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From Prager University, here. From transcript of audio:
Now, if all you are is a brain, an exhaustively physical system of neurons and synapses, then there’s no “you” that’s gonna be making a “choice” at all. Your thought processes are basically just a complex series of colliding electron-dominos crashing into one another. It’s just physical cause and effect, right — something that can be exhaustively understood in terms of physics and chemistry? There’s no “you” that’s an agent that’s deliberating, or choosing, or exercising free will.
And that’s why, if you are just a brain, you cannot have free will. You would just be a physical machine — a very complex but programmed computer.
But, if you’re something more than your brain — if you’re the thing that has the brain — then, when I ask you “Where do you want to go for lunch?,” you’re going to start deliberating — you’re going to be weighing your taste preferences, the commute time, perhaps even counting calories. You’d be weighing various reasons to choose one place over another. You wouldn’t be caused to think about any of these things. You would choose to think about these things, and you could stop anytime you wanted to.
So, what we have here, therefore, are two different types of things: an immaterial mind and the material brain. You are the thing that has the brain — you are not your brain.
Hat tip: Stephanie West Allen at Brains on Purpose
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