Another Free-will poll, please bear with me!

[robvalue]

I think in the end a view of free will boils down to this: is a supervenient quality greater than the sum of its parts?

I'd argue that when the supervenient quality is relational (as in mind), the answer is necessarily yes. For every two parts you bring together, you now have 2 kinds of information: that of the original parts, and that of their relation. Where does this information exist? Not in the parts-- it's not actually created by them, or of them, but exists in a superset. Now, take out a part, and the superset collapses, so in that sense it is dependent on its parts-- but they are only placeholders for that relational information.

Mind, then, transcends neurons even though it is fully dependent on them. The same goes for body: physical systems aren't about a collection of QM particles but about their interrelation. I'd argue that to the degree we see a single personal agent as A thing, rather than a collection of things, free will can be seen as the interrelationship of mental processes which themselves need not be free, but which is itself still free.

If we stare at words long enough, we can convince ourselves that there's no free will. But then we step away from the computer and actually live life, and free will is as real as every other part of what it's like to be a living human being.

Sure, when we see things as a whole, we notice different things about that whole. But does that make it real? Isn't that just us arbitrarily finding patterns and qualities by looking at things in certain ways? Just because we view something a certain way, does that make this configuration somehow "exist" any more than the sum of its parts? It may seem that way, but do we have any evidence that it does?

I guess what I'm saying is that what you observe depends on what "zoom" level you are using. Why would every possible level of zooming exist independently and gain extra qualities above the sum of its parts? Because there may be even more zoom levels, and zoom levels in between... assuming something "extra" gets added each time seems to create a kind of crazy regression which doesn't sit right with me.

I'm just brain storming. I don't know a whole lot about the details of this. I just wonder if our pattern spotting makes us attribute qualities that only exist in our minds. Are these "qualities" just themselves observations of convenience for dealing with things en masse?