I have written on the subject of free will on my blog:
http://perfectchaos.org/2012/02/05/free-will/

Many thanks and best wishes, Steven

Quantum physics in neuroscience and psychology:
a neurophysical model of mind–brain interaction
Jeffrey M. Schwartz, Henry P. Stapp and Mario Beauregard

Happy seeking!

For many years the discussion over the existence of free will was limited to philosophers and theologians. Scientists started talking about free will once science started separating as a discipline from philosophy. However, it wasn’t until the rise of …

I haven’t watched much of the lectures yet. They are on my to do list. I really like what I’ve seen so far of them. Thanks also for linking to Conway’s paper; I didn’t have that link.

Anyway, my rejoinder to your rebuttal: although the overarching question is indeed about the relationship between free will and randomness, the main thrust of this post in particular was that scientific investigation – at least as currently practiced – preemptively rules out free will, thereby making the aforementioned left/right-button-pushing experiment vain. My point was that this argument in particular is unsound because of the false premise “materialism assumes determinism”.

Second, can you present an actual argument as to why free will cannot be empirically studied, or is that merely an immediate intuition? I cannot think of any way that any particularly cool definition could allow for empirical study, but that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible in principle.

As per your response to Evan, I concurrently observe that “determinism” has been sugar-coated to appease our mysteriously disconcerting feelings about it. Sometimes I wonder, even if the brain is able to exploit the randomness of quantum mechanics (if there really is randomness there), and my decisions and personality happen to be stochastic in nature, then would I still be disappointed about it? Emotions are weird.

@ylang: It’s kind of hard to comprehend your words, but if I understand correctly, aren’t you circuitously presupposing free will and reality are deterministic? (As for the semantics: “free will” isn’t a force and “efficacy” doesn’t operate. That kind of threw me off. Perhaps I need to change brainsides.)

@dm: I haven’t looked through Conway’s article yet, but I remember downloading the first FWT from arXiv.org and glancing at it. Out of curiosity, does the theorem rest on empirically true axioms this time? I’ll check it out.

For all readers of the post – when I say “determinism” in my post I’m referring strictly to biological determinism.

ylang, That’s a very interesting comment. What you are arguing sounds much closer to a monistic approach to this issue rather than the classic dualism that neuroscience assumes. I haven’t explained what monism is (it’s different than the one-sided dualism that many neuroscientists and scientists assume) but basically it’s a philosophical idea or approach to science, particularly neuroscience, that serves as an alternate assumption to Cartesian dualism so many assume today.

There were many flaws with my post – I recognize that (namely the part where I said I’d offer an alternative interpretation – I meant to add that it would be in a follow-up post, which I have yet to write). I just wanted it to serve as a jumping ground for further discussion.

Brad, “‘materialism assumes determinism,’ which is false – as said above, quantum theory is materialistic but requires elements of randomness.” Ah, but does randomness equal “free will”? That’s the question, isn’t it?

“The term is too nebulous and conflated as it currently stands in modern parlance to be put under rigorous empirical or theoretical study.” True, it is a nebulous term but you cannot “study free will” using empirical methods. We can set up some operational definition for free will but we are still not studying it; we are studying what we believe is a measurable manifestation of it. Now we can study it using theory (i.e., philosophy) but any other method is untenable.

Evan, many people today assume soft determinism but the problem is that so-called soft determinism is simply a change in the meaning of the word determinism. There really is no “hard” and “soft” determinism – just hard determinism. What is called soft determinism is something else altogether because it breaks the basic assumption of determinism. Many people try to sugar-coat determinism to fit experience or data or personal belief systems but what they are doing is misapplying a convenient label to something it is not. Even though I try not to assume determinism in my research or theories or general belief system, I have to agree with your “hard determinists” who call “soft determinism” an evasion; it is. It’s applying a label to something that is not determinism.

(1) Exactly what is the definition of “free will”? The term is too nebulous and conflated as it currently stands in modern parlance to be put under rigorous empirical or theoretical study. And,

(2) Exactly how would deterministic left-right button pushing be logically extended to all willed choices? A bit jumpy if you ask me.

You say there are “alternative interpretations” of the data, and that you would outline one for us. I reread this blogpost over and still don’t see said interpretation. The chief erroneous claim in the whole post, though, is “materialism assumes determinism,” which is false – as said above, quantum theory is materialistic but requires elements of randomness. Even if the universe is entirely deterministic at heart – it might not rule out free will depending on exactly what “free” means.

What does it mean?

P.S. I’d like to go under that fMRI. What I’d do is select an elementary sequence of numbers and modulate it. Say I take prime numbers modulo 4. If it’s congruent to 1, I go left, if 3, I go right. (And I start at 3 of course.) Would the machine be able to parse my brain patterns corresponding to my convoluted calculations? Doubtful.