You do not have to, but it would certainly underpin your case if you were able to produce a scientist who could explain in scientific terms how free will affects the physical chain of causation.
There is a bigger problem. You seem to aver that Free Will can over-ride physics in some manner. Cite?
If our existence is structured in such a way that it is virtually impossible to determine empirically whether or not we have free will (otherwise this discussion would have been settled by now), then what difference does it make one way or the other?
Pull your head out, laddie, the behaviorist B. F. Skinner wrote an entire book on exactly this subject.
I agree that ‘Free Will’ is not a cause. How could an ephemeral cognition cause anything. Exactly.
I agree that it is an effect of having a certain sort of nervous system, but so is vision, calculus and art appreciation- none of which cause physical events to occur!
It is a limitation of our understanding, but so is the current stste of quantum physics. If I opposed the United Fairies Theory of QM where pretty fairies danced in a particular manner to cause quarks to have their properties, you would think me ill advised and scientifically doubtful. Free will (IMHO) is the same.
We can observe human beings making conscious decisions for sure. We cannot observe the processes that lead to this and whether or not those processes are Physical or Magical.
Nope.
Less of the insults please. The way you have phrased that suggests that you may believe him to accept Free Will. Perhaps that is just the antagonistic nature of your post.
If you do believe that, note:
BF Skinner gives an excellent compatibilist approach to the subject. Compatibilism does not admit ‘Free Will’ into the direct chain of causation.
In fact he was a determinist in nature.
Apologies for the quote from Wikipedia, but it will do:
Beyond Freedom and Dignity is a book written by American psychologist B. F. Skinner and first published in 1971. The book argues that entrenched belief in free will and the moral autonomy of the individual (which Skinner referred to as “dignity”) hinders the prospect of using scientific methods to modify behavior for the purpose of building a happier and better-organized society.
Beyond Freedom and Dignity may be summarized as an attempt to promote Skinner’s philosophy of science, the technology of human behavior, his conception of determinism, and what Skinner calls ‘cultural engineering’.
If you are offering him as an additional support for determinism, why the abuse?
I was trying to stay somewhat more contemporary with the acientists I chose.
So you accept that according to the laws of physics, all events are either s=determined or chaotic.
Occam’s razor was never more applicable- do not multiply entities.
Why claim that a magical essence such as ‘Free Will’ can in some way directly affect a physical outcome.
What exactly is your position.
Determinist
Compatibilist or
Libertarian.
See posts #10 and #15.
The way I see it is that “free will” as it is usually defined involves accepting the definition of the “self.”
I was listening to a very interesting NPR broadcast the other day where a woman had a hemorrhage in her brain that completely wiped out her language abilities. She couldn’t even “think” in the way adult humans do. She was basically an infant, just experiencing everything. For a good long while, she didn’t have an idea of “self”, that is, where she began and ended and everything else began and ended didn’t exist. She didn’t have free will, just as an infant does not have free will, one might argue.
As her condition improved, and her brain began to heal, language came back to her and she eventually regained her identity and all that. In that sense, she regained her free will.
I would argue that this woman’s experience provides strong evidence for the idea of a free will, if you define it as simply an extension of one’s “self.”
A lot of people argue, however, that identity or “selfness” doesn’t actually exist either. I am sympathetic to that view, really. So I’m not saying free will or selfness exists, but there is some usefulness in accepting it as a manifestation of sentient/sapient organisms.
None of that is confirmative of ‘Free Will’.
It is possible to be Cognitively intact, Conscious, Self Conscious, believ in the suggestion that one is acting with free will, yet still be determined in behaviour.
So you subvert the Rules of Science by assuming an entity before its constitution and behavior are scientifically decided.
The normal rule is that before an assertion is made, it is supported by evidence.
The evidence of 99.999997% of the history of the universe is that no Free Will was present. Free will is a belief without scientific foundation which requires considerable evience before it is accepted to overturn the accepted laws of physics.
I would also mention again Occam’s razor!
It is possible that we are brains in a jar, characters in a book or NPCs in a computer game…but what does discussing such things get us?
By the way, did you know that 38,7274% of all statistics are made up?
In my view the classic idea of “free will” isn’t even logically coherent, much less true; if something is neither determined or random, what does that leave for it to be?
As for me, I think that “free will” is a label we put on our ignorance of our own mental processes. Most of our mind is a black box, inaccessible to our conscious mind; we aren’t aware of why we think & do what we do, so we call that “free will” because we can’t see the machinery.
Depending on which interpretation of quantum mechanics is true, many microscopic events are uncaused and fundamentally random.
Can you think of any criteria that would include rocks?
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Hortas! 
Not really meant to be antagonistic, as such. See, I read Beyond Freedom and Dignity cover to cover (it was kind of challenging), so I know that Skinner is not an apologist for the concept of “free will”. Basically, at the macro level (QED/QCD notwithstanding), one could in theory trace all of our behaviors to their root causes. Everything we do is based on addressing a need, want or desire, end of story. The fact that driver might be of a physiological origin (artists create art not out of “free will choice” per se, but out of a need to express oneself or a desire to communicate feelings, which is part of individual physiology) does alter the fact that the individual is driven to act.
“Free will” consists of two major components: ability and inclination. If you put a priest in a room with a naked 8-year-old boy, all other things being equal, the boy will be sodomized; put me in that same room, I will almost certainly not molest the boy because I am not so inclined.
So, the desire, want or need must be there, and the means must be reasonably be there (if there is no way to accomplish an end, there is no room for “choice”), and the prospects must be nominally positive (the outcome should be nominally non-negative). In other words, choice us an enormously complicated calculation of which we typically only see the surface, so it gets called “free will” because examining it in detail is more than we want to deal with most of the time.
If “random” does exist as a reality, then the fact that you chose a Maserati over a Lamborghini could be simply attributed to a flip of a coin, all other factors being equal.
The idea of free will, as I posited it, if it exists as all, is pretty indistinguishable from sapience itself.
You however have defined free will in a way that is logically inconsistent and literally cannot exist.
Most people talk about free-will as it sets man apart from animals, or whatever. In that sense, free will DEFINITELY exists because there is a definite difference between animals and men and their behaviors. If there weren’t, then animals would be tried in a court of law just as men are.
Not Statistics but FACT. For 99.999997% of the time the universe existed there was no evidence of Free Will affecting Physics, then suddenly in the last 0.000003% of the life of the universe, Free Will changed the laws of Physics.
Put like that it seems a little outlandish!
Agreed. A reasoned response.
Tribbles?
But how do you know it is not basic brain physiology/Chemistry that causes that, not an imaginary entity like Free Will?
Many animals are sapient. We have no reason to believe that many animals are problem solvers and abstract thinkers.
There is no evidence for anything like ‘Free Will’ that causes changes in the real world.
If you believe in Free Will, please explain how it worls.