No, but if we are looking for a place in our model of reality where free will might exist, then surely that place is here. Penrose has said exactly the same thing, though his theory is physicalist and has the reverse direction of causality to 2PC (he thinks gravity causes consciousness, I think consciousness causes gravity).
Not impossible. But I’ll stick with my model for the moment. 
But the self’s preferences are parts of the self. Actually, they are the self’s decisive parts because they represent what the self wants, and why would the self do willingly what it doesn’t want?
Most of what we want doesn’t come from the self (the informational model encoded in the brain) but from underlying biological instincts. The self can train itself to be “above” those things. This is why mystical traditions emphasise things like meditation and self-control. The human self can learn to value what is in the interests of the whole over its own interests. Some animals do this too, but it is either hard-coded (as in eusocial insects) or instinctive (wolves). In humans it is culturally transmitted.
Morality is about doing what we believe to be the right thing to do, not what our biology urges us to do or what our self wants for itself.
You are equating the concepts which are not relevant. They don’t quite make sense why they must be equal to each other.
True or false is matter for logical statements, not metaphysical statements.
The OP seems to be unclear in its points what it is trying to say. It is not about understanding or misunderstanding.
I know what you are trying to say. But my point is that free will seem to have limited scope in its meaning, and it is not really what you seem to be making out with it i.e. equating with consciousness and wfc.
It is also a concept which cannot be located in mind. It means that we don’t know what free will is in actuality.
Is it a thought, emotion or sensation? What is the actual nature of entity you are calling “free will”? How do you perceive your own “free will”, if it is real?
They are all processes which select a singular actuality from a range of possible outcomes. Consciousness models the world to enable us to predict outcomes, free will chooses outcomes from the possibilities, and wavefunction collapse is the reduction of quantum possibility to classical actuality.
Not true. There is no point in discussing metaphysics unless you are talking about which metaphysical model is correct.
We intuitively feel that the future is open, and that we are choosing from options.
It is not an emotion or a sensation, and “thought” is too broad a category. I can perhaps give an example you aren’t expecting: roulette. When we have some money on the table, and we watch a roulette wheel, we are willing the ball to land in a specific place. The same thing happens when we watch sport, and our team has a great chance to score a goal. We will the ball to end up in the net. Now..in both of these cases we don’t actually think our will is going to make any difference, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t willing something to happen. We have much more control over our own bodies, most of the time. But even paralysed people can will their own bodies to move…it just doesn’t produce the normal result, because in this case there needs to be a physical connection.
It is impossible to define this in terms of anything else, because it is different to everything else. It is a very specific thing, and it is the same whether we can effortlessly make things happen (moving our bodies) or whether we just really believe in something and really want it to happen.
1 Like
You seem to be talking about acts of selecting from the probable options. Having probability as one of their possible characters, doesn’t mean they are all equal entities.
Being conscious means you are dealing and coping with the present happening situations, now. Free will is only effective, after you have done something, and label it as “free will”. The two are totally different.
In metaphysics, you would be seeking more reasonable models or theories, which make more sense than the other options. They are not in the category of truth or falsity. Only logical statements / propositions are true or false. Conflating the difference seem to have been misleading you.
It sounds like the emotion of anticipation. There is no clear identity of type of perception called “free will”. Free will doesn’t exist until you do something, and label it “free will”, because you think it is, or would like to believe it is.
It is just a way of tracing or tracking who was responsible for the actions taken. Free will is handy and useful for that exercise.
It doesn’t exist as distinct perceptions such as the visual sensation of the trees, or sensation of feeling cold or hot, or taste of coffee or tea, or the reflection or memory of the past.
Free will is just a word to describe the situation you are the one who made the decision or performed the action.
No. But it does mean that the proposition that they might be three different names for the same process is not absurd, and should be taken seriously as a hypothesis.
Consciously denying you have free will doesn’t make free will disappear. And willing yourself to be unconscious doesn’t make consciousness disappear. These two things aren’t the same, no. It is asymetrical.
Scientific realists believe that science seeks objective truth, and that our best scientific theories are true, not just useful. Metaphysical statements can also be true or false, via the correspondence theory of truth – a true statement structurally resembles the actual structure of reality.
No, it is different to anticipation. Have you never watched sport and felt yourself willing your team to score?
The claim I am making here is not controversial. Even determinists generally accept the phenomenology of free will – they accept that it feels like we have free will. The arguments are mostly about whether or not this feeling is an illusion.
That is a different kind of discussion of free will entirely. It is about law, politics, and sociology. That’s the discussion where we end up talking about compatibilism, because the metaphysics is irrelevant. Libertarian free will requires a discussion of the metaphysics.
This discussion clearly also has another element for you, because you’re concerned about the religious connection. This makes a situation which is already complicated even more so.
That is not free will. It would be “wishing” or “wanting”. This is the problem with free will. Every case you describe as a case for “free will”, some other concepts describe better and more informative. Of course we could say, it was my free will wanting my team to score or win.
Free will just tells us, it was the one who was was wishing or wanting, not someone else.
You talk about metaphysical truths, but seem to be denying to analyse what the nature of free will is. I am not denying the phenomenology of free will. I am not saying it is illusion.
I am saying it is a description, labelling or “pointing at” the actions or decisions people took. It is not some sort of perception or existing perceptible entity.
I don’t agree. My point is that there is no free will until someone does something, and you call it free will. It is a phenomenology of free will in its own right. It is just a different way of seeing it from your point of view on free will.
You can deny having free will without contradicting yourself. But you cannot deny being conscious. Doing so would be just a clear sign of contradicting yourself. To deny X, you must be conscious, and also be conscious of denying X.
Denying being conscious would be contradicting your act of denial.
It proves consciousness and free will are not the same.
Being conscious is a mental state.
Having free will is your potential capability of making decisions and taking actions. Your free will only manifests after your actions or decisions have been made, and when you label/describe them as the actions of decisions of your own free will.
I don’t agree, and there’s no way to conclusively resolve this because it is an argument about phenomenology. I believe there is a distinct phenomenological “thing” we call will, I have described it, and plenty of other people recognise it.
You talk about metaphysical truths, but seem to be denying to analyse what the nature of free will is. I am not denying the phenomenology of free will. I am not saying it is illusion.
I am saying it is a description, labelling or “pointing at” the actions or decisions people took. It is not some sort of perception or existing perceptible entity.
I don’t understand. You are saying the word does not refer to any actual “will”. That means it is an illusion.
It is a phenomenology of free will in its own right. It is just a different way of seeing it from your point of view on free will.
Your argument has more to do with epistemology than phenomenology. But either way, there is no analytical resolution of the disagreement available. We have to agree to disagree on this point.
You can deny having free will without contradicting yourself. But you cannot deny being conscious. Doing so would be just a clear sign of contradicting yourself.
Eliminative materialists strongly disagree with you.
No, it is not an illusion. You sound almost there, but seem not quite there yet. 
The word refers to the actions you performed or decisions you made.
I meant all preferences of the self, not just biological instincts.
And why would the self do that? Because of its preferences.
So I think we’re painfully in agreement. The explanation of my position turned out to be more complex than I thought it would be initially, because I forgot we have to cover both of the main positions on free will. But to review where we are:
Proponents of the view that we do not have free will, typically start by claiming that Determinism and the (theoretical) predictability of one’s choices are the reasons why we don’t have free will. However, they also usually subsequently handwave the likely prospect that actually our universe isn’t Deterministic and our choices are not predictable.
So, for this position, Determinism turns out to be a red herring; it’s always the thing appealed to first, but then later discarded without the original position being updated at all.
Then on the other hand, proponents of the view that we have free will, because of non-computability or quantum indeterminancy, or whatever, have a difficult job explaining how this makes a choice more free from the perspective of the chooser.
I have a few rhetorical things to say about this too, but I’ll pause again here.
Not sure if free will has anything to do with phenomenology or epistemology. Free will doesn’t give you any phenomena or object for perception by itself.
It is the actions and decisions you made get posited by your judgement, with the label “free will caused”.
If there is no will, then you didn’t make them. The laws of physics did. I am not “almost there”. I completely disagree with you.
No. There is a big difference between doing whatever takes your fancy and doing what you believe to be the right thing to do, even if you really don’t want to.
Your argument is deeply corrosive of morality in general. You are claiming moral behaviour is impossiblem, because people who have high standards of moral behaviour are acting selfishly anyway.
Are you sure that’s what you want to be defending as a position on free will?
Again, that is a defensible position, but many people also disagree with it. If it did not feel like we have free will, this would be a far simpler topic to debate.