This is a great documentary anyone interested in human intelligence should watch. It's loosely based on Hofstadter's book, The Mind's I.
But I want to talk about the saying itself. Many people of the naturalistic bent will make the claim that they are just victims of their brain. It's hard to figure what they mean by this because it doesn't seem to make much sense. What are "they" if not their brain? Are "they" some other entity that just has to watch the goings on of the brain? Where is this entity and of what is it composed?
I've never really gotten any answers to these questions. Fact is that "we" are our brains. The I that is a victim of its brain is the very brain it is a victim of. All you are claiming is that you are a victim of yourself. This is part of what I believe is behind the illusion of non-free-will.
Many people will claim that there's no such thing as free will but will then admit that we have an "illusion" of free will. It is their contention that our choices are but "illusions" and that we really have to choice at all. Now, it must be granted that there are many demonstrative cases when this is true; we think we have a choice but we find that outside forces have conspired to assure that we'd make the choice THEY want.
But this is not what they are referring to. They are referring to the fact that the calculations that occur within our brains to derive a choice are all governed by physical processes. But again, they are distancing themselves from these physical processes, as if they themselves where not physical processes. The thing that calculates the decision is the very same thing that observes it: the brain.
What sense does it make to say that you have an illusion of free will? If you have a choice to "calculate" from a miriad of possible directions you can travel in the course of your life, and there's no outside influence on you forcing you to make one decision or another, it matters not that those calculations are entirely derivable as logical statements, one following another. It is still a choice that is being "made" and the thing that did that, a brain, is you.
So, I ask such people, what's the difference between an "illusion" of free will, and free will itself?
