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RE: Free Will and Conscious Freedom

in #philosophy8 years ago

The way you describe the first "escape option", or at least the skeptic's reply, is a bit lazy, IMO.

The only assumption that needs to be made is that some parts of the neuro-network are assigned the task of amplifying the quantum effects in a cascade into a macro phenomenon. I found the idea proposed by Frank J. Tipler once:

there is a very smart and rational donkey seeing two equally large and tasty hay stacks. Forced to make a rational decision, not able to choose one stack over the other for fear of missing out the other, the donkey is stuck in the decision-making process loop - and starves.

So according to Tipler, any choice would have been better than making no choice at all. Hence, this quantum level noise source amplification allows the brain the freedom of random, unpredictable choices - true freedom of the will despite being embedded in a deterministic universal automaton.

Free enough for my taste :)