we innately believe we actually perform deliberations. Determinism doesn't falsify that. So you need some justification to consider it illusory- something more than logically possible.

You are attempting to prove something like free will actually exists. If your argument is, it's epistemologically ambiguous so why not just agree with what appears to be the case, that's fine, but it does not show anything like free will actually exists. It sounds like you agree with my description of senses being easily duped and the notion of volitional causation is a function of our perspective. Where we disagree is you think given the evidence, we should just err on the side of our perception being correct.

I just happen to acknowledge that I could be mistaken, and you seem to suggest that because it APPEARS that we are having this experience, that qualifies as evidence in and of itself. In my opinion that argument works fine in getting around on a daily basis, but it does not prove anything.

As far as "Why think the perception of deliberative control is an illusion?" fair question. I think the reason to think this is because it is a more humane perspective. I approach this from wanting to have a more compassionate way of viewing humans, especially in their economic context. Our society ascribes this notion of free will to our actions, and therefore, suggests that your economic position is deserved because you were the architect of that experience through your mental activity or laziness, etc. This leads to the notion that punitive lack of access to resources (poverty and homelessness), are deserved conditions, and some hedge fund manager taking home a 20 mil dollar bonus is just exponentially more productive and valuable within the economic context. Once you introduce the idea of determinism, this whole idea of punishing people for "not being valuable enough to the economy through the impotence of their otherwise potential to be better through making better choices," divorces them of the environmental and economic contexts which constrain their range of "choices."

Therefore, I introduce the idea of determinism, not economic determinism proper, but a form of it, to hopefully create a space for a less punitive economic system, and to view outcomes in a more systemic and holistic sense. This is why erring on the side of the will being an illusion, or like the steam of bio-electrical-chemical reactions, serves my world view.

Well I know Andrew Carnegie funded and led the charge of public education in the US, with the objective of creating workers. Modern colleges are really just vocational schools, where students attend in order to "get a good paying job," and they really do not care about the love of learning in and of itself, and being a well-rounded citizen. So I would probably agree with your criticisms of the education system. However, we would disagree on the cause of this. I would point to capital, and the drive of the wealthy to increase their share of capital, on the backs of workers. It is indeed the state which mediates the relationship of workers to owners, however, I was pointing to "education" loosely, divorced from the context of what is called "education" in our current system. (often equated falsely with intelligence)

My point here is, that if you have a condition which is beneficial to the child, they generally have better outcomes in their life. For the sake of argument, just focus on this one point. I understand you are critical of the state and the type of education on offer at the moment, but do you agree with this one point? To put it even simpler: good conditions generally improve outcomes and vice versa. In my opinion that is not controversial. In fact there is a mountain of evidence to support that claim.

You begin by suggesting the matter be treated simply as will, which I am not immediately opposed to on the grounds that it is implicitly understood to be free. However, you then go on to undermine the purpose of this discussion by suggesting that will itself is merely an illusion, presumably by deterministic principles. While I agree that portions of our world are governed by deterministic principles there is no reason to assume all of it is, going to a physical example consider quantum mechanics in which there is very little that could be said to be determined until an ill-defined event called an observation takes place. The point is that we do not know how things work at this point and assuming that everything must be deterministic from the greatest cosmos to the tiniest atoms is jumping the gun a bit. Additionally I agree with @Relativist, if we seem to be deliberating then we are in fact deliberating.

First of all, a lot of our disagreement can be cleared up by simply saying I was not saying "will" is an illusion (although I happen to think it is), I said it is epistemologically ambiguous. We can only know from our perspective, which is tainted by mental constructions of "self, and will, and agency," etc.

As far as quantum indeterminacy, I do not see how random events means you have free will. In my opinion, suggesting there are random events at a particle level undermines the notion that a complex organism comprised of particles can thereby exhibit intentional volitional deliberation and action. If it is just random, where is the volition. I suppose you could argue that the conscious observer, or your "self" the thing which is "freely willing," is locating those particles within their field of probability, therefore initiating the mechanical process which actuates the desired action, but I think that is just a form of spooky action at a distance, and suggests a kind of ghost in the machine. If your mental processes are a function of physiological states, I think suggesting the physiological states are determined by mental processes is just putting the cart before the horse.

IMO, if we seem to deliberating, then we ARE deliberating. Similarly with the act of making choices.

Please explain how the SEEMING can be an illusion.

Optical illusions are a great example. Also, our brain filling in missing information is another good example.

You frame your recommendations for the people in your community who are not utilizing technology as sort of "failing to take advantage of opportunities available to them." I have a fundamentally different view of human behavior. I view humans as acting out their behavior which was determined since childhood, which is why I emphasized education as a means to assist people in realizing their potential. So we just have a fundamentally different view, and I don't think there is too much to engage with. You view humans in a sort of existentialist frame, that is to say, through mental activity leading to physical exertion they can change their environment. I view it in just the revers, a type of economic and behavioral determinism, that is to say, their environment, especially from early childhood ultimately will decide which trajectory they are on.

I am not really sure what exactly you are referring to, but the overall condescending tone of your comment is very off putting. I do not really see a point in engaging with you because you will probably just dismiss me as some juvenile ignorant person, so it's probably better to just leave it alone.

Fair enough, my view was a bit based on tradition and perhaps reductionistic. I appreciate your insight. I will have to reevaluate my arguments pertaining to deriving value for human conscious experience, even if it is something that is simply arising out of biological materialism and cause and effect. You have made an effective argument, if only in a pragmatic sense, where valuing human cognitive experience may not be idealistic or theologically-oriented.