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Originally Posted by Tuna
I'm going off of like 1 1/2 hours of sleep today so I may get back to these posts sometime tomorrow
I will ask this of duga though (I think you already believe free will is an illusion, Face, correct me if I'm wrong). Do you think other animals besides humans have free will?
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Do I think it's an illusion? It depends on what you mean by free will. If the requirement of free will is that it needs to be independent of your experiences and genetics, well, then it doesn't exist in that sense.
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Side note from me....
If you want to get really technical, is everything we experience an illusion, since it's all perceived and interpreted by your brain? This fits in with me saying it doesn't really matter if it is an illusion or not (our own free will, or reality as we perceive it) the same thing will happens anyway because our descision has no tangible consequences whether we decide it is or not.
We decide free will is an illusion - and what?
We decide reality itself is an illusion - and what?
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But I still think we can call what we do a "choice" because our choice is what it is. Given two options, then whatever constitutes as ME is what gave an output rejecting one option over another. So nothing else could be responsible for it apart from the entirety of what is........ ME, including genetics, experiences and whatever else that consists of.
So, I think going by that, an animal would need to be able to actually consider (or be aware of) alternative options on some level to be said to have any degree of free will similar to ours, however illusionary it may or may not be.
This being aware of other options opens the avenue to taking actually taking them, which leads to there being a variety in observed responses in a population. This variety in responses is what I think can be said to be the freewill (illusion or actual).
So, in order for an animal to be able to consider options, it cannot be hard-wired, it needs to be able to learn from it's experiences and have it's psychology shaped by it.