Physical Libertarianism: Redeeming the Illusion of Free Will Back into Reality

Abstract

The notion of free will seems so intuitive to us that it would be hard, even impossible, to imagine that we live in a world without ever exerting any willpower. This view of reality is not only hindrance to inspiration, it poses a serious threat to our moral and social responsibilities. Nonetheless, many scientific and philosophical schools of thought such as determinism purport free will as a mere illusion. As an attempt to rescue free will put forward by libertarianism, compatibilism or physical indeterminism that either exempts our mind from the universal rules of cause and effect by offering our minds a metaphysical status or substitute free will with random will rooted in the laws of quantum mechanics. This manuscript offers an alternative perspective under a new paradigm of consciousness called physical libertarianism that explicates true free will through the unwavering laws of cause and effect. Based on this paradigm, consciousness is the result of interaction of awareness and decision-making process. By applying awareness to the process of decision-making awareness-based choice selection or true free will is conceived. In return, by assigning the power of decision making to the process of awareness discretionary selection of information for attention or intentional attention is emerged. Through integration of these two mental functions, an independent entity called “I” is formed that differentiates natural intelligence from artificial intelligence. While determinism can aptly describe the world of inanimate objects and artificial intelligence, because of “I,” determinism has no jurisdiction over the realm of natural intelligence.

Awareness-based Choice Selection: Improving Decision-making Efficiency by Using Known Information

“…Therefore, ABCSs purport the existence of free will through a new class of libertarianism-physical libertarianism -in which the willpower does not arise from either metaphysical properties of the mind (noncausal) or from an event (event-causal) or a special property of an agent (agent-causal). In fact, in physical libertarianism, willpower is bestowed to the mind because of being aware of select information [Farhadi, 2022].…”

“…However, the implementation process in NI is typically more complicated, as choice execution may require an additional step prior to execution, termed the appropriation process (Figs. 4 and 8) (Farhadi, 2022). The appropriation process is fairly similar to the rationalization process in the preselection stage in that it involves assessing the feasibility and practicality of the choice implementation.…”

“…In fact, the sequential utilization of ABCSs and DSIAs shown in Fig. 1 comprises the main paradigm of decision making in TTM and thus sets NI apart from AI (Farhadi, 2022).…”

Free Will as Defined by the Constrained Disorder Principle: a Restricted, Mandatory, Personalized, Regulated Process for Decision-Making

“…It is physical since system parts are designed to perform such a function. Subjects' choices cannot be their own, even if they influence their lower-level physical systems, as with libertarian free will (Culler, 2004;Farhadi, 2023;Leftow, 2009).…”

“…According to metaphysical libertarians, free will must assert influence on physical reality. The mind exerts influence instead of ordinary system randomness and must be distinct from the body to achieve this (Farhadi, 2023). According to compatibilists, freedom can exist for reasons unrelated to metaphysics, and deterministic relationships exist in the physical world, including the brain (Sie & Wouters, 2010;Wisniewski et al, 2019).…”