No downvotes from me, but where do you think the free will lives? What mechanism produces it? What about that mechanism, if not purely stochastic, is not predictable? If free will can have a real measurable physical effect on this universe, then why can't it be isolated?
I believe our consciousness is separate from our physical body. This metaphysical line of thinking is embodied by “idealism” which is opposed to “physicalism” or materialism. I am also not a determinist and I don’t believe you can replay the universe from first principles and get the exact same timeline.
I’m also religious and I believe in God (and the Holy Trinity) in the core of my being.
In some kind of quantum space probably.
We still don't know so much, yet we claim so much.
Even quantum space can be described by both deterministic and stochastic elements. The stochastic elements of quantum uncertainty are about as much free will as a PRNG – though even more predictable as they don't have a flat statistical distribution. And there are also known exploitable and predictable mechanisms behind quantum mechanics (emphasis added), so much so, that they can be leveraged for computation.
I think when most people say free will they mean dualism, in that there's some sentience in the spiritual plane that directs their bodies in the physical plane. But if this spiritual plane has no observable effect on the physical plane, it's completely incompatible with free will. And if it is observable, then it is indeed a measurable part of physical reality, but yet we haven't measured it - not even stochastic effects (which can still be observed statistically).
Sabine Hossenfelder has a much better informed take on this, and it's worth a watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI5FMj5D9zU
Also of interest, a study where fMRI readings were used to predict a persons decisions well in advance of them executing the decision. The success rate was only 60%, but still better than chance, and this study was way back in 2008:
> fMRI machine learning of brain activity (multivariate pattern analysis) has been used to predict the user choice of a button (left/right) up to 7 seconds before their reported will of having done so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will#Neur...
Yes, for example we make wild claims like 'biological sentience is incomputable'
a random number generator in base reality? ;) really i'm just using this as a more accessible (to rational materialists) example of how processes can exist outside of our measurable physical reality.
> processes can exist outside of our measurable physical reality
If it can't be measured in reality, how can it be relevant to reality?
> a random number generator in base reality?
How does randomness pertain to free will?
they may have measurable effects in our physical reality, eg. the behavior of the individual and even be correlated with other physical processes.
however, there may be hidden variables outside of our physical reality that are actually mechanizing the result. some such processes may be non-deterministic, which is why i used randomness as an example.
what i'm implying is analogous but opposite to the concept of a philosophical zombie. there may be a ghost in the machine which no measurement can reveal.
P-zombies, conceptually, actually have no ghost in the machine, but are indistinguishable from sentient beings. Sentience and free will are two different things.
> they may have measurable effects in our physical reality
If there’s something external that interfaces with the physical universe, such an externality could be observed. It’s strange that we haven’t found such a force. But if it were to exist, in some parallel universe, that external force would have its own mechanics and its own chain of causality – its own physics so to speak. Dualism doesn’t get you to free will, it just means there’s physics we can’t observe. (Or perhaps there’s some superset universe that interfaces with that universe, and then it’s still determinism or stochastic processes all the way down.)