Linas, there is no free will, because it's not even a coherent concept.
Seriously. It's just a phrase. What would it be, if it is neither deterministic
nor random? Free will is an illusion created by complexity. Everything that
happens in this universe is deterministic within the limits of the uncertainty
principle, yet unpredictable, due to complexity. If we had perfect cognizance
of everything going on in our brains, we would not talk about free will; we
would just cite all the reasons that we do what we do. You can't predict the
future for two reasons: one, because nothing is fully determinate (the
uncertainty principle), and two, because even if it were, events are too
complex to compute, even ideally. There are just too many atoms and forces at
play in any event, with all of the positions and energies having some
uncertainty. In a human mind, there are an indefinite number of forces /
feelings / ideas impacting on every decision, unconsciously. We call the
result, 'free will.' It is basically an illusion caused by self-ignorance.
Bet you didn't think I read these!Best,Aaron
On Sunday, September 20, 2026 at 03:34:29 PM EDT, Linas Vepstas
<[email protected]> wrote:
Several short remarks:* The embodied cognition crowd, which is growing in
numbers, believe that even prokaryotes and eukaryotes are conscious. That is,
neurons and brains are not needed. I'm offering a formalism broad enough to
encompass that.* Some subset of that crowd claim that positive and negative
valence states are felt by conscious beings. In bacteria, this might be hunger.
or pain associated with local toxins.* The pure reductionist "its all just
atoms" crowd imply that bacteria react entirely deterministically e.g following
chemical gradients.* I'm suggesting that the "its all just atoms" view is fully
reconcilable with subjective consciousness.
* If there is literally no free will, anywhere, ever, then the future should be
fully determined, and should be viewable with mechanical devices. e.g. I might
find out I'm hit by a bus in two weeks, but can take no evasive maneuvers
because I have no free will. Thus, no paradoxes. So then, why can't we see the
future?
--linas
On Sun, Sep 13, 2026 at 10:54 PM Michael Vassar <[email protected]>
wrote:
You’re obviously correct but the fact that such disagreements or confusions are
even possible is a massive indictment of the value attributed to concepts like
being and free will.
On Sun, Sep 13, 2026 at 11:03 AM Zoltan Nadasdy <[email protected]> wrote:
Don't you think it is the other way around?
More precisely, in the life of every kid, the concept of agency develops first,
which triggers two other concepts: the recognition of the invariance of
"agency" that gives rise to the concept of "self/being" and "free will". Free
will derives from the recognition that the same invariant agent ("self") can
make either decision A or B. No matter which way it decides, the source of the
decision (the agent) remains the same. That is free will. And it is an
illusion, because the decision could be biased by numerous factors, yet it
feels like the alternative always presented itself to the agent. Moreover, it
is an illusion because it is not true that the decision does not affect the
agent. It does. After decision A, the agent is not the same as before. There
come counterfactuals: the speculation of what would have happened if I had
chosen B.
These are not facts, just a theory. Not better than yours, but an alternative.
I am happy to discuss it further.There is a book on the evolutionary aspect of
this question by
Tomasello:https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262047005/the-evolution-of-agency/
Unfortunately, it is not a good book; he did not nail it, but Tomasello is an
authority on the subject. It means there is plenty of room for other opinions
in this discussion.
-Zoltan
On Sun, Sep 13, 2026 at 6:32 AM Linas Vepstas <[email protected]> wrote:
To friends and acquaintances interested in philosophy, AGI, physics, a new blog
post:
https://linas.org/blog/2026/09/subjective-being-ness-follows-from-free-will/
The subjective experience of being, living, existing, feeling, experiencing and
acting arises precisely because we have free will, because we have the ability
to direct and create a future. I claim more: being trapped in the here-and-now
is a fact of physics; it can be mathematized. I claim that any agent with
executive control over it’s future will also feel alive and aware and
experience the subjective inner life of feelings and emotions. This includes
not just animals, but also plants and even bacteria.
The ingress of possible futures from the Platonic realm into physical reality
happens directly in the here-and-now, and the willful selection of possible
futures manifests as conscious awareness of the subjective self.
This essay is an attempt to put a dent in the "hard problem of consciousness"
by placing a mathematical, physical foundation under it.
I hope you enjoy it. (p.s. no LLM's or AI's were used to write this; these are
my words. It took several years to put this together.)
-- Linas Vepstas
--
---Zoltan Nadasdy
Dept. of Neurology, Dell Medical School, UT Austin ([email protected])
Dept. of Cognitive Psychology, ELTE Budapest [email protected]
http://brainstim.psy.utexas.edu
--
Patrick: Are they laughing at us?Sponge Bob: No, Patrick, they are laughing
next to us.
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