Just read for beginning Lefevre's "The Algebra of Conscince" and you find the answers on your question, whether you do it with free will, or without it... :)

Take a look at https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780792371212; alternatively, the book is widely present in web.

The way you have framed the question has imported a lot of language and constructs to the conversation before it even starts. If you accept that a "decision made is already there", then there is no free will. It implies the consciousness is a static function at the time of decision. A different decision can be made to the same question at a different point in time because (independent to the posing of a question and under a different model) updates have been made to the underlying function in the intervening time. But if one changes the model or the formulation and allows the decision function to have a truly random component present at the decision time then this "free will" can be viewed as a "weighted randomness", some decisions having a better probability of being selected or some decisions having equal weight at a given time and truly being randomly selected. The construct offered also pre-supposes that all the inputs at the time of decision are deterministic and does not allow for a model where a set of inputs (weights to the decision) can be truly random (or have random fluctuations). Some of this gets into ideas of duality or sampling theory - saying you "know" the inputs to a decision function (and thus the result of the decision through calculation) implies that you perfectly characterized the nature of each input and that even with some small (or large) change in time either side of the decision time the input values would not have been any different. I think your answer depends on how you frame the question and choose to model your inputs (the "beliefs" you bring to the framing) and not on whether or not there really is "free will".

Michael Sadovsky

Dear Michael, thank you for your note. Actually it is my intention to begin a vivid discussion and not to begin reading a book. If you are interested in the question and know the answer that it is no great effort to formulate a thesis that we can talk about. To recommend a link without own contribution what the link has to say is, in my experience, very risky. Often the recommended link doesn't work - it is the case here - and often a link says quite other things as are in discussion.

Kind regards, Hein

John Wegrzyn

Dear John,

I have rarely received such a high-quality answer to such a general question, which has been discussed so often in our time. The first sentence of your comment is simply well said - and I can only fully agree with you. But at the same time, I must point out: My question is posed by our everyday experience, and is understood by everyone at all times. So you can answer them either at this level - or not. I suppose, you would obviously not be able to answer the question in such complex framet, but judges or psychologists must do so if an act with criminal consequences is at the centre of the trial. It is decisive for the judgement whether the action of the defendant is classified as "willful intent", emotional act or "unintentional" - by the jury or by the judge.

2. I think the broad middle part of your answer is perfectly okay. I wouldn't be able to argue that better. Two things I would like to exclude, because you have spoken of "weighted randomness" or similar: There are psychological experiments demonstrating that when the action is worthless - for example with the request: Put the match you have in your hand on the right or left side of the table - the test persons actually claim that they have free will to do so. And the other case I would likke to exclude in my argumentation: We know from social psychology the experiments of Milgram, which showed how strongly people are influenced in their free will to act inhuman themselves, when the willingness to volunteer assumes a framing that follows unnoticedly the obedience of the authority of the investigator (of course I also know the recent criticism of the conclusions).

3) If I have understood correctly, you raise the following objection: My question asked makes a clear answer impossible from the outset because it contains complex contexts. I say: This objection is quite common in scientific theory discussions. I would say that if your objection is to apply, it leads me into a "double bind", a relationship trap from which one can no longer get out : That means, whatever I try to answer, it is wrong. Therefore I tend to contradict your first sentence - however to contradict is characteristic of the argumentation model of Critical Rationalism. I repeat: I ask the question as a result of a contradictory experience when I read statements of some neuobiologists in the magazines, when they said: There is no free will - we have empirically proven this - and then the example comes with switching a lamp on and off, with simultaneous measurement of electrical impulses in brain areas. Perhaps some other experiments.

4) I will leave the answer to the question posed here open and say: Sometimes my consciousness tells me that in a meaningful decision you are free to act, but you have a moral standard for your actions, there is something as old-fashioned as a conscience, and there is a duty to obey your own conscience. Second, your decision has consequences that affect other people's well-being and lives. This corresponds to the ethics of Immanuel Kant, who, together with other philosophers, regards the will of man as "free" to do good or evil, but has to answer for it.

5. There are several different approaches to this question for me. I once helped to shape a discussion at an academy in which two philosophers (who were also scientists - one neurobiologist, the other physicist) were debating over the answer of our question.- My experience is that experimental scientists, neurobiologists for example, of course carry out important research work. That the consequences that they have drawn from their work - for example for free will - (the great discussion of the question goes back three decades) are by no means secured against exaggerations. About a

6) You said: " I think your answer depends on how you frame the question and choose to model your inputs (the "beliefs" you bring to the framing) and not on whether or not there really is free will." - No objections in my evveryday ore common sense-experience. But if we dig deeper comes the question: What means "really"? When we overstrain the question of free will (which was not my intention), we immediately come into fundamental aporias of epistemology.

Kind regards.

Hein

I am afraid, there is no way to get a vivid discussion, unless the concept, statements and definitions are undefined and unclear. To read a classic book is the best way to get the really vivid discussion.

Good luck!