Free Will

[Yoo]

As soon as we start talking about conscious agency, we're talking about a very, very high order of supervenience.  The real question is whether free will can supervene on building blocks which themselves don't have the capacity for freedom.  My answer to that is-- why not?  That's what emergence IS-- the spawning at one level of organization of properties that are nowhere to be found on lower levels.

This in my opinion is a fallacy that many have committed in the argument against free will-- to paraphrase, "As below, so above."

But that supervening version of free will must only be the illusion of free will. Every particle and wave in and outside your body still does whatever its cause makes it do. So you might get an illusion of free will, but by your reasoning you can't say that you actually get a version of free will which alters the chain of causation, right? Every building block follows some rules, and whatever comes from those building blocks as a byproduct can't change the nature of the building blocks. Then it wouldn't really be supervenience.

You might reason your way to get some form of consciousness, as a byproduct of the building blocks that aren't conscious themselves, because consciousness doesn't negate the nature of the building blocks.