Is free will real?

[The Grand Nudger]

It's a label for part of our human experience, and it is meaningful to us, so it "exists within the subatomic world." But it cannot be found there outside the context of experience. You can't find "comfort particles" floating around the universe, nor any particular collection of particles representing "comfort," except those ones we dub so. Well, any thing which exists only because we say it does must be called illusory IMO.

You won't find "Ferrarri particles" floating around either-and yet there are Ferrarris. I have labels for all sorts of experiences......labeling them does not seem to make the content of those experiences any more accurate. You found comfort particles(despite your insistence that there is no such thing)...why wouldn't there be free will particles? I would call the experience of free will illusory - but I do think that "something" is happening, that we are attempting to refer to that something when we say "free will". That part, in my estimation - isn't illusory at all.

You are pretty sure the pole exists. But where does "pole-ness" exist? How do you know it's a pole at all?

Same way you do. It's an object that fits a description. Pretty simple stuff..."pole-ness" is stretching...don't you think?

The thing is-- it's only a pole in the context of your human experience of it.

It's a pole because that collection of atoms in that structure and that arrangement fit the description of a pole. That by which we call a rose.

That idea of unity-- that this particular collection of QM wave functions collectively represent a "thing," is itself of and from the mind exclusively. It is therefore illusory, in the same way that free will is.

Yep, you find ideas in minds(might be a waste to look anywhere else for them). They don't seem to be illusory.

The general idea here seems to be that by attempting to make the mundane(pole-ness) seem more mysterious - something mysterious (free will) might seem more mundane. Meh....