Do Humans Have Compulsary Will? Which best describes your take on 'will'?

[Angrboda]

Then we'll just have to agree to disagree.  However where your assertion makes a mystery of psychogony, mine facilitates an explanation: awareness gradually evolved; there was no sudden emergence.

Hmmmm. . . given that evolution happens based on variation or mutation, and given that at some point there was absolutely no mind on the Earth, then how could there not have been sudden emergence?

The effects of variation may be evinced at varying levels of granularity. The idea of a totally new functional part evolving in one step is generally thought to be unlikely. This argument also ignores exaptation, the evolution of a feature for one purpose being pressed into service for another purpose. In short, this is not an argument against a gradual evolution of mind / subjectivity / awareness.

Take a hypothetical scenario. Eye spots are first used to trigger reflexes in the movement of the organism. The eye spot evolves into an eye and is used to detect movement, not just light and dark, in the visual field. A cluster of neurons in the brain gets involved so that the reflexive movement is persistent. The persistence of the movement is reinforced by a feedback loop in the brain re-presenting the image of the stimulus to itself to aid persistence. The eye perception evolves to where it can recognize patterns; each of these patterns stimulates a different movement reflex. The feedback loops get more complex. These feedbacks work by 'strobing' the neurons in the brain associated with activation by signals coming from the eye. Is this not a possible beginnings of awareness and memory, the memories being fixed patterns of feedback from the feedback loops? Is this awareness? Or is it no longer clear where awareness begins and where it leaves off?

I certainly agree that psychogony is a mystery, but evolution doesn't really help us much either.  It's pretty clear to see why the brain evolved, and why people act certain ways; it is much less easy to see why an evolved brain needs to subjectively experience anything.  Are you sure that in this case, it's not just "evolutiondidit" rather than "Goddidit?

The point is not to say "evolutiondidit", but rather to show how it is possible that evolution "couldhavedoneit". The proof still lies in the future, but an immobile obstacle to the puzzle of psychogony has been tentatively removed.