The idea of sin in Judeo-Christian religions assumes the existence of a soul with free will. A person may choose to commit a sin or not and the sin taints their soul if they do.
Yet, the laws of physics do not leave room for free will. The brain makes decisions based on its physical structure and sensory input, and there is no non-physical force acting upon it (the "soul") to influence it. If there was we would be able to detect it.
That seems to compartmentalize morality, and limit free will to the 'soul'.
#Physics has nothing solid to say about free will or souls. We have yet to surmount the topic of #consciousness, or even life.
We can say the the #brain's internal structure changes over time, and stores past #information in an interconnected format. When faced with #decisions, the first filter or branch immediately draws from this data to inform the 'fight or flight' type response. The standard default is to back away from the unknown.
However, when you add more info to this data, you add more degrees of freedom. This manifests as '#FreeWill'.
@MalthusJohn Physics has plenty to say about free will and soul, in particular that they are not detectable in the material world in any capacity. Applying Occam's razor we could say that they don't really exist.
All decisions are purely the result of physical processes in the brain, however complicated they may be. There is no soul that resides outside of the material world that influences inner workings of the brain. For all we know the future may be strictly predetermined.
@jackofalltrades @MalthusJohn
Even if the universe were not deterministic, free will would still be nonsense.
The addition of randomness just makes it less predictable, there is no freedom in that - your decisions would strictly depend on nondeterministic dice rolls.
@Kihbernetics Completely agree.
I would add that while how you respond is up to you (your state), your state is not up to you (whatever that would mean, probably the nonsensical free will).
The #state I'm talking about is the present state of every living #DynamicalSystem which is controlled by the closed ***autopoietic*** process of #growth and #learning:
@karlo @MalthusJohn Agreed, free will is nonsense either way.
We really have no way of knowing if laws of the universe incorporate randomness or not, because what would that even mean? We call something "random" if we can't detect a pattern, but that doesn't mean the pattern is not there. It may simply be impossible to observe it from within the system, due to the uncertainty principle.
@jackofalltrades\@mas.to @Karlo\@qoto.org @Kihbernetics\@qoto.org
As is standard for this topic, no one even agrees on the word right off. The lines have been drawn long ago, and have never been free of biased opponents leading the charge to 'divide & conquer' their rivals. The christian philosophers being one of the early co-opters trying to find support for their beliefs.
When you define what free will is, leave off everything not necessary to describe it. Conflating it with other things will only lead to more disagreement.
All that aside, whatever #FreeWill is or isn't, it is neither monolithic nor homogeneous. It's not a binary concept of 'all or nothing'. Not everyone experiences it the same way or has the same skill in exercising it.
The human bio #system makes autonomous changes in response to inputs continuously & unconsciously. We also regularly make #conscious choices among input options, though obviously less often.
In between those modes is a mixed state where conscious, fast #decisions are made, and deliberation is proxied by some other external input.
Some of these inputs are analogous to the first group, as the "will" to trust those other inputs would resemble the genetically #autonomous response. These can also be ignored, over-ridden, etc. at will.
@karlo @jackofalltrades @MalthusJohn
#FreeWill is a *misnomer*. If our will is *free to do as it pleases* then we don't have any say in the decisions it makes.
The problem of #Will has nothing to do with #determinism. It is all about #Control.
As #individuals, we are born ***unwillingly*** within the #nature of our genes and the #nurture of our environment, family, culture, and society, upon which we have little or no *control*.
However, our #individuality (*singular*) and our current #knowledge #state were also affected over the years by layers upon layers of little decisions that we've made to ***willingly*** transition from one state to another "better" one.
In#Kihbernetics, #information, #knowledge, and #control are all internal to the system.
The #environment may throw things at you but how you #respond is totally up to you (your current state).