Is free will real?

[Neo-Scholastic]

What's the difference besides one description being subjective, as in felt directly, and conveyed in practical terms, and the other, being non-evaluative, expressed in intricate detail at the level of molecular processes?

Except you aren’t actually describing one system in two different ways. It’s not simply that subjective language is just folk shorthand for brain processes. Subjective language describes conceptual relationships that do not exist in purely objective descriptions of brain states. For example, suppose you could relay every physical operation related to conceiving of a triangle. That story would tell you absolutely nothing about triangles. You cannot map one onto the other without losing something vital.

[The Grand Nudger]

For example, suppose you could relay every physical operation related to conceiving of a triangle.

Okay....imagining it...lol

That story would tell you absolutely nothing about triangles.

You just said that the description was all inclusive...........what's missing? I'm not sure I understand how you could manage to describe every physical operation -snip-.......without saying something about triangles.

[Whateverist]

The really big difference is that, so far, we are the only creatures we've encountered who make self reports of subjective states. Our bodies inhabit space like every other animal as well as plants and minerals. But none of them will tell you in english (or some other human language) what it is like to be them. That doesn't mean they have no such experience. There is way too much similarity in wiring to believe that other mammals don't feel much of what we do, they just don't self describe their experience in a manner we can decipher.

There is every reason to think that the nature of what we experience is an emergent property for creatures such as ourselves. It is more economical to believe that the subjective bits which can't directly be mapped to an objective process are nonetheless produced by the material being who reports them. If consciousness were really something disconnected to bodies which bodies had to receive from somewhere else .. that would require extravagant amounts of explaining.

[The Grand Nudger]

There is way too much similarity in wiring to believe that other mammals don't feel much of what we do, they just don't self describe their experience in a manner we can decipher.

No reason to limit it to mammals or wiring. That's all implementation level stuff. Two entirely dissimilar machines can achieve an identical effects. Two identical machines can achieve entirely dissimilar effects.

[Whateverist]

That's true. I thought I'd start with the low lying fruit before arguing for worms and lettuce.

[Neo-Scholastic]

...or thermostats.