The two common positions in the free will debate are either that the universe is deterministic and therefore free will does not exist, or that the universe has a stochastic element to it, leaving room for free will. The former makes sense to me, but the latter does not:
The brain consists of roughly neurons. Let’s say of them are involved in a decision, which leaves us with neurons. Assuming each of them fires times per decision brings us to events. If there are wave function collapses per neuron event, we are at total per decision made. (That’s probably a gross underestimation, but my point stands: It’s a lot of them.) So it’s pretty safe to say you will find some sort of statistical regularities at the macro level. Therefore, you might argue that, just like Newtonian physics, the whole thing is not really random anymore. Meaning if our mind operates at the macro level, there’s no free will.
But maybe I’m wrong, maybe there are no statistical patterns? Well, in that case, it would literally just be pure randomness. If there is no bias towards some goal, by definition, there is also no will. Associating free will with randomness just seems paradoxical to me.
The last thing I can think of is that our mind does not operate at the macro level of this universe. Perhaps quantum phenomena are not really samples of a random distribution, but the communication protocol to another substrate, and this is where our free will is implemented? But independent of where it’s implemented, free will is some sort of entity that takes in our sensory input and knowledge and outputs a decision based on it. (It must be conditioned on our sensory inputs and knowledge, otherwise we would hardly consider it will.) Now we can ask if the other substrate acts deterministic or stochastic. In the case of the former, the whole thing would be deterministic, and we would again have to reject free will. In case it isn’t deterministic but stochastic, we have arrived at the next step of recursion…