Free Will

Note: This is a start, a stub.

This section addresses the impact of theories of consciousness on Free Will—free will defined in the libertarian sense that prior states or laws do not determine some human choices, and that the agent is the ultimate source and genuinely could have done otherwise.

Materialism: unlikely, because the regularities of laws and the closure of the physical world mean that every physical effect has a prior physical cause.

Non-Reductive Physicalism: likely, because top-down causation and/or strong emergence may allow openings for mental causation.

Quantum: likely, due to consciousness leveraging the vast potential and interconnectedness of quantum states.

Information: possibly.

Panpsychisms: likely, because consciousness, along with fundamental physics, is ultimate reality.

Monisms: possibly.

Dualisms: almost certain, because a nonphysical substance operates independently from the laws of physics (which, of course, spotlights dualism’s interaction problem). Idealism: almost certain, because if the mental causes the physical, then physical states cannot constrain mental states.

Anomalous & Altered States: likely, because whatever is enabling those (supposedly) physics-defying events (ESP, NDEs, etc.) is not bound by physical laws.

Challenge: possibly.