Human beings have free will

Thanks to Con for being so gracious last round.Con lodges several objections that I don't have the space to respond to this round so I will respond to his philosophical argument "The 'Dilemma of Determinism' next round. I wish to deal with his scientific objections this round.The Argument from the Law of Conservation of EnergyCon calls this argument the "Argument from Physics" but it'd be more accurately called the "Argument from Law of Conservation of Energy" so that is what I will refer to it as. Basically he argues that the freewilling would "violate" the law which makes it an "obvious impossibility". The philosopher Robin Collins shows what's wrong with this argument. [1]Collins says:"GR [general relativity] presents a major problem for the EC [energy conservation] objection. The problem is that no local concept of stress-energy (and hence energy or momentum) can be defined for the gravitational field in GR. Consequently, BPEC [boundary principle of energy conservation] does not typically apply in GR since one can neither define the total gravitational energy in a region of space nor the rate at which gravitational energy flows in or out of the region. This implies that although gravitational fields and waves clearly causally influence material objects, their influence cannot be understood in terms of movement of energy through space. As physicist Robert Wald notes, 'In general relativity there exists no meaningful local expression for gravitational stress-energy and thus there is no meaningful local energy conservation law which leads to a statement of energy conservation.' (1984, p. 70, note 6.)" [2] (Brackets for clarification added by me.)And,"Now for the punch line. A theorem proved by John Bell in 1966, called Bell's theorem ruled out the above explanation and any other explanation of these quantum correlations involving only local causation. Bell showed that if certain experimental results predicted by quantum mechanics occurred, explanations based on local causes could not explain the correlations. Since 1977, these predictions have been verified numerous times. Now within all physical theories energy exchange always involves non-instantaneous and hence local causation, since the packets of energy (or stress-energy) must move through space. Consequently, Bell's Theorem rules out any explanation of these correlations by means of energy exchange. Consequently, quantum mechanics requires the existence of correlations that cannot be explained by an exchange of energy." [3]The conclusion here speaks for itself. If the law of energy conservation doesn't even apply to all physical interactions why must we believe with Con that freewill "violates the law of conservation"? There doesn't seem to be a reason.The Law of CausationCon's argument here is utterly and completely question-begging - that is, it assumes what it's supposed to prove. Con just assumes here that freewill is "not real" and then goes on to argue that since freewill is "unreal" it cannot have any bearing on physical things. That's an obvious truism if free will is "not real" but that is what Con is supposed to be arguing for the truth of in the first place!The Arguments from NeuroscienceCon presents two arguments from neuroscience but I think they can both be answered with one reply. Basically, in both objections the conclusion that is supposed to be drawn is that brain science shows that we make our decisions before we are aware of them - this would undermine free will in the sense that we aren't really choosing our actions from a variety of options and doesn't really seem to be "up to us" to choose. Alfred Mele's criticisms of Libet's work are important here. [4][5] He makes a crucial point - there is no reason for to interpret these brain events as being decisions to act and not intentions to act or urges to act or a considering of the options. For all we know these brain events are correlated with the urges, intentions and considerings - not the decision to itself. This is entirely compatible with a two stage model of free will. [6] If interpreted as urges or intentions, for example, then the subject still has time to "veto" this urge or intention or decide to act on it. That is when they become decision would be made and that is when they would be conscious of the decision. That these intentions/considerings/urges may arrive before one makes a decision does nothing to threaten free will.The Argument from Rational DeliberationNow that the ground is cleared onto my argument for free will. It proceeds from a very simple observation - the fact that we human beings reason. When we are reasoning about anything we often think that we have several options to choose from wherein in which, in some sense, we could choose to do each one if we thought we had good reason to do so. Rationality is only possible if there is such a thing as irrationality. If one has rational options open to them that seems to require that they also have irrational options open to them. There have to be alternate possibilities from a range of less to more rational options. In the course of rational deliberation there is always a "gap" that a set of beliefs and desires isn't causally sufficient to cause your actions. You have to choose to act on a set of beliefs. John Searle illustrates this well with a humorous example:"Suppose you go into a restaurant, and the waiter brings you the menu. You have a choice between, let's say, veal chops and spaghetti; you cannot say: 'Look , I am a determinist , che Sara, sara. I will just wait and see what I order! I will wait to see what my beliefs and desires cause."' [7]The above scenario seems comical just because we recognize that isn't how human beings work. It doesn't follow inexorably from our antecedent beliefs/desires that we act on them. To put it another way - reasons don't act on you, you act on reasons. If I have numerous reasons to vote (and not vote) for the next presidential candidate, in the the end, it's me who chooses which reasons I decide to act on; maybe I like their economic policy more than their foreign policy and figure that their economic policy is more important than their foreign policy stances. I have a range of reasons to choose from. This seems incompatible with the truth of determinism and determinism would lead to the conclusion that no one ever rationally deliberates. Surely this can't be true. Therefore, there seems to be good reason to affirm that human beings have free will and that determinism is false. Sources [1] http://ebookbrowse.com...[2] ibid, pg 8[3] ibid, pg 17[4] http://www.informationphilosopher.com...[5] http://newhumanist.org.uk...[6] http://en.wikipedia.org... [7] http://books.google.com... pg 14