No. The electrochemical activity in the brain operates according to the classical, macro-level laws of physics and chemistry. Quantum indeterminacy is no applied. Even if it were, it would only mean that certain things were random, not guided by a will that operates independently of causality.

Even if quantum indeterminacy affected brain function, which it doesn't, it would not introduce "new information." Quantum indeterminacy only operates in the absence of an observer, and information cannot exist without observation. The minute you observe the position of particle, its quantum state collapses into a determined state and only then can your brain translate the input into information.

There is an unbroken chain of causality in all these events. The person who is unwittingly hurting others is doing so because he has never been informed that insults are hurtful. Once he is informed, he stops. Cause and effect, at both ends. What we would expect, if consciousness really operated independently of causality, is for the knowledge that insults are hurtful to spontaneously pop into the person's head without anyone telling him. This never happens.

Nothing unpredictable ever does happen. However, many things happen which are not predicted, because the inputs to consciousness are so many and so complex that it is nearly impossible to calculate them with any accuracy. 

Everything, even macro level physics, is affected by quantum level fluctuations, the degree to which the effects are likely to show depends on the complexity of the system, ie how many particles present.  Also electrons are always subject to quantum level fluctuations, and electrons are part of the neuron activity in the brain.  I don't know if you're aware, but quantum mechanics affects chemistry I used to have a whole text book on the subject of quantum mechanics and chemistry.

And then a simple real world example of a macrolevel system affected by quantum nondeterminism:  Nuclear decay.  The nuclear decay rate is constant, this we know, over the span of the half life due to the law of large numbers, however the decay rate is not uniform.  It doesn't decay at a constant linear rate over the span of the half life.  This is why geiger counters, which detect the release of alpha and beta particles, usually, which are byproducts of nuclear decay, click randomly, because the radioactive materials don't decay at a constant linear or deterministic rate.  Radiation is directly relevant to evolution, because radiation is one cause of mutation.  I realize that none of this is directly relevant to the brain, though.

However the neuronal discharges are electrical, and when a person is trying to solve a problem for which they have no clear solution at best they can engage certain neural pathways that are related to the problem but are not the solution, or forge new pathways by linking new ideas.  Of course to do this new neural pathways have to fire and the order and timing of these neural pathways firing is nondeterministic because it depends on a number of nondeterministic factors, including the nondeterministic nature of the electron.  Once a concept is formed by the firing of pathways in response to the problem we are brought into the loop in which we check for consistency with experience or available information.  This is where the new idea is either accepted or rejected.

This whole paragraph is completely wrong.  Quantum indeterminacy has nothing to do with observation.  It is the fact that the behavior of a particle is only predictable by a wave function that can only tell us the probability that a specific particle will follow a specific path, whether or not we are observing particles this is what we know that they do.  this is the reason why even firing single photons at a time after firing many photons through a double slitted barier panel the photons will hit a photodetector behind the double slitted barrier in a wave pattern, as though it were traveling as a wave instead of a particle.  This is the famous wave/particle duality.  You're confusing the principle with the uncertainty principle which has to do with measurements.  The uncertainty principle states that the more certain we are about one state of a particle the less certain we are about another.  thus according to position/momentum uncertainty we can measure the position of a particle with absolute certainty, but if we do that we can know absolutely nothing about the momentum, and vice versa.  Then from there if we measure the position with less certainty we can know more about the momentum, and vice versa.  but this principle is distinct from the principle of wave/particle duality, which is where indeterminism in quantum mechanics comes from.

How is that a problem?  How do you break a chain of causality?  With or without free will, even in completely random systems where random event A causes one event from a set of random events B or random event A is self catalyzing and causes another random event to occur from the set of random events A you have an unbroken chain of causality.  Free will isn't about breaking chains of causality, it was silly of me to even go along with that in the first place.  Free will is about making decisions and thinking novel thoughts.  Most importantly consciousness is about being aware of yourself as distinct and seperate from your environment.  Our decisions are effected by past experience which makes up the causal chain.  "Breaking the causal chain" in my perspective in my previous response was just me adopting someone else's sloppy terminology, more accurate would have been to say changing their past trend of behavior.

This is also just false.  In quantum physics the actual path a specific photon will travel is unpredictable.  Same with any particle, actually, we can, at best, calculate the probability a specific photon will take a specific path using its wavefunction, this is not the same as saying we can predict its path.  We still won't know the photon's specific path even when we know its wavefunction.  Thus everytime anything emits a photon, we cannot predict where that photon will go.  We can calculate the probability that it will go in some specific direction, we can even limit its path, but in a more realistic system we cannot predict the path of a photon.

Yes you did say that, but I never saw in your post why that is.  What proof do you have that this is a necessary aspect of free will?

The 'we' I speak of is every entity in the universe capable of perception, not all are conscious, however.  Mostly I was referring to all conscious entities in the universe but more specifically to human beings.  Our brain is developed by genetic processes, we learn by experience or other means of introducing new information, but what we store is not dependant upon what we experience alone.  Do you remember every detail of every event or did you only bother to commit to memory what you thought was interesting or important?  The first time you were introduced to a subject you found interesting, how did you decide it was interesting?  How about the first subject you were ever introduced to?  Did you think it was interesting or uninteresting?  How did you decide?  How did you pick your favorite color, food or music?  What about your favorite movie?

The nondeterminism in nature also has indirect effects in choice, because it will eventually lead to conditions in the macro world which could never have been predicted even with complete knowledge of all physical laws and the current state of all matter in the universe at any point in the past.  This is because of particle/wave duality.  Particle/wave duality is an observed property of particles, basically we have observed that a particle will not travel a determined path, instead any individual particle may chose from any number of paths that are included in that particle's wave function.  There is no way to determine which path a specific particle will chose as there are no physical laws which determine which path a specific particle will chose, we can only determine the probability that the particle will chose a specific path based on its wave function.  This is also applicable to the specific location of an electron in its orbit around an atom, we cannot determine its specific location with any degree of certainty we can only define a probability function which tells us the probability that the electron will be located at any specific point around its atom based on the electron's wave function.

This nondeterministic nature of the fundamental particle's paths affects beta decay which is part of the weak nuclear force.  The weak nuclear gauge boson has its own wave function associated with it which calculates the probability of all of its possible paths.  The actual path the weak gauge boson will travel along to a nucleon is not determined, however, and is completely unpredictable.  It's also true, though, that the precise path and position of the quarks and gluons that make up the nucleons will not be determined either.  Their paths will fluctuate within the allowed ranges of their respective wave functions.  Also the heisenberg uncertainty principle does not allow for any particle to be stationary.  So there will always be a nondeterministic motion associated with all particles, even if we could measure what the actual motion was we still would not be able to predict what the motion would be from its starting point.  We can only ever calculate a probability based on the particle's wave function.

Radiation is directly relevant to mutation and thus evolution.  Because beta decay is affected by the nondeterministic nature of particle paths and motion there's no way to predict how it will effect the mutation of an organism's genome, thus evolution is nondeterministic.  Once an interaction takes place the results of the interaction are determined by physical law, however, there's no way to predict what will interact and thus what will mutate due to radiation and how.  Thus even our very existence is not the result of purely deterministic processes.  There was an element of chance involved.

If actual freewill exists it will most likely be the very freewill we percieve, thus if the freewill we percieve actually exists then actual freewill exists.

You aren't trying to suggest that all information is derived directly by experience are you?

You haven't in any way shown that it is actually a completely deterministic process, nor have you given any arguments that show that nondeterminism plays no role in consciousness and thus free will.  You have basically so far only asserted that it doesn't.  I'd be interested in your proof.  Also I should note that I have not at all denied that the process has deterministic aspects.  But it is, nevertheless, not completely deterministic because of particle/wave duality.

And nowhere have you offered up any proof that "a moment where anything suddenly becomes re-routed by some will removed from and independent of the overall causal strructure" is in any way necessary for free will, or even what that would look like...or even what that means.  I see no reason why this is at all necessary for free will, or why causality is in any way a problem for free will, or even what causality has to do with free will, except that it is necessary for us to be able to make sense of the universe.  If causality didn't exist then very likely neither would consciousness, or it would be no consciousness that we could possibly make sense of if it did exist in a universe without causality.

Other than that, though, I don't see how the ability to violate a chain of causality is necessary to free will.

You haven't even tried to show how it's irrelevant, only once again asserted that it is irrelevant.  I'd be interested in your proof.

But for fun I will address the objection anyway.  It is not essential to free will in general, but it is essential to conscious free will.  Our ability to abstract properties, and abstract ourselves from our environment.  Our ability to think novel thoughts, make up novel new concepts, tell stories, learn new things about the universe despite the fact that we can't directly observe them.  Even derive mathematical proofs about aspects of reality that we may never be able to experimentally prove, and may not even be true.  These novel ideas come about through a process that I will spend more time on in response to something following this, but which can be shown to be the product of some nondeterministic processes.  I'd be interested in your proof that this is not the case.

Also free will in general is not important to me, our free will specifically is much more interesting to me, because it directly effects me.  And this is a model that has the potential to explain how our freewill is derived from both deterministic and nondeterministic aspects of nature.

Once again you begin the paragraph with an unproven assertion...and almost identical to the unproven assertion you've been making all along.  I have noticed how people never have novel thoughts that involve information they don't already possess.  I fail to see the problem.  The novel thought does indeed recombine already injested information, but in a random and nondeterministic way.  We only have the concepts that we have, when faced with a problem we use the information that we have to try to solve it.  When the solution is not already present in our minds we forge new neural pathways linking existing concepts.  Quantum fluctuations due to particle/wave duality will cause neural pathways to fire at random and then comes the part where we accept or reject an idea based on consistency with other already present information or other processes that make up our informational filter.  It's the novel thoughts themselves, however, which are the product of nondeterministic processes involved with thought.  When neurons fire they produce electrical impulses, the electromagnetic force is communicated by photons, photons are subject to the nondeterminism that is wave/particle duality.  This means that the path they travel along when activating new neurons fluctuates within a certain allowed range.  This affects how neurons fire in relation to each other leading to novel and nondeterministic thoughts.  At this point our informational filters are engaged and we either reject all or part of the new concepts or accept them.  This model is effective at explaining why people can jump to conclusions that in no way follow from what the original stimulus was.

I actually say it as though such a thing is an important factor in whether or not the concept would add anything useful or important to our understanding of the universe.  As it stands it would not.  In fact it would almost mark the end to scientific inquiry if it were true, though, it would not actually stop scientific inquiry because it is determined by nature that people will continue to inquire.  Still if absolute determinism does exist in nature where would any scientific inquiry lead?  To the truth?  It would definitely not necessarily lead to any truth.  It would only lead where physical law has already determined we would go.  We would be able to learn nothing beyond what nature has intended for us to learn and we would never be able to know if what we had learned was real or just how physical law has determined we should percieve it.  As such absolute determinism in nature adds nothing important or meaninful to our understanding of reality and the universe, even if true.  We may, of course, continue to explore other possibilities, though, as long as other possibilities remain open.  As it stands I see no reason to assume that absolute determinism is a property of our universe.  And so far in this discussion no one who has tried has given me even a single reason to conclude that it is.

Nothing can be removed from causality.  About the best free will can do is make a choice.  Basically when someone is forced to make a decision an event caused the decision, but free will decides.  And the closest we come to escaping causality is by causing things ourselves, which we do, but one could argue a causal chain of events there, since nothing we do would be possible were it not for our parents causing our birth.  How do you remove yourself from all causal chains?  I still have no idea where you even get the idea that in order for free will to be free it must be removed from all causal factors since that's impossible.  Nor did I say that our will was entirely random, only that it has a random element.  Thats almost like the creationists arguing that evolution by natural selection is entirely a random process, and how could an entirely random process cause so much complexity?  It probably couldn't, good thing neither evolution nor free will are entirely random, though they do have their random elements.

I am actually suggesting that given the exact same material scenario someone could choose something different.  This is because choices are not entirely deterministic.  They are subject, as all other thoughts are, to random firing of synapses, after that they are put through our information filter, if what is being chosen between are two equal options then something random has to go into deciding one over the other.  We also don't always use the same tie breaker techniques in deciding the one we use depends on whatever method pops into our heads at the time.  Or we try harder to determine the consequences of each choice, but we don't always use the same specific strategy, and there's no reason to believe a person will always chose the same thing even if we could completely roll back time and watch him chose again.  I'd love to see your evidence that this would happen.

I think we are exposed to things which determine what we will chose for whatever reason to like or dislike.  But the chosing what we like or dislike is influenced by nondeterministic aspects of our thought processes.

I never even assumed you were saying that at all.  In fact the comment that this was a reply to had absolutely nothing to do with what you jusst claimed I said.  It doesn't matter what a person's current state is in a completely determined universe, that person's future state will evolve according to a completely determined set of laws and that petrson may "change" but never be anything other than what he was ever going to be.  How do we hold anyone responsible for any of their actions or choices if it turns out that every aspect of the universe is determined by natural law and there is no element of nondeterminism in nature?

True it could be seen as a little overzealous.  However due to the fundamental nature of the issue and the fact that nothing that could effect the path of any particles is known in nature, also the fact that wave/particle duality has been experimentally confirmed to exist in macro sized objects even as marge as fullerines, it certainly seems to be a fundamental part of nature.  To assert that physical laws must exist is a little overzealous, though, don't you think?  I'm only pointing out that from what we know about particle physics there's no reason to assume that nature is completely determined.  Wave/particle duality points out to us an aspect of nature that is not deterministic and which, as far as anyone knows, is fundamental to nature.  You can assume that there must be physical laws that determine the paths of the particles, but you'd be begging the question.  Not only do we not know of any, but we have no reason to assume that any exist.  The existence of such laws aren't even necessary for making sense of quantum physics, so you couldn't even argue for that.  Basically my position comes from the observations of nature, my conclusion is based on evidence.  You seem to be starting from your conclusion that all of nature is determined and now trying to brush aside the fact that as far as anyone knows wave/particle duality describes an aspect of nondeterminism in nature.  Possibly you didn't start with your conclusion, but you came to your conclusion either without that information or ignoring that information, and now you are trying to brush that information aside because it doesn't fit your conclusion.  The information is still valid.  Unless you can come up with proposed physical laws and then prove at least one of them, that determine the paths of the fundamental particles you can't really assert that any must exist even though we don't know what they are or even that they are necessary just for the sake of salvaging your conclusion.  Physicists are perfectly alright with accepting wave-particle duality as fundamental because it explains what we observe and doesn't present any problems for our understanding of nature.

'Freewill' is only the ability to make choices.  our freewill is a conscious free will.  But consciousness is more what requires indeterminacy, though indeterminacy is present in all living things, since as far as we know it is present throughout nature and the universe.  Actually I think I was wrong before to assert that nondeterminism was not essential to freewill, just a little bit hasty.  Since it would be difficult to choose between two equal options without some nondeterministic means of forcing a decision.  Either that or the choice made would always follow the same deterministic pattern.  Thus with enogh information it would be possible to predict how every organism will chose between two equal options.  But a random element makes that impossible.  Also in a deterministic universe either a mechanism to chose between two equal options must be explicitly programmed into the mind, or we would see a lot of people entering infinite loops when forced to chose between two equal options.  However in a nondeterministic universe a mechanism to force a decision between 2 equal options is just naturally built into the mechanism for making choices in general.

We don't have to directly experience something to gain information about it.  Yes information is acquired from some sort of experience, but we can gain information about events we have never experienced by reading about the event, talking to someone who experienced the event, or more.  There's also the thought experiment.  You can gain information about an event by thinking through what would happen if you did it, but not actually doing it.  Einstein did this a lot.  What would you have thought had I said "all information is gained by experience"?  I think you would have jumped all over that statement to point out that we gain information from books, other people, television, movies, not just experience.  So here it looks like you were just arguing for the sake of arguing.  Yes talking to people is a form of experience, but the only experience there is that you talked to someone about something.  You now have the information of what you talked about but you did not experience the event.  So you get information about two things from only a single experience.  Not all information comes from direct experience.

Yes randomness and freewill are not the same thing.  I've never said that they were, but freewill arises from nondeterministic aspects of thought.  It also depends on its deterministic aspects.  You're still assuming the correctness of your definition of free will which you have yet to adequately prove.  Or prove at all for that matter.  I still think your first comment which was an attempt to do so was very amusing but pointless.  What does the 'free' in freewill have to do with a removal from causality?  Why is that necessary for freewill?  How owuld you even do it?  Since your birth is the first cause of everything you subsequently did, you'll never be removed from that cause so everything you do subsequently will at very least be directly causally linked to at least that one event.  Plus events that have nothing to do with your life.  What causal chain do you propose we break?  And why is breaking any causal chains necessary for freewill?  Your response earlier only restated your earlier assertion that it is, you still haven't explained why.

You only say this because what followed didn't address your definition of freewill which I rejected as inherently flawed.  Why would I address a flawed definition?

Random thoughts are thoughts that just come up with no stimulus.  Like if you're sitting around bored and just suddenly think something to yourself that's not at all related to anything.  Or if you're having a conversation with someone and something they say brings to mind something completely unrelated to what they said.  Those usually make for funny stories, and I'm sure you've experienced things like that or similar to that in your life whether you thought they were important enough to remember or not.  They can also be thoughts that come up through a random chain of tangentially linked concepts.  As an example if you were talking to someone about cheese and suddenly you think cheese wheel, and then you think tire and then you think firetruck and the next thing you know you're talking about Ghostbusters because they bought an abandoned firehouse.  Random thoughts are usually amusing when you have them.

How often do you think we recombine information unless we're trying to come up with a new concept?  You made quite a random new concept here and it was only in response to your brain trying to recombine things into a new concept.  If you're not trying to recombine information to solve a problem or make up a story or whatever, why would your brain be doing it in the background for no reason?

What an individual accepts or rejects information based on depends on the individual's present information, their personal informational filter, their current state of mind, and possibly other things which I haven't thought of.  Current state of mind could also be expanded to include amount of sleep, emotional state, level of rationality when dealing with whoever's giving them the information if it's coming from a conversation or some other external source, etc..  The informational filter is complex and subjective, by which I mean it depends on the subject, and by subject I mean the person to whom the informational filter belongs.  The informational filter is mostly deterministic, though there is still a degree of nondeterminism present because of what the system is made of and how it works.  But synapses that are bound to each other will fire together and our informational filters are bound together through constant use.  The orders in which they fire in may be more random so aspects of the informational filter may take precedence over other aspects, like emotional state may fire before logical pathways and effect how the logical pathways fire, or not.  And then the person chooses to reject or accept the information.

Why would we suspect this?  Then the person would be aware that he was lying to himself.  The choice is made consciously to accept or reject some information.  If the choice to reject the information is made and the person accepts it anyway then that person is now consciously lying to himself.  Durring the informational filter process a person can decide to let considerations that are not rational determine whether or not he accepts or rejects an idea, that's called rationalization, it's part of the informational filter, though.  After the choice to accept or reject is made, though, a person can consciously lie to himself but why would he do that?  He'd know he was lying to himself.  It's far easier to lie to yourself by using the informational filter and have the lie be unconscious, or mostly unconscious, because usually at some level the individual is aware of his rationalization.

But our ability to make a nondetermined choice is what our freewill is.  If all of our choices are determined by natural law our will is not free.  It's determined.  We're not imprisoned by that deterministic nature only as long as we are unaware that we aren't making our choices.  Ignorance is bliss, remember?  If we were to actually apply determinism to our concept of freewill, though, we would no longer be able to hold anyone accountable for their choices or actions, how could they have chosen any differently?

This is because you were still applying your flawed definition, when you apply my definition, that free will is the ability to make a nondetermined choice, you see that it was involved in the entire process.  Since the entire process had to do with decision making.  Basically freewill is our decisions being determined by us not by natural processes alone.  We use natural processes, but natural processes don't completely determine on their own what we chose.

This is just funny, because in a different thread I explained why it matters if something adds something useful or important to our understanding of the universe over whether or not it is true.  Not to mention the fact that you can't prove that your view is true without ignoring wave/particle duality or begging the question that wave/particle duality must be determined by natural law because if it isn't it doesn't fit your conclusion.

Let's briefly look at something we are accepting as axiomatic right now specifically because if we didn't it would tell us nothing useful or important about the universe and for no other reason.  We accept the existence of reality outside of our own consciousness as axiomatic, it cannot be dedictively or inductively proven with any degree of certainty.  However if we were to assume that reality doesn't exist outside of our own consciousness it tells us nothing useful or important about the universe at all and actually negates everything we experience.  Because we aren't really experiencing anything it's all just a trick of our minds.  In fact from my perspective I am the only person who exists so if I didn't just accept as axiomatic for all intents and purposes that external reality really does exist because the alternative tells me nothing useful or important about the universe, you'd be pretty hard pressed to prove that you weren't just an elaborate figment of my imagination made possible by compartmentalization of my thoughts.  In fact you'd find it impossible.

The only reason why we accept an external reality as axiomatic is because if it is true it says something useful about our universe.

Of course if you're right the reason why you don't follow is because natural law won't allow you to.  Also is gravity real or is that just what natural law wanted us to percieve?  What about evolution?  Why are you asking the question of whether or not god exists except that natural law made you?  Why even bother changing what other people think except you have no choice.  This whole discussion, did you chose to enter into it?  No natural law made you.  How about cerial killers why do we execute them for crimes they had no choice but to commit?  Oh yeah because we have no choice but to do so.  Can scientists discover anything about "nature" that natural law didn't predetermine that they would?  No.  How do we know what we discover is accurate?  We can't.  We just have to have faith, I guess, that natural law is allowing us to accurately understand things.  You could try to argue that the fact that what natural law is allowing us to discover seems to work, but that would just be natural law making you make that argument, how do you know that that argument is valid?  You don't.  Natural law just told you to think it is, or forced you to think it is, more accurately.  It would be impossible for you to think otherwise even if you were wrong.  Maybe some day natural law will make you change your mind, but until then you'll just think whatever natural law is making you think.

That's what natural law is forcing you to think, Vessel.

I'm sure this is true for very different reasons.  It's not necessarily because natural law controls our destinies or predetermines everything in nature, but because our ability to probe everything about nature depends on our ability to understand everything about nature.  Nature may be sufficiently different from us that at some level we may never be able to understand it.  Only insofar as nature is completely rational will we ever be able to make sense of it.  Quantum mechanics may be counter intuitive at times, but it's still rational.  There's also the limitation on what we can measure.  Maybe some day we'll be able to measure the smallest distance scales, but more likely we'll go extinct long before then since shorter distances requires more energy to probe and the planck distance scale will require thousands of trillions of times more energy than we can currently produce.  Or even have any idea how to produce.

If everything in nature is determined everything in nature is predetermined.

Again this is because you were looking for me to address your flawed definition of freewill, which I had already explained didn't follow even from the word itself as you tried to argue it does.  Why would I have been arguing for your flawed definition?  Maybe you should have been reading more carefully.

Given the exact same material scenario at the moment the choice is made, what would be the means by which some other choice could be made? If something random occured that is part of the causal structure by which the choice is made, not an element of freedom to choose. 

What are 'two equal options'? Why do you think any two options are ever equal? How can randomness deciding between two equal options be considered freewill? You are still equating randomness with freewill whether you say you are or not. The bolded section illustrates this.

I can see no mechanism by which it wouldn't. If some random event occured that was part of the causal structure then in a scenario that was materially identical the same random event would need to occur. If it didn't, then the scenario would not be materially identical. Therefor, it is necessary to add something non-material into the processes in order to think the outcome could be different given a materially identical scenario.

I agree. 

Possibly true. This does not in anyway suggest that our choices are fee or could be different.   

As I've stated repeatedly, I'm not arguing for a completely determined universe. 

have you actually been reading my responses? Does anyone else see any point at which I have claimed that there is no element of non-determinism in nature? 

That's why I haven't asserted any such thing. 

We aren't talking about nature being completely determined, as I've said over and over. We are talking about the choice making process of a conscious agent. 

Silliness. Why would I care to do that? I have no stake in whether or not anything given thing is true. I am simply putting forth what seems true as best I understand it.  

Now, as I've stated repeatedly I have not said that there is not quantum indeterminacy. I have merely stated that it does not rescue freewill. As of yet you have not demonstrated how indeterminacy idoes support freewill so I am still not able to correct my position if it is indeed wrong.  

One last time, I haven't argued against indeterminacy. Hopefully we can move past this. 

So freewill doesn't need to be free? A computer can make choices based in criteria programmed into it. Do computers have freewill? If not then freewill is more than the ability to make choices.  

So you can consciously control the firings of neurons? But you are the firings of neurons. So can you control who you are? Can you be someone who enjoys mime if you want to? 

I don't believe any two options can be equal. If they were they would be the same option, and a choice would not need to be made. Any two things that are fundamentally identical, or equal, are the same thing.

I'm going to have to start ignoring all the references to a determinstic universe as we are discussing choice making by conscious agents. Again, First there is no such thing as equal options that are not the same option and secondly randomness is not freewill.

Of course we can, but we are experiencing information, Which is what I said. The information is simply from whatever source by which we are hearing, reading, whatever, about the event.  

You can only do this so far as you possess information about what will happen or information that can be extrapolated or combined to provide an expectation of what will happen.  

I consider all those things experiences, or things we can experience, don't you? Why would I have jumped all over that statement? It seems to me to be a true statement. 

I'm unsure why you would say that. 

How ridiculous would it be for someone to claim all information of a particular event can only come from direct experience of that event? No sane person would make such a claim. 

You continue to state this but do not explain it in the least. Surely you can see why I have a problem simply agreeing with your assertion that "freewill arises from nondeterminstic aspects of thought. It also depends on determinstic aspects".

If you are simply calling making a choice freewill then a determinstic choice would be freewilled choice, so your freewill definition is useless. And without a useful definition of freewill claiming what it arises from is meaningless.

I'm really not concerned with what you thought amusing, only  with the truth or reasoning of the position you present. 

If one is caused to do something then one is not free not to do it.

Because if it was not necessary for freewill then there woul'd be no difference between freewilled choice and determined choice. 

That's the point. 

Of course. 

Yes. 

I don't propose we break any as I don't believe freewill is actual. 

 Because all we are left with otherwise is determinstic forces with some amount of random elements thrown in. Now, explain how that equals freewill.   

You haven't addressed any definition of freewill I have ever seen anyone put forth. That is the problem. 

I don't see any reason to think this happens.