Concept Paper
Version 1
Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed
Physical Libertarianism: Redeeming the Illusion of Free Will Back into Reality
Version 1
: Received: 3 June 2022 / Approved: 9 June 2022 / Online: 9 June 2022 (07:27:39 CEST)
(This article belongs to the Research Topic Teaching Sociology)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Ashkan Farhadi (2023) Free Will in Physical Libertarianism: A New Paradigm of Decision-Making. J Psych and Neuroche Res 1(3), 01-11. Ashkan Farhadi (2023) Free Will in Physical Libertarianism: A New Paradigm of Decision-Making. J Psych and Neuroche Res 1(3), 01-11.
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.
Keywords
Consciousness; awareness; free will; decision-making; attention; self-awareness
Subject
Arts and Humanities, Philosophy
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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