The reason I’m not responding in this thread is that things like anosognosia, split-brain experiments, fMRI etc. are orthogonal issues to the classical debate on free will, and if I ever handle it, I’ll handle it in a separate post.
Actually, the classical debate on that topic seems to be founded on our perception of ourselves as a unified being—when confronted with actions for which we cannot provide a causal explanation, we each say “I chose to do that”—and yet we have good reason to doubt that the systems responsible for making that statement weren’t actually involved in the decision-making process.
If our sensation of making choices comes long after the choice is actually made, if it doesn’t have anything to do with the act itself and our decision comes without any corresponding sensation entering our awareness, we don’t need convoluted reasoning that tries to justify accepting our feelings as valid. We can just discard them as invalid and move on.
Why bother fiddling with the Gordian knot when we can just cut through it? We don’t need to make any particular assertions about the lawfulness of the universe or the predetermination of events—we don’t need any further assumptions at all. Our perceptions, and most especially our mental self-perceptions, are not veridical. Once we acknowledge that we do not need to account for whatever convictions give rise to the classical debate on free will, because the burden of demonstration then falls on those who insist that it indicates something in particular.
If our sensation of making choices comes long after the choice is actually made, if it doesn’t have anything to do with the act itself and our decision comes without any corresponding sensation entering our awareness, we don’t need convoluted reasoning that tries to justify accepting our feelings as valid. We can just discard them as invalid and move on.
Why bother fiddling with the Gordian knot when we can just cut through it? We don’t need to make any particular assertions about the lawfulness of the universe or the predetermination of events—we don’t need any further assumptions at all. Our perceptions, and most especially our mental self-perceptions, are not veridical. Once we acknowledge that we do not need to account for whatever convictions give rise to the classical debate on free will, because the burden of demonstration then falls on those who insist that it indicates something in particular.