Do you believe in free will?

[NoMoreFaith]

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.

Such is the case with free will. It is the reality of all of us, none of us feel constrained to act. In this, it is no different to hallucination. This has been my position all along. The illusion of free will makes it real to us, and we can feel the effects of the illusion, but it, like the hallucination, is only real to the observer, i.e. you.
To equate the hallucination with the illusion of free will, consider an optical illusion. We are aware of the brains mechanisms(or at least a very good theory) for creating the illusion, and the causation of why your eyes and mind interpret it in a certain way.
We are not defining the appearance of grey dots between areas of high contrast squares as reality, however the brain certainly perceives them as real, as per the hallucination. So the question is, do we consider the illusion of free will, as being equivalent to being real.
I consider free will to be the grey dots of the optical illusion, real to the observer, but no more than the interactions of the brain and the method in which it perceives.

2- I thought we were leaving God out of it, but I’ll go along with the thought process. You say we lack the ability to change the future, yet isn’t that the core of determinism? Everything you do and what you perceive yourself doing causes a change in the course of causality around you in your environment. I think the problem lies with premise 2. Changing the fundamental laws of HOW the universe works is not the same as not changing the COURSE of the universe through free will.

It is a thought experiment, God was the most economical way of introducing the pausing of time concept.
To clarify, the presumption we can 'change' the future is based upon a presumption that events would occur differently in which has been altered through the application of this concept of free will.
My argument is that free will itself is part of the causal chain, and cannot induce change at all, nor be modified beyond truly random factors (if they exist).
There are no crossroads of choice between alternatives, it would require an force capable of changing a fundamental property of the universe, for instance how the electric pulse routes its way through your mind. That pulse was always going to fire the same way if you replay that same instant a hundred times unless a force exists to change a fundamental property which affects how your brain reacts. Otherwise, we are all just reacting in a unchangeable chain.

In the example of pausing time, you can affect change to this causal timeline if you were to change how the electric pulses in the mind are about to fire to divert them to another course.
In another words, I do not believe that your free will can change things, which begs the question, how is it possible to have acted differently at all. Of this question, I have not seen an answer. If it can be shown than a variable in choice can be MADE to act differently given identical circumstances, then I am completely wrong. However, we have covered the fundamental unfalsifiable nature of this question, so it remains a idea, and untestable hypothesis.

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

There is a presupposition that there IS a real him and a real you. The "I" is a product of the variables leading up to any instant. This concept of the reality of self is nothing more than the sum of all variables leading up to the instant you consider the self.
Your actions are a causal variable in that makeup, at the end of the day, were you ever capable of not knocking him out and changing his memories in this hypothetical. My proposition is that you were never capable of the choice any more than I have the choice to reply. The reasons I do so are the inevitable result of the self in this instant.
This is exactly the point, nothing you did interrupted the causal chain. It was always going down like that.
Am I the same person I was 10 years ago, no. Am I the same person I was 5 seconds ago, no. I am merely the sum of my parts up to this point, and do not exceed it.