"Free Will" Belief/Disbelief Poll

[Anomalocaris]

II think thought and will are governed by neural chemical state of the nervous system, which interacts with sensory and physiological inputs from the body. If one could determine another's neural chemical state in sufficient detail at a given moment, and read the continuous sensory and physiological input from that moment forward, then one could in principle accurately simulate the other person's changing neural chemical state and thus the other person’s thoughts and will. If one has an accurate picture of another person's neural chemical state at one moment, and is able to accurately forecast the other person's sensory input for some period into the future, then one could simulate, or at least define useful bounds for, the other person's will and thought ahead of real time. This is what I meant by will being in principle predictable by another.

I think memories, psychological events and other factors normally thought to influence a person’s behavior does so by influencing the person’s neural chemical state. If one could read another’s neural chemical state at a given moment, one would not need to know per se, or reconstruct, the memories and psychological factors that led to that moment in order to model the person’s will and behavior going forward.

This does not address the tremendous technical difficulties involved in doing this in a way that allows prediction sufficiently far into the future to be generally useful. But I don’t see any fundamental reason why technical difficulties can not eventually be overcome.