A billionaire can always dream!
What do you think is purely my own subjective opinion, and why do you think it is illogical? Where is the contradiction?
Refusing to accept an assumption of determinism isn’t a subjective opinion, and isn’t illogical either. I am just rejecting the premise of your thought experiment, for very obvious reasons. Thought experiments only work if the people they are aimed at agree with the premises.
This one from another thread is pertinent:
You seem allergic to discussion and hypotheticals. You want everyone to line up in a nice little row behind whatever conclusions you are have arrived already on all of our behalf. This is very low Phi. By contrast, introducing a hypothetical thought experiment to provoke discussion is high Phi.
The idea of forum like this is not to get everyone straightaway to whatever the correct answer is (if there even is such a thing for highly complex matters). It’s to encourage everyone to process ideas in their own ways. If you don’t like some discussion prompt or another, you are very free to just ignore it! Let others have their own fun.
I have never asked anybody to line up behind me just because I said so. I always offer scientific or logical justification for everything I am saying.
And I am most certainly not allergic to discussion or hypotheticals. Justin started a thread involving a thought experiment, and it basically acts as an analytical argument. But if so, it doesn’t demonstrate what he thinks it does. He is trying to convince people that free will can’t exist, but this argument assumes its conclusion as a premise. All I have done is point that out, which is exactly how analytical philosophy is supposed to work.
Anybody is entirely free to attempt to do the same to 2PC.
If you post a thought experiment, then you are inviting people to respond to it.
If we imagine it is possible to completely control a brain from the outside then we are imagining a situation where determinism must be true. Therefore the conclusion that free will doesn’t exist is not of any interest – anybody who believes in free will will just reject the premise. Useful thought experiments start with premises the target audience can’t easily reject.
Actually you positioned it like it was impossible for neuroscience to do this. I asked you, after providing evidence:
“Where is the hard limit in neuroscience to say it is impossible to completely control what goes on in the brain from outside?”
You didn’t even engage this. You seem to miss the point each time you try.
As for saying that even imagining the scenario automatically destroys free will - how? You could have fallen back on quantum uncertainty. Or invoked some other field. But doing this makes it difficult for your own theory, hence the resistance.
I’m not fond of roundabouts - they make me nauseous. Circular debate where one side neither engages with the core principles or addresses any point made does the same.
I absolutely engaged with it. I agreed with it: there is no hard limit in neuroscience which forbids this. Neuroscience can’t answer this question (because it is metaphysical: we are talking about free will).
And I am not “missing the point”. You are. You have offered a thought experiment which assumes there is no such thing as free will (because determinism must be true for the scientist be in to complete control), and then asked “where is the subject’s free will”? And the answer is: the subject doesn’t have any free will, but this doesn’t tell us very much, because that conclusion was assumed in the premises.
This is exactly how analytical philosophy is supposed to work.
I didn’t say it “destroys” free will. I said it that the scenario assumes there is no such thing. If free will exists then it would be impossible for the scientist to have complete control over what goes on in the subject’s brain.
I am neither going round in circles, nor refusing to engage. All I am doing is pointing out that your imagined scenario assumes there is no free will. If you disagree with that, then just explain why you disagree.
Think about it like this: If the scientist can have total control over what is going on in the subject’s brain, how can free will exist? What possible freedom can the subject have?
I just pasted the full text above into Deepseek, and said it was a thought experiment posted on a forum. Here is its response:
This is a sharp thought experiment that targets the relationship between external control and subjective experience.
Let me break it down:
- The setup
- Subject in stasis → no body movement, no independent sensory input from the real world.
- Neural interface can create any mental content (feelings, thoughts, perceptions, reasoning).
- Scientist has complete control of the interface.
- What “free will” usually means
- Ability to choose among alternatives based on one’s own desires, reasoning, or values.
- In a normal case, even if external factors influence you, your choice is still yours if the decision-making process is internal and not coerced at the moment of choice.
- Why this case threatens free will
- The scientist doesn’t just influence the subject; they directly create every thought and desire the subject experiences.
- If the subject “decides” to raise their hand in the simulation, that decision was written by the scientist’s programming of the neural interface.
- The subject feels it as their own free choice, but the causal chain for that choice goes: scientist’s intent → interface → subject’s brain state → subjective experience of choosing.
- Possible compatibilist view
- A compatibilist might say: free will is about acting according to your own psychological states without external constraint at the time of action. The subject is acting according to their (simulated) desires.
- But the problem: those desires were not generated by the subject’s prior self or independent learning; they were injected. The subject is a passive receiver of a script.
- Conclusion of the thought experiment
- The subject has no free will in the libertarian sense (ability to do otherwise given the exact same past and laws of nature) because every mental state is determined by the scientist’s control.
- Even in a compatibilist sense, most philosophers would say free will is absent because the normal relationship between the agent’s character and choices is severed — the scientist is the true author of every “choice.”
- The subject only has the illusion of free will.
So the short answer: Nowhere — the subject has no free will in this experiment. Their subjective sense of free choice is entirely fabricated by the scientist.
This is effectively the exact same answer I just gave you.
What were you hoping to demonstrate with the thought experiment?
That’s not really what the OP said. The only person assuming “no free will” in this thread is you. You can draw that implication from the OP if you wish, but please understand, others may see it differently. (Diversity of opinion is one way “free will” manifests in practice!)
In the OP, what the scientist has control over is injecting perceptions and thoughts into the brain. Essentially, it’s very high-tech brainwashing. It’s like a Black Mirror episode, or the Matrix film series, of the sort of thing Elon Musk would like to impose on society for real, if given the opportunity. But even if science figures out how to spam our brain 24x7 with such injected content, it’s not clear at all such a process would reach our core identity as spiritual beings or preclude our discernment of the process (and eventual liberation from it). In effect, this thought experiment is a high-tech version of Plato’s cave.
No. This is not how analytical philosophy works, which is why when I posted the thought experiment into Deepseek, it said the same thing. The thought experiment is very clear: it specifies that the scientist has total control over the subject’s brain. This is not interpretation, and there is no scope for “seeing it differently”. It’s a logical connection: the only way the scientist can have total control is if determinism is true. If libertarian free will exists then it is impossible for the scientist to have full control.
If you think that the scientist can have full control and the subject can have free will then you think self-contradictory things, which is the one thing analytical philosophy does not permit.
EDIT: I am talking about libertarian free will here. Compatibilist free will is something else entirely, but it too is probably ruled out by the conditions of this experiment.
But even if science figures out how to spam our brain 24x7 with such injected content, it’s not clear at all such a process would reach our core identity as spiritual beings
Exactly! This is a different way of expressing exactly the same point I have been making.
This is getting more aligned with an actual debate. I remind you that your original stance was ‘this is impossible’, and you positioned that in a way as if it came from neuroscience.
Since you’re now engaging in a more equitable manner, let me approach the issue from a different angle.
Imagine someone, let’s call them Rita. Let’s say Rita is born with a real neurological condition. For example, congenital amusia. Due to differences in the way her brain processes sound, she cannot perceive certain musical distinctions that most people can. She does not choose this. She cannot simply decide to hear what her nervous system is incapable of representing. Does Rita have free will in that specific area?
Most people would say no. Her limitation is a consequence of how her brain is structured.
Now suppose that, at age twenty, Rita experiences a rare neurological event. There are documented cases of brain injury or neurological change producing new perceptual or cognitive abilities. After the event, Rita can suddenly perceive distinctions she never could before.
Again, did Rita choose this change? Did she choose the accident, the neural rewiring, or the new way her brain processes information?
Clearly not. Yet her thoughts, perceptions, preferences, and decisions are now different because her brain is different. This raises a question that I think cuts deeper than the scientist thought experiment.
At conception, Rita did not choose her genes. In the womb, she did not choose her development. At birth, she did not choose her brain. As a child, she did not choose the experiences that shaped that brain. At twenty, she did not choose the event that altered it.
So where exactly does free will enter the picture?
If it is absent at conception and absent at birth, is there some precise moment later when it suddenly appears? If so, when? Why then rather than one second earlier? What is the mechanism?
And if free will does not exist before that moment, how does it emerge from a chain of causes that lacked it?
The same question applies in reverse. When Rita dies, where does her free will go?
Does it vanish when the heart stops? People can be revived after cardiac arrest. Does it vanish at brain death? If so, then free will seems entirely dependent upon the physical state of the brain. And if it is entirely dependent upon the physical state of the brain, in what meaningful sense is it independent of that state?
My point is not that this proves determinism. Rather, it seems to me that anyone proposing a genuinely free, uncaused chooser has to explain where that chooser comes from, when it arrives, how it interacts with the brain, and where it goes when the brain ceases functioning. Your theory of consciousness has no cogent explanation for this.
The scientist thought experiment was intended to probe the limits of external influence. This one probes something more fundamental: where, in the causal history of a human being, does this mysterious free will actually enter the chain…?
Tell me where is Rita’s free will, when did it arise, and when did it end…?
Let’s read the OP:
“Let us imagine a scientist places a subject into stasis, connected to a neural interface. This interface is able to interact with the subject’s brain to the extent that it can create feelings, sensations, perceptions and even higher thought processes. The scientist has complete control of this.”
In the third sentence, the word “this” refers back to the phrase in the second sentence, “interface is able to interact with the subject’s brain to the extent that it can create feelings, sensations, perceptions and even higher thought processes”. This is, the scientist has complete control over a process through which content can be injected. At no point does the thought experiment state that the scientist has complete control over the subject’s “brain”. Moveover, none of this has any necessary implications for mind-body relationships nor for spiritually derived notions like the soul. Can science manipulate brain content? Of course! It happens all the time. Does this obviate free will? Not in any obvious way.
Oh no I didn’t. What I said was this:
I don’t think it would work. I think it is physically/metaphysically impossible.
No mention of neuroscience, and my stance was I THINK this is impossible. You are now claiming I said or implied something which existed only in your own mind, not in what I actually said.
Imagine someone, let’s call them Rita. Let’s say Rita is born with a real neurological condition. For example, congenital amusia. Due to differences in the way her brain processes sound, she cannot perceive certain musical distinctions that most people can. She does not choose this. She cannot simply decide to hear what her nervous system is incapable of representing. Does Rita have free will in that specific area?
That is a fundamental misunderstanding of what “free will” means. A very common one. Free will doesn’t mean you get to choose everything – the identity of your parents, or which religion you were brought up in, or your genes and biology.
Most people would say no. Her limitation is a consequence of how her brain is structured.
Anybody who understands what “free will” means in philosophy would say what I just said. Free will is the ability to make real choices, not the ability to determine which choices are available.
At conception, Rita did not choose her genes. In the womb, she did not choose her development. At birth, she did not choose her brain. As a child, she did not choose the experiences that shaped that brain. At twenty, she did not choose the event that altered it.
All true, but nothing to do with the debate about free will.
So where exactly does free will enter the picture?
Every moment she is conscious. Determinists claim that all her conscious decisions are illusory, because the laws of physics are determining everything she does. Libertarians believe that she is continually making decisions which are not fully determined by those laws.
If it is absent at conception and absent at birth, is there some precise moment later when it suddenly appears? If so, when?
When she becomes conscious, which is probably shortly before birth.
What is the mechanism?
This is a very important question, and historically it has caused a lot of problems for libertarians. In 2PC, the mechanism is defined by the Embodiment Inconsistency Theorem. It happens when the subject makes incompatible non-computable valuations regarding different possible futures. Put simply, we cannot prefer contradictory futures – we cannot prefer to marry Alice and prefer to marry Bob, and the moment we commit to one or the other then the wavefunction collapses according to our valuations.
And if free will does not exist before that moment, how does it emerge from a chain of causes that lacked it?
It doesn’t. It is an entirely different sort of causality. Collapse is not determined by the unitary evolutiuon of the wavefunction. There is no consensus in physics as to what is happening. In MWI, every possible outcome happens in branching timelines, which is exactly why MWI is incompatible with free will.
The same question applies in reverse. When Rita dies, where does her free will go?
The same place her consciousness goes: nowhere.
Does it vanish when the heart stops?
No. It vanishes when she ceases to be conscious.
If so, then free will seems entirely dependent upon the physical state of the brain. And if it is entirely dependent upon the physical state of the brain, in what meaningful sense is it independent of that state?
It is independent of that state because when we are conscious we are making non-computable valuations. This argument is taken directly from Penrose.
My point is not that this proves determinism. Rather, it seems to me that anyone proposing a genuinely free, uncaused chooser has to explain where that chooser comes from, when it arrives, how it interacts with the brain, and where it goes when the brain ceases functioning. Your theory of consciousness has no cogent explanation for this.
On the contrary, this is the core mechanism in my theory. It is the thing that was missing in The Real Paths to Ecocivilisation, but which I figured out shortly after it was published, which is why I then wrote another book. The whole of Chapter 13 is about it.
AI summary of the explanation in 2PC:
Free Will in Two-Phase Cosmology: A Summary
Free will in 2PC is neither illusion (as in hard determinism) nor a mysterious exception to physics (as in libertarianism), nor a compatibilist redefinition. It is a structural feature of reality itself – the mechanism whereby conscious agents locally instantiate the cosmos by resolving Phase 1 possibilities into Phase 2 actuality.
The Core Claim
“Free will is the hinge of reality: the point at which possibility meets value, and value becomes part of the lived unfolding of the world.” (Ch.12)
The Mechanism in Five Steps
1. Phase 1 contains all possibilities, not yet actual
In the primordial state (Phase 1), every physically possible future exists in superposition. No collapse has occurred. There is no time, no “now”, no fact of the matter about which future will happen. All possibilities are real in the mathematical sense (they exist in the Pythagorean ensemble) but none are actual .
2. The Embodiment Threshold (ET) is reached
A physical system (a brain) develops a unified, transparent self-model – a representational “I” that:
- Maintains a single, indivisible perspective across time
- Models multiple possible futures for itself
- Assigns valuations (preferences, values, meaning) to those futures
- Cannot be split across incompatible futures without contradiction
3. Incompatible valuations force collapse (EIT)
When the system assigns incompatible valuations to mutually exclusive future continuations – e.g., “I want outcome A” and “I want outcome B” where A and B cannot both happen for the same subject – a logical contradiction arises. A single “I” cannot coherently extend across both branches.
The Embodiment Inconsistency Theorem (EIT) states that when this contradiction occurs, continued unitary evolution (Phase 1 superposition) becomes impossible. Collapse is forced – not by a physical mechanism, but by the need for representational coherence.
4. Collapse selects one future as actual
The system collapses into one of the possible futures. Which future? The one that minimises representational inconsistency given the system’s valuations, predictions, attention, and coherence constraints. This is not random (though randomness may be involved at the quantum level) and not deterministic (valuations are non-computable). It is choice – the subject’s valuations actively bias which branch becomes real.
5. The storm of micro-collapses sustains agency
Consciousness is not a single collapse event but a continuous storm of micro-collapses across the specious present (the felt “now” of about 1-3 seconds). Each micro-collapse is a tiny resolution of possibility into actuality. Attention and will modulate the pattern, timing, and weighting of these micro-collapses, shaping the trajectory of experience.
What Free Will Is (and Is Not) in 2PC
Is NOT IS A violation of physical law A structural requirement of coherent selfhood Randomness or indeterminism The resolution of representational inconsistency Compatibilist redefinition (“freedom = absence of external constraint”) Genuine origination: the subject co-creates which branch becomes actual An illusion produced by the brain The mechanism whereby Phase 1 becomes Phase 2 Located in a nonphysical “soul” Instantiated in a physical brain that has crossed the ET
Relation to Libet Experiments
Libet-style findings (neural precursors before conscious intention) are often taken to disprove free will. In 2PC, they are reinterpreted:
- Readiness potentials reflect the gradual accumulation of correlated neural activity – the preparation of possibilities in Phase 1
- Conscious influence is distributed and time-integrated across the specious present, not a punctate “last second” command
- The felt moment of intention emerges from the accumulation of micro-collapse modulations
- Early neural activity does not determine the outcome; it structures the possibility space from which collapse selects
“Libet-type findings do not undermine free will. They reveal the preparatory dynamics through which possibilities are structured prior to embodiment. Consciousness is not a passive observer arriving too late; it is the selective process by which events take form.” (Ch.12)
Relation to Conway-Kochen Free Will Theorem
The Free Will Theorem (FWT) shows that if experimenters have free will (choices not determined by the past), then particles have free will (outcomes not determined by the past) – but it does not explain where free will comes from.
2PC provides the missing explanation via the Embodiment Free Will Theorem (FWT-ET) :
Axiom Meaning SELF A representational “I” exists capable of forming valuations over multiple possible futures VALUE These valuations are not deterministic functions of the past COHERENCE A single “I” cannot be coherently split across incompatible valuations Conclusion : When these axioms hold, collapse must occur. The “freedom” of particles is the microphysical signature of the subject’s collapse. Agentic freedom and microphysical indeterminacy are two aspects of the same ontological event .
The Two Modes of Participation
Mode Description Mechanism Bodily participation Shaping reality directly through neural pathways, muscles, motor commands. Tight coupling of will and matter. The body is where valuation meets action most directly. Cosmic participation Assigning valuations about the wider state of the world beyond the body. Preferences that extend into the Phase 1 field of possibilities. Each agent exerts a “tilt” on how broader possibilities are realised.
Competition Resolved Collapse (CRC)
When multiple agents have incompatible valuations over the same physical degrees of freedom:
- Their micro-collapse processes become entangled
- The realised outcome is the one that minimises representational inconsistency across the entire network of agents
- This is not a vote or negotiation – it is the logical residue of what multiple perspectives can coherently sustain together
- No single agent unilaterally determines the outcome; but each agent’s valuations contribute to the constraint
Thus: Free will is real, but not absolute . Your choices matter, but they are co-constrained by the choices of other conscious beings with whom you share reality.
In One Sentence
Free will in 2PC is the capacity of a unified, valuative self to resolve representational inconsistency by collapsing one possible future into actuality, thereby co-creating the embodied cosmos from moment to moment.
If so, then the subject can still have free will.
Moveover, none of this has any necessary implications for mind-body relationships nor for spiritually derived notions like the soul. Can science manipulate brain content? Of course! It happens all the time. Does this obviate free will? Not in any obvious way.
I agree.
Am I talking to two people here with the same name?
Someone called GeoffDann at post 13 of this thread noted ‘nothing in neuroscience justifies that this is possible’.
This is either two people with the same name debating, bad faith communication or serious self-contradiction and/or memory loss.
You need to hold account to what you say. When I proved that studies in neuroscience showed it was eminently possible, and asked you to show me the limit established in neuroscience that made it impossible, you walked back. Now it’s a return to the ‘I didn’t even say that to start with’ tactic that also reminds me of the mammalian consciousness issue.
I don’t know if you’re way of thinking is like ‘Here I am describing a red ball’ and someone comes in describing a round object, yet you have no ability to connect the two, or if it’s deliberate obfuscation and disagreeability.
I was orientating the argument in a progressive manner and you whip it back to the same objectionable, fragmented tautology.
You replace free will with consciousness, simply kicking the ball away without addressing the points.
If I ask an AI model to explain the consistencies in Star Trek it doesn’t make Star Trek real.
Please explain exactly what you think the contradiction is. Which two statements have I made which you think contradict each other?
You need to hold account to what you say. When I proved that studies in neuroscience showed it was eminently possible, and asked you to show me the limit established in neuroscience that made it impossible, you walked back. Now it’s a return to the ‘I didn’t even say that to start with’ tactic that also reminds me of the mammalian consciousness issue.
I did not “walk back” at any point. I have been consistently defending the same position all the way through this thread. The neuroscientific studies you are citing only establish that it is possible to influence what is going on in a brain from outside, but your claim is much stronger: that it is possible to COMPLETELY control it. I already explained that this word “completely” is crucial to your argument, and not supported by any science. Same position all the way through.
If the scientist has complete control, then there can be no free will. If the scientist only has partial control, then free will is possible. Which bit are you disagreeing with?
You replace free will with consciousness, simply kicking the ball away without addressing the points.
In 2PC, free will, consciousness and wavefunction collapse are three different names for the same metaphysical process: the transition between Phase 1 and Phase 2.
Star Trek isn’t a metaphysical theory which integrates consciousness, QM and cosmology.
Tell that to a Trekkie 
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I can imagine you in the pre-flight epoch. Aviation theory is established, the principles show how it’s possible to fly, but because it hasn’t shown how it’s possible to completely control a plane, that means the whole idea must be rejected. And even now, we can’t completely control planes.
Look, this is endlessly circling around, I don’t have more time for it. You are unwilling to engage with this thought experiment, or with the Rita example, and presumably any other that may risk challenging your theory. I will respectfully engage with others more open to real debate.