I think we might have come to the root of our disagreement, or agreement, I am not sure which. 

I do not use the terms free will with joy, as we are talking about autonomy and authorship of choice, not about ability to will. They are clumsy terms and I use them only because they have become the vernacular of the discussion. 

In everything I have said I have been consistent with the laws of physics, never appealing to a seat in heaven or ghost in the machine. I just don’t believe that the existence of gravity, for instance, leaves no room for freely authoring choices. If we did not have comprehensible physics in the universe then chaos would be boundless and existence on any level would impossible. Were there not resistance to choosing then choosing would also be impossible; things of no consequence about nothing would just happen. It’s the breadth of limiting influences we engage with that feeds our choices. 

I think that we differ in that, for me, Matter-Object, Life-Organism, Mind-Animal and Culture-Person are different ways to look at a single unified thing: being. In my view, none of those things exist individually nor are they parts of a whole. While I’m not sure if I follow your “self-conscious determination”, I do agree with Michael that we are a singular whole-person, agent, organism, full-system being. I would add that we are also the environment in which wee choose. No part of it can be separated out. In other words, my thought is that defending or denying free will solely on arguments about the quality of the organism is invalid. Any full argument of free will must include place, and I am unsure how any design of determinism can account for each moment of being in place within a life time. 

As for determinism, I agree with Galen Strawson’s argument that determinism can never be proven, I just don’t agree with his argument that free will doesn’t exist. Determinism will never be more than someone looking over your shoulder saying, “I knew you were going to do that.” It continuously references past events to justify a faith in an already-authored non-existing future. It is an insupportable extrapolation. 

The 10-minute video also referenced the determinist argument that we have a “feeling" about having free will, attempting to gaslight our witnessed observations of life. We observe ourselves making free choices, we do not have an intuitive feeling about it. As I have outlined in previous notes, I can sometimes fully describe the very observable reasons that I have witnessed for making my choices. The only justification for gaslighting that free will is an illusion is because it is inconsistent with determinism, which proponents of it of course desire to believe is true. We are told to give up believing in what we do and see for a concept that is unobservable and unprovable. 

 

I cannot choose to be nine-feet tall nor to fly by flapping my arms, or choose many other things. That does not disqualify free choice. I am yet unconvinced to give up on free will because I haven't yet seen any evidence against it, or I do not have the facilities to comprehend those arguments.

I don’t appeal to the quantum level for or against free will or determinism because I think it is an argument that determinists dragged into the mix without justification. We not make choices at that level. I might look out my window in the morning to determine if someone has stolen my car, but I do not look out the window because I question if it still exists. 

Unfortunately, in today's world I do not know how to untie philosophy from psychology from physics, nor do I know if we should. If morals are still a philosophical question, I don’t think it’s possible as the question of autonomy is the foundation beneath moral responsibility. 

Peter