We do not have a precise language to rigorously argue for/against free will. It is a branch of thought that is not well defined. I will attempt to develop some foundational ideas around free will.

The reality we inhabit: we are people who make choices. In our first-person perspective, we have control over what we do. Should I have an apple or an orange today? My mind simulates both choices, out of which one is chosen (certainly the orange) and the intention is raised to an action. We will call this view of the world the agent-first model.

This seems incompatible with determinism, the belief that the universe is fully mechanical. To be mechanical means there is a set of intelligible rules that govern change in our universe. You could install the universe on some machine and run it. It’s some kind of “conservation of information,” meaning there are no secret back channels with override power.

Physics is usually a favored model for determinism. It is verifiable, can self-critique and update itself. This is a good start.

Let’s abstract. Both physics and our agent-first model are describing the same world but on different levels of resolutions. Physics is talking about these invisible things we can’t see (atoms, electrostatic forces, dark matter). They are useful when we try and split the atom. The world of free will, agents, and choices—this is more familiar. It’s describing the things I, Aariz, care about: relationships, meaning, society, etc. That is, my emotions seem coupled to this world. Not to the world of atoms.

Both of these causal structures are describing patterns I can verify in the world, but one is more coarsely-grained than the other. Neither can (or tries to) explain the set of all observable patterns.

I hope you see that this apparent contradiction between free will and determinism starts to fade. I think this takes us somewhere more metaphysical; at the end of the day, neither the atom nor the choice exists. What exists is structure that describes patterns. We are not caught in a physical world of things, but in a world of simulated patterns. This gets to the essence of what is real; or as we will see, what definitions of real-ness actually work (dualism is unsatisfying).