It is not profoundly undefined to me at all. I have defined it quite clearly. The spiritual, supernatural, non-physical simply refers to forms of pre-energy (potentiality of being itself) which are not a part of the mathematical space-time structure of the physical universe.
The point of my comment had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any avoidance of God, or to cater to the premise of metaphysical naturalism, but only about what logic requires in the case of free will. Throwing in a soul into the mix isn’t all it takes to make sense of free will. The same philosophical problem applies. And it is quite possible to believe in free will without believing in the spiritual or supernatural.
To be sure there is no objective evidence for the existence of anything outside the physical universe, nor could there be. Then why believe in such a thing? I have addressed that here. And these reasons show why this lack of objective evidence is kind of the whole point of believing it in the first place.
What you quoted follows from simple logic alone. But maybe that isn’t what you were asking how I was so sure? If so you have to be more specific.
Yes! Indeed! Which is why we have to put our faith in a choice of premises in order to live. Life doesn’t wait for proof. Certainty is impossible. We have to place our bets and run with them.
Absolutely! I base my premises on the totality of my experience of existence. And free will is my most basic experience. For that reason, I consider philosophies which deny this experience to be utterly meaningless to me. But hey, people have different experiences and maybe some people don’t take free will seriously because they don’t have that experience. And so I will grant that it is entirely possible that they do not have any free will to speak of. How should I know?
Indeed. It is easy to observe that there is nothing universal or inviolable about free will. There are quite a number of things which can take this away from us. It most certainly depends on awareness – how can we make choices when we are not aware of any alternatives? And I am sure beliefs have a significant impact – such as believing that you do not have any free will.
Yes… I certainly agree that a lot of it is going on under the hood. However what I don’t agree with, at least in my own case, is that these things are not me. Taking ownership of these things is part of what responsibility means.
We cannot expect that. We are creatures of habit, but to some degree or other we are self-programming in that respect. So while our free will is not absolute and every second, this does not change the fact that we do make choices and some lead to a greater range of choices (more free will) and others lead to a lesser range of choices (less free will).
This comment seems to be according to a presumption that free will applies only to human beings which I do not believe at all.
I did not cover the question of how free will came about but I can do that now. For one thing it did not evolve qualitatively in the proper sense because free will and life are the same thing. However since life is highly quantitative then so is the free will which goes along with it. Thus the basics of how free will works is the same as defining the process of life itself which I explained at length in this thread.
Now to ask how this nonstandard causality came about is to ask how the physical universe came into existence because that with QM is part of the very structure and nature of the physical universe. As a Christian, I obviously believe that the physical universe is a creation of God and it has the structure it does by God’s design according to the purpose for which He created it. And this is another link back to that list of reasons why I believe.
I am a theoretical physicist and I would hardly describe quantum physics as a black box. It is the most successful and precise theory in science. It does cause some cognitive dissonance among physicists who prefer to presume that everything must have a physical cause which they can discover. But that would be a problem with their presumption. It is also difficult to visualize and attach the usual sort of metaphysical significance to it because it frankly describes an aspect of our world rather far from the environment to which our minds and perceptual processes are adapted. But that would be a problem with insisting on visualizing it or the metaphysics we are trying to fit it with.
In the case of quantum physics, seeing the clothes of this particular emperor requires a little more than a “seeing is believing” mentality.