>>12131260It depends on your metaphysics. If you’re a materialist and assume physical matter is fundamental reality, then no, you can’t really have libertarian free will, since our brains are made up of small systems mindlessly obeying the laws of physics, so that doesn’t leave any room for free will. We appear to have indeterminacy at the quantum level, but most materialists will write this off as randomness or determined by deeper laws of physics we don’t understand yet.
According to the theory of panpsychism all matter possesses consciousness, so all wave-function collapses can be viewed as a conscious choice. Something like Penrose and Hameroff’s Orch-OR hypothesis could provide a bridge between the quantum and neural realms, allowing our minds a limited amount of free will.
If you’re an idealist or a conscious realist and view consciousness as fundamental to reality, this view would be more accommodating to free will. Donald Hoffman has some interesting ideas on this.
Ultimately whether free will is an illusion or not, we’re all forced to “play the game” of free will whether we like it or not. We can’t just go on autopilot, we need to make thousands of decisions every day. So whatever the physics might say, I think it’s useful for everyday life to think of ourselves as free agents.
