Do you believe in free will?

[genkaus]

Under what assertion? I'm stating that there need be no mechanism, it is truly free of any deterministic attribute. A mechanism is a material concept which you are transposing on a non-material subject. Simply stated, the conscience is non-material with a individual identity; while the brain is material with an individual identity. The non-material cannot exist without the material in so much as it is ontologically dependent. The identity of the non-material may still be preserved without the material, which is how/why they differ.

Under the assertion of law of identity. A thing cannot be what it is and not be what it is at the same time. Without any mechanism for consciousness, a conscious mind in not conscious. You can make all the assertions you like about ontological dependence and which principles do or do not translate to the non-material, but this one is inescapable.

Nor is any of that required in this discussion (let alone the fact that it most likely can't be physically known other than through induction). We aren't discussing whether I'm right or you're right, it's whether free will can exist, and if so how would that be so. I believe it can - and does - exist, and I am justifying my belief. This isn't a discussion which has an answer, it's a discussion to analyze free will and its possibilities. You can analyze the validity of my argument (which you are doing), but I can't bring you to perceive what I perceive if we differ so greatly on our original perspectives.

The problem is that so far, your attempted justifications only go as far as to say that free-will can exist. And in that they are incomplete. In order to assert that it can exist, you should give a possible scenario of how it can exist.

You believe free will is an illusion and that the world is deterministic and material. I believe that there is more outside of ourselves which we must abstract to even attempt to understand. Our perceptions limit our knowledge, and you favor the side of complete knowledge, I favor the side of not-knowing but being inspired by its awe.

Don't assume anything about my position. My position on freewill has already been spelled out in this thread. Refer to that is you wish to know what it is.

You ask to know how a non-material subject operates in a materialist perspective. You limit the abilities of the non-material to the confines of materialist physics and determinism. And then you ask me to show you the effects a non-material subject causes in a material world without allowing me the supposition that free will does come from this non-material subject.

The materialistic perspective here is an assumption on your part. The limits I'd proscribe are the logical confines of identity and causation, unless, ofcourse, you are saying that logic is not applicable to the non-materia, in which case it'd be simply nonsense.