Essay Abstract

Free will is reconceived in terms of degree of unpredictability rather than absolute opposition to determinism. So conceived, it retains its traditional expected character: unpredictable choices which in retrospect reflect individual traits and justify moral responsibility. This "somewhat free will" is explained in terms of counterpredictive strategies, restrictions on computability by embedded agents, and self-referential interaction between the unconscious and conscious mind. Libet's finger moving experiment, widely regarded as the strongest such evidence against conscious will, is reconsidered and appears consistent with this view of free will.

Author Bio

Telluride Association Program T.S. Kuhn/Philosophy of Science Princeton University 1966 B.M.(music composition) Texas Tech University 1972 M.S.(mathematics, with electrical engineering and computer science) Texas Tech University 1974 Thesis: Computer-assisted information theoretic analysis of Palestrina masses J.D. with honors University of Michigan 1977

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11 days later

Dear Steven R Brock,

Thank you for presenting a smooth flowing essay on free will. Can you please tell me what is the difference between Consciousness , free will and some what freewill?

By the I hope you can get sometime to have a critical look at my essay "A properly deciding, Computing and Predicting new theory's Philosophy"

Best Regards

=snp

11 days later

Dear Steven,

I greatly appreciated your work. I am very glad that you are not thinking in abstract patterns.

While the discussion lasted, I wrote an article: "Practical guidance on calculating resonant frequencies at four levels of diagnosis and inactivation of COVID-19 coronavirus", due to the high relevance of this topic. The work is based on the practical solution of problems in quantum mechanics, presented in the essay FQXi 2019-2020 "Universal quantum laws of the universe to solve the problems of unsolvability, computability and unpredictability".

I hope that my modest results of work will provide you with information for thought.

Warm Regards, `

Vladimir

Dear Steven

Some years ago I cut off my thumb. I can still lift my finger but I find it difficult to grasp things. Maybe it's dementia!

Liked your essay!

Lockie Cresswell

6 days later

Brock's essay on free will is really quite good and well referenced. Basically his elaborate Turing model is just a restatement of the Book of Life conundrum. In a determinate universe, a Book of Life exists and with free will, a person looks up a future choice and then chooses differently, which means there is no determinism after all.

I really liked that word neurophenomenology. Using such a word is a key tell that this essay reduces to a simple phrase. That is, free choice either exists or does not exist, but the moral outcome is the same.

What Brock does not mention at all is the free choice between two equivalent outcomes, for example, the free choice of free choice. In other words, Brock's free choice between two equivalent outcomes clearly cannot be conscious because reason can only equivocate, not decide. However, the conscious mind does decide and reasons it was because the free choice made no difference.

This free choice is then necessarily unpredictable but still subject to quantum phase noise as is all neuron action potentials. In fact, free choice is what makes consciousness the hard problem that many say that consciousness is. While people argue endlessly about the nature of consciousness, people either freely choose to believe in free choice or freely choose to believe in the illusion of free choice. Since either free choice results in the same moral outcomes, there is no difference, just disagreement.

Consciousness is then simply a result of making free choices between otherwise equivalent outcomes.

a month later

Dear Steven ,I have example regarding free will,suppose there is a sheep who is moving in a circular way whose neck is bounded by thread to a rod which is at center of circular way , the movement of sheep is his free will but still he is bounded it is his destiny! This is relation between free will and destiny!! Thanks Steven, regards, prasad Divate

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