Hi, jmullaney. You and I aren’t going to agree on this, but a respectful sharing of perspectives might have some value either way.
It seems to me that you are missing out an important element of this question. Whether outputs are determined by inputs is one important point, and you make it well. Another is whether this relationship is, or can be, detected and analysed in a way which enables one to predict the outcome. In simplified systems, it can, but this is not always true.
Provided the ‘inputs’ to your own brain are sufficiently numerous and complex, so that you are unable to analyse and evaluate them separately in your own conscious, then the summed ‘output’ will yield behaviour which is effectively indistinguishable from free will, as far as you and the people with whom you inter-act are concerned. In other words, the determinism is there, but sufficiently obscured from any analysis as not to be perceived as such.
This mental process is sometimes referred to as ‘chunking’, i.e. the conscious mind can only access higher-level accumulations (‘chunks’) of the brain’s processes, but the lower-level detail - the grains out of which the chunks are composed - remain inaccessible to conscious process. Dogulas Hofstadter has many interesting discussions of this process in hs famous book, “Godel, Escher, Bach”.
Your logic seems to run something like this:
- Humans exhibit free will.
- Without a soul, free will is impossible (all is determinism, comprehensible in terms of input-output schema)
- Therefore, the human soul exists.
With respect, I believe the first premise is flawed. First of all, it might be said to beg the question. Some people would define ‘the soul’ as ‘that which renders free will possible’. I’m not saying you would make this mistake, but some would. Secondly, it is presented as a ‘given’, whereas I am entitled to suggest it unsubstantiated. In my experience ‘free will’ is rather elusive to define. As you will be aware from having discussed this topic elsewhere, it is very hard for opposing sides to agree what constitutes ‘free will’, or to cite a behaviour which both sides can agree constitutes evidence for it.
I do recognise that most of us feel a strong need to believe that we exhibit free will. The argument tends to get over-simplified, as if the only alternative is to think of oneself as a ‘fleshy robot’ - which of course people find repugnant. However, I for one have no problem with the
belief that I have no ‘free will’ (as that concept is commonly accommodated by those with spiritual views). I don’t think of myself as a robot, but I can very contentedly reconcile myself to the notion that all my ‘outputs’ DO have relevant ‘inputs’, albeit ones so complex I cannot consciously access and analyse them.
The related difficulty with the concept of ‘the soul’ is that, like God, even if it does exist it clearly possesses no attributes which can be detected and verified by independent experimenters. (At this point, I hope this thread is of sufficient quality that nobody will chime in with the usual low-grade detritus about “Can you prove a spring morning is beautiful, or that your SO loves you?”).
One can posit as many such entities as one desires - by definition their existence can be neither proved nor disproved. So it is with the soul. Until such time as it acquires any detectable attributes, there is not much rreason to suppose it is there, and it makes no difference whether it is or is not. For something to ‘be’ there or not only matters if it has detectable attributes. Hence the problematic (for believers, that is) question: Why stop at one soul? Why not credit yourself with two, or 17, or 1037? What difference would it make?
Anyway, while differ we may, respect to you and your views.