Quote Originally Posted by mutton View Post
Free will isn't unaffected by causality. It fits in the causal chain. The causal chain up to now affects my will, which affects my actions, which affects the further causal chain.

I consciously choose what to do, based on the causal chain.
So you think that the causal chain exists up until it impinges on you, then causality is suspended for a minute while some magical property of your brain allows you to make decisions outside of the causal chain, then once you've made your decision, causality kicks back in? No. Every atom in the universe is a part of the causal chain at every moment, including the ones that make up your brain. If you think that you can "consciously choose what to do, based on the causal chain," you don't understand causality.

Quote Originally Posted by mutton
Science hasn't and perhaps can't give a good account for consciousness.
So? Are you saying that because you feel like you're consciously making decisions, you must actually be doing so? Consciousness is pretty irrelevant to this issue. As Think explains, your brain is like a black box with a huge number of inputs, a huge number of outputs, and a lot of complex clockwork inside. The fact that you feel conscious doesn't change that.

Quote Originally Posted by mutton
Causality itself is magic. To use Think's example, you drop a pen, and watch it fall. You say the dropping causes the falling, but you can't actually observe the causal relation between the two. There's only dropping and falling, no causing to be seen. It's not in the bar of soap. It's not in the air. It's not physical.

Even worse, scientists have to take a leap of faith to say that every time you drop some object in such-and-such conditions, it will fall. There's no way to verify that this purported causal relation is universal. If human understanding of the universe rests of causality, then that understanding rests on faith magic.

The example doesn't work with gravitons or any other reduced explanation either. Even if we observe gravitons moving around, we can't observe their causing the pen to fall.
You are correct that causality, as a principle, emerges from observed relationships between events. We see two events and label one the cause, and one the effect, and there's never any way to actually detect a causal relationship between them. Yeah, maybe tomorrow I'll drop a bar of soap and it won't fall--who knows. Nevertheless, causality has never failed us yet; and in science, that's about as good as it gets. The principle of causality is the foundation stone of science. It's held even more dearly by scientists that utterly ironclad, exhaustively tested theories like the theory of gravitation or the theory of relativity. If you really don't want to accept it, that's fine; no one can force you to. Human understanding of the universe DOES rest on causality, because science rests on causality. So I guess that you believe science is "faith magic". Okay.

Quote Originally Posted by mutton
No. As far as I'm aware, we can only predict probabilistically. There's no evidence to think there are laws that predict events exactly.
Yeah, I set aside quantum randomness in trying to explain that to no_brains. You can see that I do mention it earlier in the thread. Either way, free will gets the boot.