The hard problem of consciousness - Attempting to solve the mind's biggest mystery

[Hellbound Hellhound]

"I think, therefore I am", once proclaimed philosopher René Descartes. It is this simple proposition that would later become the standard rejoinder to those who express doubts about their own existence, but it does raise a difficult philosophical question: why is it that we're aware?

If thought resides within the brain, and the brain is nothing but an amalgamation of physical matter which reacts to the rest of the world in an entirely mechanical fashion, then it would seem that consciousness serves no purpose. Why are we not instead like robots: equipped with the programming to do all of the things we do, but without the ability to consciously experience any of it?

Descartes himself addressed this problem by suggesting that the body and the mind are two separate entities, and that the mind transcends the physical world, but this suggestion perhaps raises more questions than it answers, and has often been criticized on empirical grounds. Nevertheless, the conundrum still persists: why is it that we're aware?

Cognitive scientist David Chalmers has called this the "hard problem of consciousness", and has suggested that neuroscientists have two major challenges to overcome if they are to unlock the mysteries of the mind:

• The first challenge is to solve the "easy" problems, which Chalmers identifies as the questions surrounding which parts of the brain physically interact to produce a particular feeling or behavior (what causes people to experience love? For example). Though these are still difficult questions, Chalmers argues that they are relatively easy, because they should have a physical cause in the brain which could be identified, and possibly even manipulated (ethical objections not withstanding).
• The second challenge is to solve the "hard" problem, which is to answer perhaps the most fundamental question of all: what is the nature of our conscious experience, and what is it's relationship to the physical world?

It is this "hard problem" which I find the most interesting, and there are several thought experiments which have resulted from it:

Philosophical zombies

Going back to something I touched upon earlier. Suppose you had someone who was physically and functionally indistinguishable from a typical person: they have a life, a job, relationships, they respond, both positively and negatively, to external stimuli, etc. You ask this person if they are conscious, and they answer with "yes", however, they are not telling the truth. In reality, they are a "zombie", with all of the abilities of you and I, but with no conscious experience whatsoever.

The question we are faced with here is whether or not someone such as this could exist in our world, and if so, what would the implications of this be? Some have argued that the philosophical zombie problem demonstrates that consciousness would not be explainable by purely physical means, but scholars remain divided on the possibility of philosophical zombies. Some have argued that they are conceivable, but impossible, while others have dismissed them on physical grounds, arguing that the very presence of awareness demonstrates that the existence of a physical brain necessarily produces awareness.

The China brain

On perhaps the other end of the spectrum, another thought experiment this problem presents is that of the China brain. Suppose the Chinese government gave every Chinese citizen a walkie-talkie, and ordered them all to configure themselves into the shape of a neural network similar to that of the human brain. By sending transmissions to one another in the manner of neurons, would this "brain" achieve consciousness, and make the nation of China a sentient being? Daniel Dennett has argued that it would, while fellow philosopher Ned Block, has argued that it wouldn't.

Again, scholars remain divided.

Possible solutions to the hard problem of consciousness:

User illusion

Some have argued that consciousness is merely an illusion created by the brain, though this is perhaps begging the question of what, exactly, it is supposed to be an illusion to? I am unhappy with this suggestion for precisely this reason, because it doesn't seem to me that you can "illude" something which isn't already aware in the first place, and thus, the central question would seem to remain unanswered.

Panpsychism

Another possible answer to the hard problem of consciousness is to be found in panpsychism: the belief that consciousness is a ubiquitous feature of reality. Under this view, all matter is conscious, and our brains are merely one of it's many configurations. I have no idea if this could ever stand up to any scrutiny, but it is pretty trippy nonetheless.

Please discuss.

 

[Lemmingwise]

why is it that we're aware?

If thought resides within the brain, and the brain is nothing but an amalgamation of physical matter which reacts to the rest of the world in an entirely mechanical fashion, then it would seem that consciousness serves no purpose. Why are we not instead like robots: equipped with the programming to do all of the things we do, but without the ability to consciously experience any of it?

Barring any spiritual explanations, because it is evolutionarily advantageous.

To not just be robot, but to also be programmer. To spend idle time and surplus energy planning things, coordinating with others and staying a step ahead of both extra species competitors and dangers (such as diseases), but also interspecies competition, because those with creativity and intelligence have an advantage over those that don't.

Much like an eye wasn't formed at once, but started with a mutation that had some light sensitivity, there would likely have been a mutation that gave the slightest sense of what we call consciousness.

Much of our actions are that of a moist machine. We are quickest to act on habit and instinct, then emotion and it's only after that that our conscient mind comes.

As for the untestability of the zombie humans, it is simply a lack of being able to test. We may not be able to say for certain who has some consciousness and who doesn't, but we can make some educated guesses.

And it's pretty likely that some people have more of it than others.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

I'm by no means an expert on this, but it's something I've given a lot of thought. I'm a religious man, but as far of the actual MECHANISM of consciousness, I don't think ANY current proposal is adequate, religious or otherwise. So let me take these in order and add one more.

Philosophical zombies
Something like this could exist in theory. See, the Chinese Room experiment. But it's not an explanation for ME. I know that I'm conscious. I assume that the person reading this knows that they're conscious. So even if you postulate that every OTHER single living being is a philosophical zombie... you're still left with the problem of consciousness.

The China brain
I have no particular problem with the view that the brain, as a physical construct, is basically a modular system. I don't find it shocking or even surprising. But that doesn't explain QUALIA. Evolution may explain the WHY, but not the HOW.

We all know what it's like to be conscious. We know how things taste, for example. And while a complex system of interwoven parts is a fair enough explanation for how the human brain works at a physical level, it doesn't get you one inch closer to explaining how a physical object can generate self-evidently non-physical properties. Human behavior, responses, reactions to external stimuli, maybe someday those will all be explained in purely material terms. I'm skeptical of that, but let's say it happens. Doesn't help here. Consciousness ITSELF is, straightforwardly, not a material thing. So what mechanism could the physical brain employ to create something that isn't physical?

User illusion
Frankly I find this one absolutely baffling, and as far as I know Dennett still holds this view. I have never seen an allegedly scientific theory so resolutely determined to change the facts to fit the theory. We are conscious. Period. I could be a brain in a vat having scientists feeding me false data. I can't absolutely prove that's not the case. But I'd still be conscious. And even an illusion of consciousness is STILL consciousness. Being fooled requires perception.

Panpsychism
This is growing in popularity, but while I don't think it's absolutely crazy, I'm not convinced. It basically proposes (as I understand it) that the physical universe, atoms and energy are pregnant with "consciousness stuff". Get enough of it together in the right arrangement, and boom, consciousness. Well... okay. That's a decent stab at the qualitative gap between consciousness and unconsciousness, but it just raises further questions. How does this work? In what sense do the water molecules in my body contain the potential for consciousness? How is it that certain arrangements of potentially conscious matter lead to actual consciousness, but others don't? Like I say, I don't absolutely rule this out, but its adherents have some 'splainin' to do.

Substance Dualism
This view has largely fallen out of favor and I don't hold it myself, but I think it's at least worth mentioning. This is the Cartesian view that we have an immaterial soul made out of some kind of "soul stuff" which is the "real us". The ghost in the machine. Now while I don't think that the interaction problem is as serious as people say, it's just one of those things where there's extremely limited evidence for or against it. At best, you could remove a "soul" as a requirement for the explanation, but you couldn't actually disprove it. And you couldn't really prove it either.

I'm completely agnostic on the existence of any kind of immaterial soul. It may be a problem for some religions, but by no means all. Christianity believes that the first man was created as a body, and God said that it was good. So why should it be a problem that we're "only" a body?

So... what is consciousness? I have no fucking idea, and anybody who says they do is trying to sell you something.

 

[Rev]

The China brain is probably the best explanation, I mean that's actually how ants work.
I mean, our bodies are made of millions of cells. Cells eat, reproduce, die, and even communicate with other cells. So by our understanding of what life is, we could say cells are living organisms of their own. Millions of simple organisms (cells) make up a greater organism (what we think of as the self)
I believe this is called emergence, basically when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Going by this logic I guess we can say consciousness is a network

 

[Exigent Circumcisions]

The China brain is probably the best explanation, I mean that's actually how ants work.
I mean, our bodies are made of millions of cells. Cells eat, reproduce, die, and even communicate with other cells. So by our understanding of what life is, we could say cells are living organisms of their own. Millions of simple organisms (cells) make up a greater organism (what we think of as the self)
I believe this is called emergence, basically when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Going by this logic I guess we can say consciousness is a network

But computers aren't conscious, despite being designed in a (limited but) similar manner.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

But computers aren't conscious, despite being designed in a (limited but) similar manner.

We don't know that. They're definitely not conscious now, but they could be someday. Now I actually tend to think you're right and that it's not possible (again, mainly due to the Chinese Room problem), but there's no way to conclusively prove or disprove it, especially when consciousness itself is so poorly understood.

 

[Y2K Baby]

Delete Deep Thoughts.

 

[Exigent Circumcisions]

Delete Deep Thoughts.

Unpoop your pants.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

The hard problem is my argument for the existence of the soul. It's not real deep. It's just that I reckon that, in order to not be a p-zombie, because I KNOW that I experience qualia, I must have some non-physical component to my existence that I call a soul, though I don't really see a difference between soul and consciousness, and the soul can potentially be acted on or created by physical forces and isn't necessarily immortal.

Then, I reason that it is sensible to assume that things that are alike in outward ways are alike in inward ways. If I have no specific reason to assume something is different when it is otherwise like, I assume it is like. So, because I exhibit the behaviors of "human" and I experience qualia, I assume other people experience qualia, and I consider the experience of qualia to be the soul.

But anyways, you cannot make any sort of convincing argument that the hard problem of consciousness/qualia can be explained away through just nature, because why? You've got to convince me that there is some actual PHYSICAL reason why I'm not a p-zombie, which is impossible.

The China brain
I have no particular problem with the view that the brain, as a physical construct, is basically a modular system. I don't find it shocking or even surprising. But that doesn't explain QUALIA. Evolution may explain the WHY, but not the HOW.

We all know what it's like to be conscious. We know how things taste, for example. And while a complex system of interwoven parts is a fair enough explanation for how the human brain works at a physical level, it doesn't get you one inch closer to explaining how a physical object can generate self-evidently non-physical properties. Human behavior, responses, reactions to external stimuli, maybe someday those will all be explained in purely material terms. I'm skeptical of that, but let's say it happens. Doesn't help here. Consciousness ITSELF is, straightforwardly, not a material thing. So what mechanism could the physical brain employ to create something that isn't physical?

Substance Dualism
This view has largely fallen out of favor and I don't hold it myself, but I think it's at least worth mentioning. This is the Cartesian view that we have an immaterial soul made out of some kind of "soul stuff" which is the "real us". The ghost in the machine. Now while I don't think that the interaction problem is as serious as people say, it's just one of those things where there's extremely limited evidence for or against it. At best, you could remove a "soul" as a requirement for the explanation, but you couldn't actually disprove it. And you couldn't really prove it either.

I'm completely agnostic on the existence of any kind of immaterial soul. It may be a problem for some religions, but by no means all. Christianity believes that the first man was created as a body, and God said that it was good. So why should it be a problem that we're "only" a body?

So... what is consciousness? I have no fucking idea, and anybody who says they do is trying to sell you something.

Thank you for mentioning the China Brain; I had thought about that many times but never knew of a name for the idea. It had occurred to me, one day, that the cells show so much autonomy that they can be thought of as animals unto themselves existing in a strictly confined society. Do they have any qualia? Do they experience thought? And, analogously, do collections of humans or other organism, acting in concert, experience qualia? That is, that something like a community, or nation, could be thought of as a consciousness? Does it even make sense to think of consciousness in terms of anything other than an individual human experience?

I'm inclined to say that souls capable of qualia exist naturally in nature and, for whatever reason, generally/always experience qualia through their physical bodies. I think of souls as being able to reproduce from themselves, not necessarily in a way that involves any loss of "size," though maybe in some way a loss of information, like that creating a soul removes the ability to obtain qualia from the physical body the soul is attached to. God basically creates souls from Itself. In Mormonism, which I don't believe in but which has my favorite cosmology out of any religion, souls have a sex and sexually reproduce, but there is no explanation given of where reality ultimately originates from, whether it's some sort of original Male and Female, or an original sexless God, or if it's infinitely recursive.

 

[snailslime]

can i prove my consciousness to you? for all you know, i could be a robot designed to look and behave just like a human.

i'm religious so i believe in souls, and that the body is just a shell for our souls/our brains are like antennas that pick up a radio signal of consciousness. i think the idea of p-zombies makes for a good sci-fi plot but not much else. if consciousness isn't a biological mechanism then why don't i remember being a baby? because a section of my brain (the hippocampus) wasn't developed yet. if our brains have nothing to do with consciousness then there is no reason why i would rely on my hippocampus to remember things. i also don't see why anesthesia would work the same on all mammals if our brains had nothing to do with consciousness.

i think consciousness is like fire. our ancestors thought of fire as an extremely arcane enigma, but now we know how it works. i'd even wager that the "hard problem of consciousness" is close to being solved in the field of neuroscience.

 

[Rev]

But computers aren't conscious, despite being designed in a (limited but) similar manner.

One big difference is that computers are pretty simple compared to a human brain and they aren't truly intelligent in the fact that they cannot learn/evolve without human intervention. Also, I wouldn't really consider it a network, its a machine.
The internet, however, is a network and would be a better comparison for consiousness.

One of my favorite theories of consiousness goes as such-
The common materialistic view is that consciousness is generated in the brain and it away when the brain dies. But maybe the brain doesn't generate consciousness but instead acts as a receptor or antenna and "tunes into" consciousness like a radio tunes into a broadcast . So when we die, consciousness doesn't go away, we just lose the connection. This view could explain ghosts and the afterlife, the body is gone but the broadcast is still live,

idk if that's actually true I just think its a neat theory.

 

[Just wandering]

I don't like those debate because it treat consciousness as something ethreal and special and not as the natural result of our own neural system ''understanding'' the world. It mean that animal like cat, bird and even simplier(intellectually speaking) like frog are technically conscious of it surrounding. It more debatable when the neural system is extremly basic like a neural net
A more interesting question would be: are computer conscious?
Some proposed the turing test wild be good test for that. Opponent used the chinese room allegory to disprove it.
In fact the chinese room you can theoretically trick the non chinese speaker write word salad, this is what happen with clever bot(in the first round he sound normal but the longer you chat with him the more chance he will say very weird shit)
the entity behind it is not really conscious it doesn't ''undertand'' what it say or do. It only follow a imput/output protocol like a bacterium
Understanding structural rule rather than meaning and concept have it flaw; it can be easily tricked to say word salad because it don't understand meaning it can say structuraly correct sentence but completely absurd in meaning*

*This is just the exemple of chat program and the flaw of the turing test, but other form of AI(like pattern recognition) seem to have similar flaw. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03013-5

 

[MrBlueSocks]

Barring any spiritual explanations, because it is evolutionarily advantageous.

To not just be robot, but to also be programmer. To spend idle time and surplus energy planning things, coordinating with others and staying a step ahead of both extra species competitors and dangers (such as diseases), but also interspecies competition, because those with creativity and intelligence have an advantage over those that don't.

Much like an eye wasn't formed at once, but started with a mutation that had some light sensitivity, there would likely have been a mutation that gave the slightest sense of what we call consciousness.

Much of our actions are that of a moist machine. We are quickest to act on habit and instinct, then emotion and it's only after that that our conscient mind comes.

As for the untestability of the zombie humans, it is simply a lack of being able to test. We may not be able to say for certain who has some consciousness and who doesn't, but we can make some educated guesses.

And it's pretty likely that some people have more of it than others.

It doesn't have to be evolutionarily advantageous. It could be a meaningless side effect of a sufficiently advanced brain. As long as it isn't a hindrance.
This isn't my original idea, I'm sure I read it somewhere (probably Dennett) : Human minds evolved as pattern matching & analysis machines. As they got better, they included more details in their models. Including modelling that other members of our species were intelligent thinking beings. Eventually the model also includes itself in the model. Full feedback. That's consciousness.

You're not giving the P-Zombies enough credit. They can be fully intelligent , planning, exhibiting all the signs of emotion. They just aren't aware internally. But they'll say they are . You can't tell from the outside.

Consciousness as an illusion is interesting. I think there's experiments that show we don't actually consciously make decisions. We just think we do. They can show that the background processes of the brain started the wheels in motion to perform some action before the conscious brain thinks it made that decision. Your consciousness isn't doing anything at all, it's just a spectator along for the ride on the back of a P-zombie. It's just a logging thread for the brain .


It is an interesting topic, but it seems closer to stoner philosophy than science. Severe lack of testability on most of the 'theories' . Apart from the timing stuff I just mentioned above.

Probably shouldn't be trying to reply to this thread at 1:30am ...

 

[kūhaku]

This in an interesting ted talk in my opinion. If you don’t agree with his conclusions that’s fine but he brings up some good questions at the least. And I think he’s absolutely right that scientific dogmas are preventing progress. Consciousness is weird and we don’t understand the brain nearly as much as the average person thinks we do. The dogma that all things have a physical scientific explanation is likely preventing this consciousness question from being delved into more and actually answered scientifically because most scientists are not true scientists in the sense that they don’t want to try and challenge the dogmas.

Personally I think there is hard physical evidence of consciousness that we have yet to find in the brain, but that’s my opinion.

Consciousness as applied to the China brain thought experiment is also something that depends entirely on your definition of consciousness.

 

[Watermelanin]

Boltzmann brains are an interesting and relevant concept here:
In an infinite universe, it seems inevitable that random fluctuations in energy and matter would form a fully functional brain with false memories and a false experience of the universe around it, if only for a brief moment. And an infinite universe being infinite means there would be infinitely many of these things popping in and out of existence at any given time. This means that it's infinitely more likely that you are one of these brains than it is that you're an actual human actually experiencing whatever you're experiencing.
All your memories are false, you're just floating around in space, and you're gonna pop out of existence in the next millisecond.

 

[Dom Cruise]

i'm religious so i believe in souls, and that the body is just a shell for our souls/our brains are like antennas that pick up a radio signal of consciousness.

This is how I think of it as well.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

It doesn't have to be evolutionarily advantageous. It could be a meaningless side effect of a sufficiently advanced brain. As long as it isn't a hindrance.
This isn't my original idea, I'm sure I read it somewhere (probably Dennett) : Human minds evolved as pattern matching & analysis machines. As they got better, they included more details in their models. Including modelling that other members of our species were intelligent thinking beings. Eventually the model also includes itself in the model. Full feedback. That's consciousness.

You're not giving the P-Zombies enough credit. They can be fully intelligent , planning, exhibiting all the signs of emotion. They just aren't aware internally. But they'll say they are . You can't tell from the outside.

Consciousness as an illusion is interesting. I think there's experiments that show we don't actually consciously make decisions. We just think we do. They can show that the background processes of the brain started the wheels in motion to perform some action before the conscious brain thinks it made that decision. Your consciousness isn't doing anything at all, it's just a spectator along for the ride on the back of a P-zombie. It's just a logging thread for the brain .


It is an interesting topic, but it seems closer to stoner philosophy than science. Severe lack of testability on most of the 'theories' . Apart from the timing stuff I just mentioned above.

Probably shouldn't be trying to reply to this thread at 1:30am ...

This seems like as good a place as any to dump one of my Big Boy Thoughts: free will is an illusion.

For some reason this really pisses people off, but free will is an illusion in that everything is predetermined. If the mind/consciousness comes from the physical machine of the brain, and the brain makes decisions based on the information it processes, and the information comes from the physical state of the world around it, and the physical environment is caused by the previous physical environment, then there is just a direct chain of physical processes which lead to the brain making decisions.

Decisions of the brain which don't seem like they are driven by the environment are, even seemingly random ones. There's no such thing as a random coin toss. It's just that the toss seems random because we can't predict the exact forces working on that coin to determine how it will land. If you knew them all in advance, you could predict perfectly how the coin would land. Decisions work the same way. You are fed information. Your brain, based on previous information/decisions and its physical structure, interprets information and converts it into new information and action. If the information, your brain's structure, and your prior experience is the EXACT same, down to the level of subatomic particles, it should ALWAYS come out the same, right?

Put another way, if you could "rewind" time, you should see the same exact sequence of events happen, which is maybe the best way to illustrate my point. Everything is going the same, right? At the point when you stop rewinding, the exact state of the universe is the same, so then the next "moment" (moments actually being continuous rather than discrete, of course) should be the same as before you rewinded, and you can follow the chain of logic all the way up to where you rewinded from. There was no room for any deviation.

This theory only fails under one of two conditions. One is if you believe that the consciousness/mind has a non-physical component to it, like that your brain can create a decision without having a physical cause. But there's no real reason to think that it's the case. The other is that if you believe that the physical world does have randomness to it, like in quantum mechanics (according to my very basic, layman's understanding of it) where observing a particle causes it to randomly settle into some state, although maybe that's also caused by some underlying mechanism we don't know about yet. And even then, it's the action of the particles, not of a conscious will, that causes the change.

So everything in the world is predetermined based on the exact state of the Universe as of creation, and as a consequence, free will has to be an illusion. Where people seem to get really pissed off is that they think this amounts to some sort of rejection of the idea of responsibility, which I don't understand as I don't see how that changes it in any way; the act may be predestined, the will was an illusion, but the act is still real. Essentially, I don't see it as having any bearing on our day-to-day lives.

Boltzmann brains are an interesting and relevant concept here:
In an infinite universe, it seems inevitable that random fluctuations in energy and matter would form a fully functional brain with false memories and a false experience of the universe around it, if only for a brief moment. And an infinite universe being infinite means there would be infinitely many of these things popping in and out of existence at any given time. This means that it's infinitely more likely that you are one of these brains than it is that you're an actual human actually experiencing whatever you're experiencing.
All your memories are false, you're just floating around in space, and you're gonna pop out of existence in the next millisecond.

Can't be scientifically proven in any way, but I would consider a Boltzmann brain, if I ever happened across one, to be a p-zombie.

 

[Watermelanin]

Can't be scientifically proven in any way, but I would consider a Boltzmann brain, if I ever happened across one, to be a p-zombie.

You can't really scientifically prove any of the shit ITT. It's conjecture. Alluding to the P-zombie thing, you can't prove I'm conscious any more than I can prove you are. But if we are willing to run on the assumption that all sufficiently advanced nervous systems are capable of exhibiting consciousness (with is the generally popular one), then such a "brain," which doesn't have to resemble a brain mind you, would have a real form of consciousness just like either of us.

 

[MrBlueSocks]

This seems like as good a place as any to dump one of my Big Boy Thoughts: free will is an illusion.

For some reason this really pisses people off, but free will is an illusion in that everything is predetermined. If the mind/consciousness comes from the physical machine of the brain, and the brain makes decisions based on the information it processes, and the information comes from the physical state of the world around it, and the physical environment is caused by the previous physical environment, then there is just a direct chain of physical processes which lead to the brain making decisions.

Decisions of the brain which don't seem like they are driven by the environment are, even seemingly random ones. There's no such thing as a random coin toss. It's just that the toss seems random because we can't predict the exact forces working on that coin to determine how it will land. If you knew them all in advance, you could predict perfectly how the coin would land. Decisions work the same way. You are fed information. Your brain, based on previous information/decisions and its physical structure, interprets information and converts it into new information and action. If the information, your brain's structure, and your prior experience is the EXACT same, down to the level of subatomic particles, it should ALWAYS come out the same, right?

Put another way, if you could "rewind" time, you should see the same exact sequence of events happen, which is maybe the best way to illustrate my point. Everything is going the same, right? At the point when you stop rewinding, the exact state of the universe is the same, so then the next "moment" (moments actually being continuous rather than discrete, of course) should be the same as before you rewinded, and you can follow the chain of logic all the way up to where you rewinded from. There was no room for any deviation.

This theory only fails under one of two conditions. One is if you believe that the consciousness/mind has a non-physical component to it, like that your brain can create a decision without having a physical cause. But there's no real reason to think that it's the case. The other is that if you believe that the physical world does have randomness to it, like in quantum mechanics (according to my very basic, layman's understanding of it) where observing a particle causes it to randomly settle into some state, although maybe that's also caused by some underlying mechanism we don't know about yet. And even then, it's the action of the particles, not of a conscious will, that causes the change.

So everything in the world is predetermined based on the exact state of the Universe as of creation, and as a consequence, free will has to be an illusion. Where people seem to get really pissed off is that they think this amounts to some sort of rejection of the idea of responsibility, which I don't understand as I don't see how that changes it in any way; the act may be predestined, the will was an illusion, but the act is still real. Essentially, I don't see it as having any bearing on our day-to-day lives.

I come to the conclusion that men far far more intelligent and thoughtful than I have floundered on this problem, so I'll just go along as a spectator. The free will problem stuff seems inescapable to me though.
Out brains are made of matter -> They are subject to the laws of physics
Where is the room for free will ? Some magic 'soul' (be any other name) that reintroduces Cartesian dualism?

However, this doesn't mean that things are predetermined, or if you rewind time it'd be the same again.
The laws of physics aren't exactly repeatable at the lowest level.

I think it was Roger Penrose who tried to rescue Free Will out of magic quantum pixie dust. But to me, all he could prove was non-determinism, which isn't the same. Coins don't have free will when you toss them. Though I imagine some talking coin might insist that he totally chose to land on heads.

 

[Hellbound Hellhound]

Boltzmann brains are an interesting and relevant concept here:
In an infinite universe, it seems inevitable that random fluctuations in energy and matter would form a fully functional brain with false memories and a false experience of the universe around it, if only for a brief moment. And an infinite universe being infinite means there would be infinitely many of these things popping in and out of existence at any given time. This means that it's infinitely more likely that you are one of these brains than it is that you're an actual human actually experiencing whatever you're experiencing.
All your memories are false, you're just floating around in space, and you're gonna pop out of existence in the next millisecond.

Can't be scientifically proven in any way, but I would consider a Boltzmann brain, if I ever happened across one, to be a p-zombie.

Boltzmann brains are more of a thought experiment in physics, rather than psychology or philosophy.

The basic idea is that over an infinite amount of time (after the heat death of the universe), random quantum fluctuations could eventually cause a fully-formed brain to flicker into existence, and the argument goes that if this is theoretically possible, then how do we know that we are not Boltzmann brains? (In theory, if Boltzmann brains are permitted, and if time is infinite, then it would be infinitely more likely that our consciousness resides within a Boltzmann brain than not).

Though certainly an interesting idea, Boltzmann brains aren't seriously entertained by most physicists, they're more of an absurdism that results from the measurement problem in physics, and physicists usually try to avoid them when crafting theories about the ultimate fate/nature of the universe (generally, it is assumed that if Boltzmann brains are allowed in your model, then your model is probably flawed).

It's not clear to me what relevance Boltzmann brains would have to the hard problem of consciousness though. I see no reason why a Boltzmann brain wouldn't be conscious.

I come to the conclusion that men far far more intelligent and thoughtful than I have floundered on this problem, so I'll just go along as a spectator. The free will problem stuff seems inescapable to me though.
Out brains are made of matter -> They are subject to the laws of physics
Where is the room for free will ? Some magic 'soul' (be any other name) that reintroduces Cartesian dualism?

However, this doesn't mean that things are predetermined, or if you rewind time it'd be the same again.
The laws of physics aren't exactly repeatable at the lowest level.

I think it was Roger Penrose who tried to rescue Free Will out of magic quantum pixie dust. But to me, all he could prove was non-determinism, which isn't the same. Coins don't have free will when you toss them. Though I imagine some talking coin might insist that he totally chose to land on heads.

There are several interpretations of quantum mechanics, some of which would seem to lend credibility to the idea of free will. If the many worlds intepretation is correct, then it would seem that it is not only possible for us to choose between many different decisions, but in fact inevitable.

Personally, I think of myself as a compatibilist when it comes to the debate around free will. As I see it, irrespective of causal determinism, we are aware, and we can use this awareness to deliberate in a way that an inanimate object (or a philosophical zombie) seemingly could not. I think that's a pretty good definition of free will, or at least something approximating it.