>Most likely we're not conscious at all, nor do we have free will, as typically described.
No these aren’t likely. Consciousness is the human experience, there’s no way we aren’t conscious as that wouldn’t make sense linguistically. As for free will, anyone saying we don’t have it is doing bad science since every person knows they do. Trying to disprove humans having free will is mental masturbation and nothing more.
>As for free will, anyone saying we don’t have it is doing bad science since every person knows they do
This is a statement spoken with an authoritativeness that it doesn't deserve. There has never been a time I can remember that "free will" ever seemed real to me much less something I inherently "know"; it is at best an imprecise phrase for something I don't have a word for. The physical body is going to do what it does, the thing experiencing qualia is just along for the ride.
As for "bad science", free will as it is described seems that it would violate causality. That a macroscale effect can occur spontaneously without a paired action.
Exactly. To those who think free will is real, what exactly are you claiming is true about a particular set of atoms (shaped like a human)? Are they atoms not doing what they should do? How can a box of atoms control themselves? What does that even mean? Is physics being defied when the atoms are arranged into the shape of a brain?
Free will is literally a non sensible concept and is plainly just a subjective illusion.
1. Humans evaluate, determine, and select which causal effects to attempt/apply, among the selections in their known agency.
2. The world, given its complexity and chaos, is non-deterministic.
Humans determine their actions (will) where fate (determinism) isn't prescriptive of their course. Humans don't have a monopoly on will, but we do have our own. If you've ever survived, it's because you chose to eat. Eventually, even decisions like these which you may feel are implicit are also subject to be reversed if we want to and will.
> 1. Humans evaluate, determine, and select which causal effects to attempt/apply, among the selections in their known agency.
Explain this process in the framework of physics and thermodynamics. Specifically, what differentiates this free will process from mere causal process?
> As for free will, anyone saying we don’t have it is doing bad science since every person knows they do.
Free will: the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion.
A known side effect of Parkinson’s drugs is the development of compulsive, (hypo)manic behaviors like gambling and hypersexuality — people who have been very straight laced their entire lives can change drastically. Are you suggesting that we should hold such patients equally accountable for making poor choices, as they are just as free willed as anyone else?
What of people with crippling, general anxiety, of no fault of their own, but simply as a result of genetics or exposure? If they aren’t as productive or let things slip, is that because they simply aren’t trying hard enough? (Even there — if we say one is trying harder, does that not imply an impediment to “act at one's own discretion”?)
Perhaps we should consider banning ADHD medication altogether — given everyone has free will, what practical difference does it make to put a substance into people’s bodies — they can just choose to make good decisions, right?
Of the decisions you regret, and knew that you would before acting, why did you make them? Why haven’t you just made the meta-choice of choosing to choose the right things from here on out? You can see the utility in making such a choice, right? So can you make that choice? Your discretion would likely be to make that choice, so all that’s left is to act on that discretion, which should be no problem because you have free will and you are not constrained by the natural chemical processes occurring in your brain and the physical laws that define them.
> As for free will, anyone saying we don’t have it is doing bad science since every person knows they do.
A lot of suffering exists in our society due to that belief you have regardless if it's correct or wrong and similar suffering exists in our society from beliefs formed based on knee-jerk feelings or personal biases. I agree that people have free will if we replace the term "free will" with "personal desire." However, that doesn't imply the personal desire could've been different because otherwise the person would be different as well. I've also encountered many people that remarkably don't believe in free will, so the premise you made is false.
> There has been a long controversy as to whether subjectively 'free' decisions are determined by brain activity ahead of time. We found that the outcome of a decision can be encoded in brain activity of prefrontal and parietal cortex up to 10 s before it enters awareness. This delay presumably reflects the operation of a network of high-level control areas that begin to prepare an upcoming decision long before it enters awareness.
This is unfortunately only a brief for Nature Neuroscience -- from 2008, so take with a grain of salt -- and I haven't been able to find the full paper. I also would hesitate to claim this as "lack of free will" or similar; the conclusion sentence from the brief seems to be most-accurate:
> Thus, a network of high-level control areas can begin to shape an upcoming decision long before it enters awareness.
This study was disproven. It turned out there was a software/firmware bug in the machines used for the tests (mri?). instead of thinking yeah this doesn't make sense maybe we should take a step back, they just went on with spreading misinformation of the worst kind.
If "having free will" is defined as "feeling like you undeniably have free will" and "having consciousness" is defined as "feeling like you undeniably have consciousness," then sure, it doesn't make sense linguistically to dispute that.
No these aren’t likely. Consciousness is the human experience, there’s no way we aren’t conscious as that wouldn’t make sense linguistically. As for free will, anyone saying we don’t have it is doing bad science since every person knows they do. Trying to disprove humans having free will is mental masturbation and nothing more.