Free will and consciousness

[Jim__]

14. I notice that you didn't explain that "subtle process."

That's alright. I didn't really expect you to. But, phrases like subtle process can't substitute for knowledge. You didn't demonstrate any knowledge of how the brain works. Your claim to know that there can't be any free will is completely unsubstantiated.

We do know that we have various experiences, made possible by consciousness. If you raise your arm through a conscious decision, you experience the desire to raise your arm and then your arm goes up. What really did your consciousness do and where did that desire to raise your arm come from? You really have no other understanding of what went on in your brain beyond the experience of desire to raise your arm, unless you have some scientific knowledge, but that won't help your free will.

I told you where the desire came from. I read your post, wondered what could be a simple demonstration of free will, and freely decided that raising my arm for no particular reason other than to demonstrate that I can do it would be a simple demonstration, then I followed through and raised my arm. I freely decided to act and I acted. Then I followed through again, only this time I didn't raise my arm. My experience of making a free choice and acting on it does not prove that I have free will. But it goes a damned sight farther than your naked proclamation that I can't make a free choice.

You have a lot of explaining to do IF you think we have free will (you say you don't know). How did that desire to raise your arm become conscious and how did your consciousness create your desire to create your desire to raise your arm? Stuff pops into our brains and then stuff happens. Our brains put our thoughts into our conscious brains and our conscious-selves experience them. Our conscious-selves are created by brain processes. There is no room for free will here. No one has ever been able to explain free will or how possibly it could be done. Beyond that, how do I prove a negative?

There is no room for free will here? That's just a proclamation, you haven't offered anything resembling evidence; just naked claims. I told you where the desire to raise my arm came from. I also told you that I could either decide to raise my arm, or not to raise my arm - just the existence of the thought did not force anything.

As to your claim that there is no room for free will, researchers an John Hopkins disagree with you. An excerpt from What free will looks like in the brain:

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An illustration of the human brain indicates where researchers found activity relating to free-will decisions. Credit: Johns Hopkins University
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Johns Hopkins University researchers are the first to glimpse the human brain making a purely voluntary decision to act.

Unlike most brain studies where scientists watch as people respond to cues or commands, Johns Hopkins researchers found a way to observe people's brain activity as they made choices entirely on their own. The findings, which pinpoint the parts of the brain involved in decision-making and action, are now online, and due to appear in a special October issue of the journal Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics.

"How do we peek into people's brains and find out how we make choices entirely on our own?" asked Susan Courtney, a professor of psychological and brain sciences. "What parts of the brain are involved in free choice?"

...

They seem to think there's room. I accept their research as carrying more weight than your proclamations.