Do you believe in free will?

[genkaus]

1- Not a substance separate from reality, but becomes the reality of the viewer, as he deems his hallucinations as real. Reality = perception (within the4 mind) of reality. Unless we’re defining some absolute value for reality. Many people have false memories of things that never really happened due to reconstructive properties of memory. That doesn’t negate the real implications of what really happened with who they are, or lessen the affects of what they perceived happening 20 years later on their decision process.

You are confusing perception with projection. Perception, by definition, cannot be of anything other than the external reality. False or apparent perception - also called projection, is the conscious or unconscious effect on perception. That is a result of a person's mind. Neither are independent of or separate from the physical reality.

3- OK let’s say that we took a guy, knocked him into a coma for a few months while we augmented and messed with how he thinks chemically and physically. Then he wakes up and goes about his life acting as a completely different person none the wiser, but he is the same person. Which is the real him the one caused up to that point or the one we caused while he was in the coma? What happens when he starts realizing his memories aren’t his and never really happened? None of what we did interrupted the causal chain. What we did do was affect why he makes decisions, not how he makes them. At no time could (while he’s conscious) we reduce what he define’s as who he is (or his agent) to not functioning. Whether he’s aware or unaware of the tampering of his mental self, there is an irreducible “I” and the ability to introspect

Why would he be the same person? The same body - perhaps. If the very agency by which the decision is made is changed, then the agent is changed as well. There may be an "I" - but that "I" is separate in both cases.

OK, we’ll roll with this:
1. There are two separate components of reality - physical and non-physical (which could be alternatively referred to as mental). Ok fine I agree that that is my position.

2. The mental component is not only separate from, but independent of the physical component. I don’t believe it’s completely independent of causation, as everything we are comes from before. I don’t believe though that it falls in an unalterable causal change.

3. I do believe in a reality beyond the physical reality but not that this reality to holds primacy. Maybe if you better define this primacy then I could take a closer look at it.

Justify your second premise. Causation is applicable to the physical reality because of its feature of being temporal. The non-physical reality can either be temporal or be non-temporal, but not both. If its not, then it would be independent of causation. If it is, then it would fall under unalterable causal change.

As to your third - primacy means when the laws of two reality are in apparent conflict - which one would you consider as applicable. An action being the result of causation and it being independent of causation are contradictory and cannot be true at the same time. Here you have two realities - one where causation is undoubtedly applicable, the other where it is somehow both applicable and inapplicable. But, for some reason, in a conflict between free-will and causation, you choose a less applicable one.

---

I think I get it, but as was pointed out, if your nature is all that makes your capability to choose then it’s not free, unless you can exceed who you are.

The very definition you present here requires violation of law of identity. You can only be who you are - neither less nor more. Any requirement of negating this premise takes away any ground for a logical discourse.