[boris]

"That would be the mechanism of "free will" processing input and returning output. We can't see how it works because it's within the "black box" that is the human mind."

A mechanism?!

Do you really mean a mechanism? Because, see, a mechanism has no free-will; it is at best chaotic.

It "processes" input? According to some algorithm? If the processing follows an algorithm, it is not free. If it uses no algorithm, it is random (chaotic). In either case it is not "free".

Now try again, without mechanisms, processing, whatever.

--Boris

[unspun]

It "processes" input? According to some algorithm? If the processing follows an algorithm, it is not free. If it uses no algorithm, it is random (chaotic). In either case it is not "free".

Computer science has become our latest lazy idol in the alchemist's imagination of the hubristic mastery of life. The wild overextension of the effects of man's wannabe mastery of the Universe is very common, when a scientific or noetic study is in its infancy. Remember Frankenstein -- and SciFi stories and movies about virtually any technology, from Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, to "scientologist" L. Ron Hubbard.