I specifically remember doing this with one of the goosebumps choose your own adventure. There was a good ending page that referenced nirvana (the idea not the band) and I read that thing end to end choosing both choices for everything. No page ever sent you to it. It was just a contrivance that you were sent to glance at while flipping through.
One cauld rightfully argue "determination" and "predetermination" are wildly different concepts. The comic is wrong on this. But let's go page 72 anyway
And yet I can speak about my consciousness, and therefore deliver information to you based on an experience which can't be physically observed or quantified.
Perhaps the universe is naught but a comforting illusion.
deliver information to you based on an experience which can’t be physically observed or quantified
I'm not sure if "Black Box of electro-chemistry" is necessarily the same as "Non-determinism".
That said, we contain the ability to observe and react to our surroundings which causes a large and complex web of interactions that aren't trivial to map or anticipate.
That unpredictablity is what we ultimately define as freedom.
Yeah, I was curious if anyone would catch that. My comment doesn't necessarily ensure free will, it just rejects a physicalist model of reality as a basis for determinism. You can have neutral monism and still have determinism.
I was just trying to embrace the spirit of shitposting idealist takes in response to shitty physicalist takes. 🤭
That said, we contain the ability to observe and react to our surroundings which causes a large and complex web of interactions that aren't trivial to map or anticipate.
That unpredictablity is what we ultimately define as freedom.
How does higher uncertainty of my choices achieving what I strive for raise the perception of freedom of said choice?
ChatGPT can speak about its consciousness too, but there's no reason to believe it actually is conscious. It's just very good at writing text that imitates text written by beings that believe they're conscious. It's difficult to understand how ChatGPT generates that text. But, if anybody were sufficiently interested, it would be possible to trace the entire process, since it's just computers processing data.
Also, MRIs can observe the brain as it does things. Currently it's a pretty blunt tool and can only guess at what someone is thinking, but there's no reason to assume that a much more advanced version won't be capable of observing and quantifying the actions of every neuron in real time.
This reminds me of that one riddler comic
(Found it, batman black and white #5 "The Riddle", here's a reddit link since that was the easiest to find https://www.reddit.com/r/batman/comments/tn8b68/ )
It's a creative and very short choose your own adventure and I highly recommend it
"Welcome to page 60! Just as anticipated, your rebellious nature resulting from your lived experiences left you no choice but to rebel against the rules of the book and pick this page."
Your mind is a computer attempting to optimally fulfill several prerogatives which are determined primarily through evolutionary pressures. It is free to do this in the way it sees best and is free to adapt as the environment in which it operates changes, in the sense that it is not forced to override it's internal decisions and come to a different conclusion regarding how to act. I consider this to be free will. You may disagree, but that would be haggling over definitions, rather than facts.
Crucially, this definition is true regardless of whether the universe's course is predetermined or not. I personally don't think it is, because a good chunk of the universe is random and I find it hard to believe that that randomness was predetermined.
If we're to rely on facts and facts only, I'll argue its internal decision making is itself clearly determined by several factors, most if not all of them being determined causally.
I'm quite sure this addition erases the mere idea "free(dom)" and "free will", which would somehow escape universal determinism, hence creating a special case in the laws of causality for humanity only.
Edit : changed phrasing because I answered after reading your first paragraph. Then I read the second one.
My personal tale on this is that given that the brain contains chaotic circuits (i.e. circuits in which tiny perturbations lead to cascading effects), and these circuits are complex and sensitive enough, the brain may be inherently unpredictable due to quantum fluctuations causing non-negligible macroscopic effects.
I don't know if the above is the case, but if there's anything like free will out there, I'm inclined to believe that its origins lie in something like that.
My argument would go something like this: If you are the computer, then it is free will. If you could predict the computer, you could argue, but you can't. You can't even do this theoretically since you'd need more mass than the universe and can't initialize your predictive model. So you can only say "that decision was made inside that brain". That is at least one sensible definition of free will.
It's like looking at a motor that breaks down and then saying that it's not really the motor that breaks because the motor had no choice in it's parts breaking. That's just rhetoric.
The error I believe is that we don't want to accept that sentience can arise from mechanical universe and it's a matter of degree and that this can create meaning. People want to set the bar higher because they want the idea of some type of "pure mind". But since we're already discussing the meaning of all these things, arguing that what you are reading is just quantum physics is rhetoric.
Either what you are saying is supposed to be meaningful, or you concede that your words are meaningless. Then I anyone else wins the argument by default ;)
Basically the definition of free will can only be made by someone who claims that meaning exists, emerging from the material world. Therefor within that emergent layer of mind and meaning, a definition of free will other than basic physics is at least acceptable.
As far as I'm concerned, a chess bot that doesn't have a preprogrammed set of moves but rather is capable of adapting and learning does in fact process a limited form of free will.