Quote:
KnowledgeIsPower wrote
The physical laws work just fine as descriptions. They don't control anything. There's nothing being forced at all. Whatever happens in nature, there are true descriptions of it. There are regularities in nature but that's just the way nature is. There's no need for hidden forces or laws that govern the universe. That's a throwback from religion.
Causality remains but it's a description of what happens, not something that controls it.
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When studied, the "what happens", behaves as though it was under the complete control of forces and states. If this were not true then Newton's gravity equations would be useless. So, either free will is just a part of that causality and hence illusory (since there are no real choices in that case) or free will must be a way to circumvent or distort causality (which, for conversational purposes, I have called a force by analogy with the Newtonian forces).
My position is not a throwback to religion, but a refutation of it. I do not believe there is any extra or hidden force that enables free will for the same reason I do not believe in angels, no evidence plus an entirely adequate explanation using only the known forces.