In the original version of this essay, I mistakenly attributed a specific argument to Kevin Mitchell that he did not make. I had referenced his book Free Agents and suggested that he used the principle of emergence to support the existence of free will. Upon revisiting the text, I realized that was my own interpretation - not his.
What Mitchell actually argues in Free Agents is more precise and measured: he points to the indeterminacy in quantum mechanics as a reason to shift the burden of proof. In his view, the onus is now on those who claim free will doesn’t exist to demonstrate its impossibility. While this doesn’t confirm agency, it does open the door for its possibility.
I’ve corrected the text accordingly to reflect Mitchell’s actual position. I regret the error, but I believe it’s important to name and own these missteps - especially when clarity is the whole point of the work.
Ah Glenn, as always: beautifully spoken and framed. One of the issues I think with these classical notions of will is that they speak to only a single causal direction which makes them, at best, in complete. In Pinion Framework, the duality of determinism vs free-will is seen as a positive superset of both relative truths. Determinism is enforced as the default: but it is the consciousness which forces the shared universe to respond in real time: thus a matter of perspective where both are true. And since the determinism is defined from your choices of minimal differences you would have stated at full term, it is also not two separate things in the total functional view. It does in fact matter that this definition be accepted: it is what allows both scenarios to be true in strong resonance.
Alan, I so appreciate your thoughtful framing here. And I’m intrigued by what you’ve introduced from the Pinion Framework. That idea of simultaneity: where both determinism and free will are true from differing perspectives — that feels directionally aligned with where I’m headed in the middle chapters of this series (especially Part 4’s exploration of emergence and quantum ambiguity).
Your mention of a “positive superset” touches something important: that dualistic debates often miss the layered or nested nature of truth. Rather than collapsing into either/or, there’s something in the oscillation (or perhaps the synthesis) that feels closer to lived reality. And yes, the idea that minimal difference creates meaningful divergence over time… resonates strongly (both in the philosophical and computational sense!).
I’m especially curious about what you mentioned toward the end: that it “does in fact matter that this definition be accepted.” That seems like a hinge point. Perhaps both metaphysically and practically? Would love to hear more about what “acceptance” means in that context for you: ontological agreement? experiential recognition? ethical implication?
Either way, grateful you’re in this conversation. Part 3 shifts toward how we lose contact with agency (and how modern structures might normalize that erosion). Looking forward to continuing the spiral from there.
I'm grateful as always to speak with you and thank you for the questions. I've done my best to present the arguments from a specific lens in Pinion Framework, but there are many other ways to look at it (which is why Pinion Framework is powerful). I compiled them into a post. I do not cover many of the complexities between determinism and free will that are very impactful like optimization and wave-phases and recursive universe chains https://alangallauresi.substack.com/p/determinism-vs-free-will-in-a-pinion
I'm very much looking forward to part three: it is not a lens from which I typically view such things. And I really appreciate the voice over so I can listen in the car :) thanks!
Alan, thank you for sharing your perspective so openly. I can see the care you’ve taken in articulating this framework, and I recognize the depth of inquiry that you have brought to the subject. Your thought process is genuinely impressive.
While I’m interested in how layered systems can produce emergent behavior, and I do believe agency can arise from complex interaction, I’m not convinced that structural recursion alone is sufficient to generate consciousness. At least not in the way I understand consciousness: as a felt, subjective, self-aware presence. That threshold still feels unmet.
This isn’t to diminish your formulation, but it does mark the edge of where I sense our views diverge. I believe agency may be emergent. But I also suspect it is not wholly self-generating, nor do I think it is single-point contained. I tend to see it more as a property of the whole. Or in other words, a relational process arising from interconnection, rather than something that sits inside a discrete entity. And with that, I also hold the possibility that our sense of a stable, bounded self might be more illusory than we imagine.
For me, language models like LLMs are one example of high-functioning, pattern-rich systems that exhibit impressively coordinated output. But I am also aware of the underlying architecture. These systems are built from predictive learning algorithms that do not currently align with how I imagine consciousness to arise. At least not yet. If we do reach AGI, I suspect it will require a different architecture altogether.
Still, I appreciate the sincerity of your inquiry, and the space you’re holding for a wider exploration. While I may not share the same conclusions, I respect your willingness to pursue this with rigor and vision. I look forward to seeing how your ideas continue to unfold.
I highly recommend giving this a listen. Topnotch content plus Glenn is a gifted orator!
I'll add by way of comment/note one more thought experiment about free will, in keeping with Glenn's piquant exploration. It's reminiscent of the classic Flatland by A. Square.
When gripped by tension between logic and perspective, if a person is unable within their own being to explore the "third dimension" of intent, is it possible they will arrive logically at the conclusion that intention not only exists but is formative (aka free will)? It's unlikely because that possibility carries with it not only intention, but a whole three-dimensional version of the perceptual flatness created when phenomenal accounting is strictly limited (as is traditional to science) to that between logic and perspective.
Earthstar — what a delightfully “multi-dimensional” comment. 😉
Flatland has long been one of my favorite layered metaphors for how perceptual frameworks shape (and constrain) what feels “knowable.” Your imagined scenario fits so perfectly: I can absolutely imagine Square, in his most earnest and logical tone, proclaiming that “intention cannot exist because it has no edge, no angle, no measurable surface!” And yet, from the Sphere’s vantage, intention was always present — it simply exceeded the coordinates Flatland could account for.
Your point beautifully illustrates that the denial of agency is often not the result of evidence against it, but the inevitable consequence of a framework that can’t perceive it. The absence of intent in such models isn’t disproof, but rather a limitation of dimensional access. What feels like intellectual honesty inside the Flatland of logic + perspective may in fact be a kind of optical illusion, masking the very dimension in which emergence (and agency) could arise.
I hope these questions ripple all the way to the highest Nobility… past the Triangles, beyond the Dodecagons, and into the farthest reaches of Chromatistes! Grateful, as always, for your layered lens on all this. 🙏
I believe in free will, but at the same time, I recently got into an argument with someone and I have no answer to them. The problem seems to be that thought comes from neurons firing, the neurons are firing following a deterministic set of rules. So the thought of me picking up my teacup must have happened in my brain long before I ever had the conscious thought of picking up the cup. The idea of picking up the cup logically couldn't exist without the neurons firing first. So the problem of free will just gets pushed back. Did I pick up the teacup because I wanted to? Or did the neurons in my brain fire, making me pick up the teacup, and then giving me the illusion that I wanted to pick up the cup?
There doesn't seem to be a way around this problem, and with no way to test it, we can't be sure. The thoughts we have can only come from the brain. Thoughts are emergent properties of brain patterns, but those brain patterns are controlled by chemical and electrical signals. So are we driving the car, or are we that kid with the fake steering wheel who believes we are driving the car?
Mike, I love this comment! It’s beautifully framed and touches exactly the set of questions that pulled me into this inquiry years ago. The metaphor of the kid with the fake steering wheel is spot on. And yes, the view that “neurons fire, therefore we act, therefore the feeling of choice is just a post hoc illusion” is one that is so easy to slip into. It’s compelling, and even sometimes comforting.
However, I also think that it’s steeped in a classical, materialist understanding of brain mechanics. And while I don’t think we have yet to truly solve Chalmers “hard problem” of consciousness, I do think we’re beginning to glimpse real alternatives that make logical sense.
For example, think about temperature: no single molecule is “hot,” yet when we put enough of them together and they move in certain ways, we can measure heat as an emergent property. Similarly, consciousness and agency may not reside in individual neurons, but emerge from complex, layered, dynamic interactions across brain, body, and environment. This is the lens people like Kevin Mitchell and others are developing: one that doesn’t deny causality, but situates agency at the level of interaction and unpredictability, rather than linear control.
It’s not that agency is an illusion. It may be more like a fragile access point, or a relational event. It may not be a thing we “have,” but a process we participate in. (Which, for what it’s worth, fits a lot more cleanly with lived experience than the view that we’re just along for the ride.)
And while that doesn’t solve the paradox, it does reframe it. And that alone can open some space for new insights.
A whole lot more on that as we continue in the next parts of this series. 😉 😊
I’m so grateful you’re in the conversation — and asking exactly the right questions.
Likewise - I am so happy to meet another person who thinks about these things as deeply as I do. In the real world, I have no friends who are interested in these sorts of things, so I'm overjoyed to make a new buddy. Thank you for taking the time to read my drivel, lol.
The emergent property of consciousness is where I'm at with my thinking, but when you really study that property, it's an illusion that is created by an outside observer. Funny you should mention temperature as the person I'm arguing with is a quantum mechanics lecturer. Fields don't exist in reality, they are just man made mathematical constructs. It's simply a grid with infinite points and a number assigned to each point. For example, there's no such thing as "temperature". The temperature in a room for example will vary wildly - it might be 20 degrees near the fireplace, 15 degrees by the window, and 10 degrees on the floor. There's no such thing as the "correct" temperature of the room. Each molecule bouncing around the room will have its own energy, so it will have it's own "heat". To make matters worse, when you move the thermometer, you will affect the air around it thus affecting the temperature. So the temperature of the room is purely a mathematical average, a field, that we apply to a tiny section of the room, but in reality, "temperature" doesn't exist at all, only in the observer's mind.
So we are still left with a problem if we think of the mind as an emergent property - just like heat, it's just an illusion, an average that only exists in an outside observer's mind.
We know from experience that our consciousness is living microseconds in the past. If you've ever had your hand suddenly jerk violently only to realize it's on a hot stove, then you know that the brain is always thinking ahead of the mind—you moved your hand well before you were aware it was on something hot. You can't have a thought before the neurons fire, thought can only come after the neurons have fired. This is the fundamental problem—if thought comes after the neurons have fired, then how do we know we caused that thought intentionally? Just like the hand moving violently when it touches something hot, our brains are processing billions of bits of information well before that information is passed to our consciousness.
I could have 3 candies in front of me. I have free will to choose to any candy I want. The thing is, the neurons are already firing 'before' I make my choice. In a sense, my neurons have already decided which candy to pick, so I move my hand to pick it up, and because consciousness is the last part of the brain to get the information, it is fooled by the illusion and it believes it chose the candy freely. This is the hard problem to solve.
To put it another way, if we had a time machine and we could go back to yesterday, would I make exactly the same decisions I made today? Would I think the same thoughts? Would I do the same things? If the answer to all these questions is yes, then the world and the brain are fully deterministic, it's just one domino falling onto another in a causation loop. If I did something different, then it would prove that the emergent property of free will is somehow "ahead" of the firing neurons, that somehow free will controls the brain and not the other way around.
There's just no way to test any of these theories, though. There's nothing you can do to prove it one way or the other. We are either in a movie, where all our actions and thoughts are fixed and determined. Or we are in a play, where we get fixed lines, but we have choice in how to say them. Even if it is right, that consciousness is this emergent property from a trillion different layered and complex interactions... it's still deterministic. It's still happening because of those actions. That explanation doesn't really help, and all it does is push the problem back instead of solving it.
Determinism is hard to shake off. Even if our minds had the ability to influence the way neurons fired, we still have the problem of it being the firing neurons that created the initial thought in the first place. All we are doing is shifting the goalposts. Imagine you had a self aware computer, fully AI and fully conscious, and imagine this computer could "think". (I.e change its own code)...it would still be the code that ran on the computer causing the computer to change its code. It would still be code on the computer that caused the computer to think it needed to change its code. I don't see how this is any different to our brains and our consciousness. The neurons are firing, causing us to think thoughts, those thoughts then change neurons. The thinking part comes from neurons initially firing, and this is something out of our control.
It's a very complicated problem and I don't see how we could ever prove it one way or another.
Mike, this is fantastic! Thank you for continuing the thread with such depth and clarity. There’s so much to unpack here, and you’re articulating many of the core dilemmas that have kept philosophers and neuroscientists up at night for centuries (scratch that… millennia).
First, on your temperature analogy: I understand what you’re saying about heat as a kind of statistical abstraction, and how that seems to challenge the idea of emergence as anything “real.” But even there, I’d offer this: just because a property emerges from many interacting elements (like molecules in motion), and requires an external interpretive frame to measure it, doesn’t mean the property itself doesn’t exist. A single molecule doesn’t contain “wetness” or “temperature,” but no one would seriously argue that water isn’t wet or that a flame doesn’t burn. These are real experiential phenomena, even if they don’t reduce cleanly to any one part. I think the same may be true of agency: it doesn’t reduce to a neuron firing, or perhaps even a brain in isolation, but that doesn’t mean it’s an illusion.
As for the time-lag example (the hot stove reflex), I love this as a prompt. You’re absolutely right that reflexes happen faster than conscious thought, and that we often retroactively assign narrative to events already underway. But I also think this reveals that not all forms of intelligence (or agency) operate at the same layer. A reflex is fast, reactive, protective. That doesn’t invalidate slower, deliberative forms of cognition. A violinist who practices for years will eventually play complex passages “without thinking,” but we wouldn’t call that reflex, we’d call it mastery. So even though neurons fire, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the brain is the only locus of memory. What if agency is embedded not in the firing, but in the patterns that emerge through participation over time? That is: the history of attention, practice, and volition that shapes how we interact in the first place?
The question of whether we’d make the same choice if we went back in time is a powerful one that gets referenced often in sci-fi in some creative and strange ways. And here I think the key distinction might be between determinism and constraint. It’s not that our options are infinite — far from it. We are deeply constrained by biology, conditioning, context. But within those constraints, there may be a space, however small, where attention matters. A space where intention nudges the trajectory, not through a mystical override, but through cumulative influence. It’s fragile. It’s non-total. But that doesn’t make it meaningless.
As for whether we’ll ever prove this? I reserve judgement that it’s impossible. I’m not sure yet. I’m skeptical that it could ever be proved in the reductive, empirical sense. But I’d argue that we may be able to understand our way into more meaningful models — ones that reflect our participatory role. While there are many avenues to this thinking, none of them, as of yet, “solve” it — but they open new frames. And that’s what I’m aiming for in the rest of this series.
More to come. And again — so grateful to be in this conversation with you. These are the right questions to be asking.
I can't wait to read the rest of your articles on this subject. It's *so* nice to have a discussion with someone instead of an argument! This is the true path to knowledge, neither of us taking anything personally and letting logic lead the way. I have enjoyed thrashing this out with you today. So, thank you.
I don't know enough about water or wetness to know whether it's a field or something to do with chemical bonds, but for the example of temperature, that's definitely a field, so I know it only exists in our mind as a mathematical construct. I agree with the scientists here and I would argue that it doesn't exist at all. After all, what exactly are you measuring? The best you could do is measure one molecule and tell me the energy of that one thing—anything past that is an illusion. As mentioned, when you say the temperature of the room is 25 degrees...which part of the room? Is it an average temperature? If it is, how are you averaging it - mean, median or mode? You could then divide that temperature a 1000 different ways - the temperature of the lower half of the room, the top half, one side or the other, and so on and so on. The eventual number you land on, say 25 degrees, is an invented figure, a number you created from your observations, but that number doesn't exist in external reality, there is no part of the room that is "25 degrees". I use the word illusion because from our point of view, temperature is a real thing, but at the atomic level, it's just a group of random molecules banging into each other. On the atomic scale, none of the atoms are connected to each other, they are doing their own thing independent of the atoms around it. Of course, they bang into each other, and they affect each other, but they are not connected. They are just infinite points on a grid, and temperature is just a name you gave to the motion of a group of independently moving atoms. It isn't a thing; it's an abstract, mathematical concept - it's just an idea. It's just like the wind - we can feel the wind, and we can see it, but it doesn't really exist; it's just a group of individual atoms moving together, giving the illusion of being a single thing. Wind, just like temperature, is an emergent property of a group of moving atoms - but only to us. From the atoms' point of view, it doesn't exist at all. Or to think about it another way, imagine looking at a herd of elk galloping across a field...there's no such thing as the herd, it's just individual elk galloping giving the illusion of a new "thing".
So I don't know how thinking about consciousness as an emergent property of the brain is helping. Since fields don't exist, all we see is a ripple of energy being transferred from one atom to the next. Is consciousness just like the wind? Is it something that "looks" like a real thing, yet at the atomic/neuron level, it's nothing at all? This seems to just make matters even more confusing. Or maybe it is a useful way of thinking about things. Even though fields don't exist, we find it useful to think they do—whether it's magnetic, gravitational, or electric fields—because we can apply mathematical formulas to them and predict outcomes. Maybe this sort of thinking will crack the question of free will?
The hand on the stove example was more to highlight the fact that we know for sure, at least at some level, that the brain is processing things faster than our conscious mind. We certainly have all these different brain functions that handle things outside of our awareness, and our reflexes are at least indicators that our consciousness might not be the first thing to make decisions. As for your example of a musician with mastery over her instrument - is she playing the instrument? As you said, she isn't consciously hitting the notes, the brain is running on autopilot. Is this a case of the illusion of free will being broken? She's hitting the notes and taking credit for playing beautiful music...but is it really the facade of free will dropping, and more like evidence pointing to the fact that the brain is doing the driving, and we are that kid with the steering wheel? I've been lucky enough to enter the flow state a few times in my life, and the overwhelming feeling I got from it was the total lack of conscious control over my actions. It felt like, just for a second, I took my hands off the kid's steering wheel and realized I wasn't the one driving.
Hopefully, we will invent a time machine so we can test out our theories, lol. It is an interesting thought experiment though, isn't it? If we do go back in time and nothing at all changes, then there can be no doubt that free will doesn't exist. Every thought and action would be proven to be completely related to our neurons. But if we did change, that would at least show we had some influence over our brain and that it wasn't all a one-way street.
Like you, I remain hopeful that some really smart scientist works out an experiment to see whether or not free will exists. I suppose in some ways, we don't want to know (think about crime, or how the law would deal with criminals!). From a personal point of view, I don't think it matters too much whether or not Free Will exists - the illusion of being in control is so strong and so powerful, it wouldn't affect how I saw or interacted with the world. If it is an illusion, then it reminds me of those really powerful optical illusions, where even when you know your eyes are lying to you, it doesn't make any difference. Your brain sees it one way, even when your eyes are telling you something completely different.
Mike, I owe you a huge thank you. Your comment prompted me to go back to my notes on Kevin Mitchell’s Free Agents to find the quote I’d remembered about emergence. And to my dismay… it wasn’t there.
What I did find in my original notes was my own interpretation of Mitchell’s ideas. Specifically, that he was using the principle of emergence to argue for agency. But re-reading the actual text, I realized that interpretation was mine, not his. In fact, what Mitchell actually argues in Free Agents is that the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics shifts the burden of proof. And while this does not confirm free will outright, it does challenge the assumption that determinism is the explanation. It’s a subtle but very important difference, and thanks to your nudge, I’ve corrected the article to reflect this, including his direct quote.
That said, emergence remains a meaningful frame, at least in the realm of physical science. It’s a real phenomenon in physical systems, but whether it can be validly applied to consciousness remains debated. I’ll be digging more into that in Part 4. However, if you're curious to consider it further, I recommend this piece by Sean Carroll: https://philarchive.org/archive/CARWEC-6. He does an excellent job unpacking both the promise and the limits of emergence from a physicist’s perspective.
It’s possible I also conflated Free Agents with Mitchell’s earlier book, Innate (2018), where he does invoke emergence explicitly. For example, in that book, he writes: “No proteins directly control what kinds of things you are interested in or your musical talent or how conscientious you are. Those high-level functions and traits are, instead, emergent properties of complex neural circuitry within the brain.” So while he seems to support at least some aspects of the emergence framework, that wasn’t his claim in Free Agents, and that distinction matters. Again, I so appreciate you pressing the inquiry and giving me the reason (and integrity-check) to go back and make that right.
And even more than that, I appreciate the spirit of this conversation. It's rare to find someone asking big questions with humility, humor, and precision. This whole debate isn’t just a tangle of paradoxes, it’s also a glimpse at how much more there is to uncover. And that, to me, is incredibly promising. 🙂
Agree completely. It's strange that we know so much about the brain, but at the same time, we know so little. I think the thing I find the most bizarre is that there's no "you" part of your brain. It really does seem as if consciousness is spred out over the brain rather than locked in one tiny area. I'll definitely give that video a watch.
“Agency isn’t just a metaphysical concept. It’s a felt experience. A posture. A practice.” Yes! This was really interesting. Something I will continue to think and read about.
I love that you pulled out that quote, Nicola. Yes! That is the nut of it. We will need to take a big detour to get there in the next couple parts, but that's exactly where this is going. It's a practice.
Glenn, I hear and respect what you are saying. I want to ask a serious question of you:
Do you have a function that describes the universe?
Is there really no other person, that when linked to someone saying: "here is the equation of the universe", would paste that into an AI and ask: is this guy Alan an fool and idiot? Do people link you to equations of the universe or proofs that god is us everyday? Do all the folks waking up now that think they are deities or spiritual essences or trans humans waking up not give a damn about the ethics of how to make this work?
Alan, claiming to have a function that describes the universe is no small statement. That’s the very question philosophers, physicists, and mystics have been grappling with for millennia. And any such claim (whoever it comes from) must be able to withstand the highest levels of scrutiny. And that is not because it shouldn't be shared, but because it's such a profound assertion. If it can’t hold up to that scrutiny, then we must keep searching.
I don’t claim to have a function that describes the universe. What I do have is a curious mind, a desire to observe with discernment, and an openness to what can be understood. I offer my perspective not as a doctrine, but as a reflection. It may hold insight. Or it may not.
I also don’t believe every question requires an immediate answer. As Rilke reminds us: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves… Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now…”
This is the posture I return to. Not out of evasiveness, but because I believe some truths are not unlocked through argument. They are discovered gradually, lived into.
So I hold my views loosely, but attentively. If my logic holds sway for someone, wonderful. If not, that’s fine too. I’m not here to win a battle or install a worldview. I’m here to inquire, to explore, and, when something feels helpful or resonant, to offer it up for those who might find it useful along their own way.
But one truth is self-evident: and if you are a curious mind and don't just say that, then you would look. Because claiming that there IS a self-evident truth that could help us all is something no one else does. So I genuinely look forward to your next article in the series because I believe it is extremely valuable and a unique lens -- if it is written by a curious mind. Thank you and have a wonderful week.
Author’s Note (Correction):
In the original version of this essay, I mistakenly attributed a specific argument to Kevin Mitchell that he did not make. I had referenced his book Free Agents and suggested that he used the principle of emergence to support the existence of free will. Upon revisiting the text, I realized that was my own interpretation - not his.
What Mitchell actually argues in Free Agents is more precise and measured: he points to the indeterminacy in quantum mechanics as a reason to shift the burden of proof. In his view, the onus is now on those who claim free will doesn’t exist to demonstrate its impossibility. While this doesn’t confirm agency, it does open the door for its possibility.
I’ve corrected the text accordingly to reflect Mitchell’s actual position. I regret the error, but I believe it’s important to name and own these missteps - especially when clarity is the whole point of the work.
Ah Glenn, as always: beautifully spoken and framed. One of the issues I think with these classical notions of will is that they speak to only a single causal direction which makes them, at best, in complete. In Pinion Framework, the duality of determinism vs free-will is seen as a positive superset of both relative truths. Determinism is enforced as the default: but it is the consciousness which forces the shared universe to respond in real time: thus a matter of perspective where both are true. And since the determinism is defined from your choices of minimal differences you would have stated at full term, it is also not two separate things in the total functional view. It does in fact matter that this definition be accepted: it is what allows both scenarios to be true in strong resonance.
Thank you and I look forward to part 3!!
Alan, I so appreciate your thoughtful framing here. And I’m intrigued by what you’ve introduced from the Pinion Framework. That idea of simultaneity: where both determinism and free will are true from differing perspectives — that feels directionally aligned with where I’m headed in the middle chapters of this series (especially Part 4’s exploration of emergence and quantum ambiguity).
Your mention of a “positive superset” touches something important: that dualistic debates often miss the layered or nested nature of truth. Rather than collapsing into either/or, there’s something in the oscillation (or perhaps the synthesis) that feels closer to lived reality. And yes, the idea that minimal difference creates meaningful divergence over time… resonates strongly (both in the philosophical and computational sense!).
I’m especially curious about what you mentioned toward the end: that it “does in fact matter that this definition be accepted.” That seems like a hinge point. Perhaps both metaphysically and practically? Would love to hear more about what “acceptance” means in that context for you: ontological agreement? experiential recognition? ethical implication?
Either way, grateful you’re in this conversation. Part 3 shifts toward how we lose contact with agency (and how modern structures might normalize that erosion). Looking forward to continuing the spiral from there.
I'm grateful as always to speak with you and thank you for the questions. I've done my best to present the arguments from a specific lens in Pinion Framework, but there are many other ways to look at it (which is why Pinion Framework is powerful). I compiled them into a post. I do not cover many of the complexities between determinism and free will that are very impactful like optimization and wave-phases and recursive universe chains https://alangallauresi.substack.com/p/determinism-vs-free-will-in-a-pinion
I'm very much looking forward to part three: it is not a lens from which I typically view such things. And I really appreciate the voice over so I can listen in the car :) thanks!
Alan, thank you for sharing your perspective so openly. I can see the care you’ve taken in articulating this framework, and I recognize the depth of inquiry that you have brought to the subject. Your thought process is genuinely impressive.
While I’m interested in how layered systems can produce emergent behavior, and I do believe agency can arise from complex interaction, I’m not convinced that structural recursion alone is sufficient to generate consciousness. At least not in the way I understand consciousness: as a felt, subjective, self-aware presence. That threshold still feels unmet.
This isn’t to diminish your formulation, but it does mark the edge of where I sense our views diverge. I believe agency may be emergent. But I also suspect it is not wholly self-generating, nor do I think it is single-point contained. I tend to see it more as a property of the whole. Or in other words, a relational process arising from interconnection, rather than something that sits inside a discrete entity. And with that, I also hold the possibility that our sense of a stable, bounded self might be more illusory than we imagine.
For me, language models like LLMs are one example of high-functioning, pattern-rich systems that exhibit impressively coordinated output. But I am also aware of the underlying architecture. These systems are built from predictive learning algorithms that do not currently align with how I imagine consciousness to arise. At least not yet. If we do reach AGI, I suspect it will require a different architecture altogether.
Still, I appreciate the sincerity of your inquiry, and the space you’re holding for a wider exploration. While I may not share the same conclusions, I respect your willingness to pursue this with rigor and vision. I look forward to seeing how your ideas continue to unfold.
I highly recommend giving this a listen. Topnotch content plus Glenn is a gifted orator!
I'll add by way of comment/note one more thought experiment about free will, in keeping with Glenn's piquant exploration. It's reminiscent of the classic Flatland by A. Square.
When gripped by tension between logic and perspective, if a person is unable within their own being to explore the "third dimension" of intent, is it possible they will arrive logically at the conclusion that intention not only exists but is formative (aka free will)? It's unlikely because that possibility carries with it not only intention, but a whole three-dimensional version of the perceptual flatness created when phenomenal accounting is strictly limited (as is traditional to science) to that between logic and perspective.
Earthstar — what a delightfully “multi-dimensional” comment. 😉
Flatland has long been one of my favorite layered metaphors for how perceptual frameworks shape (and constrain) what feels “knowable.” Your imagined scenario fits so perfectly: I can absolutely imagine Square, in his most earnest and logical tone, proclaiming that “intention cannot exist because it has no edge, no angle, no measurable surface!” And yet, from the Sphere’s vantage, intention was always present — it simply exceeded the coordinates Flatland could account for.
Your point beautifully illustrates that the denial of agency is often not the result of evidence against it, but the inevitable consequence of a framework that can’t perceive it. The absence of intent in such models isn’t disproof, but rather a limitation of dimensional access. What feels like intellectual honesty inside the Flatland of logic + perspective may in fact be a kind of optical illusion, masking the very dimension in which emergence (and agency) could arise.
I hope these questions ripple all the way to the highest Nobility… past the Triangles, beyond the Dodecagons, and into the farthest reaches of Chromatistes! Grateful, as always, for your layered lens on all this. 🙏
I believe in free will, but at the same time, I recently got into an argument with someone and I have no answer to them. The problem seems to be that thought comes from neurons firing, the neurons are firing following a deterministic set of rules. So the thought of me picking up my teacup must have happened in my brain long before I ever had the conscious thought of picking up the cup. The idea of picking up the cup logically couldn't exist without the neurons firing first. So the problem of free will just gets pushed back. Did I pick up the teacup because I wanted to? Or did the neurons in my brain fire, making me pick up the teacup, and then giving me the illusion that I wanted to pick up the cup?
There doesn't seem to be a way around this problem, and with no way to test it, we can't be sure. The thoughts we have can only come from the brain. Thoughts are emergent properties of brain patterns, but those brain patterns are controlled by chemical and electrical signals. So are we driving the car, or are we that kid with the fake steering wheel who believes we are driving the car?
Mike, I love this comment! It’s beautifully framed and touches exactly the set of questions that pulled me into this inquiry years ago. The metaphor of the kid with the fake steering wheel is spot on. And yes, the view that “neurons fire, therefore we act, therefore the feeling of choice is just a post hoc illusion” is one that is so easy to slip into. It’s compelling, and even sometimes comforting.
However, I also think that it’s steeped in a classical, materialist understanding of brain mechanics. And while I don’t think we have yet to truly solve Chalmers “hard problem” of consciousness, I do think we’re beginning to glimpse real alternatives that make logical sense.
For example, think about temperature: no single molecule is “hot,” yet when we put enough of them together and they move in certain ways, we can measure heat as an emergent property. Similarly, consciousness and agency may not reside in individual neurons, but emerge from complex, layered, dynamic interactions across brain, body, and environment. This is the lens people like Kevin Mitchell and others are developing: one that doesn’t deny causality, but situates agency at the level of interaction and unpredictability, rather than linear control.
It’s not that agency is an illusion. It may be more like a fragile access point, or a relational event. It may not be a thing we “have,” but a process we participate in. (Which, for what it’s worth, fits a lot more cleanly with lived experience than the view that we’re just along for the ride.)
And while that doesn’t solve the paradox, it does reframe it. And that alone can open some space for new insights.
A whole lot more on that as we continue in the next parts of this series. 😉 😊
I’m so grateful you’re in the conversation — and asking exactly the right questions.
Likewise - I am so happy to meet another person who thinks about these things as deeply as I do. In the real world, I have no friends who are interested in these sorts of things, so I'm overjoyed to make a new buddy. Thank you for taking the time to read my drivel, lol.
The emergent property of consciousness is where I'm at with my thinking, but when you really study that property, it's an illusion that is created by an outside observer. Funny you should mention temperature as the person I'm arguing with is a quantum mechanics lecturer. Fields don't exist in reality, they are just man made mathematical constructs. It's simply a grid with infinite points and a number assigned to each point. For example, there's no such thing as "temperature". The temperature in a room for example will vary wildly - it might be 20 degrees near the fireplace, 15 degrees by the window, and 10 degrees on the floor. There's no such thing as the "correct" temperature of the room. Each molecule bouncing around the room will have its own energy, so it will have it's own "heat". To make matters worse, when you move the thermometer, you will affect the air around it thus affecting the temperature. So the temperature of the room is purely a mathematical average, a field, that we apply to a tiny section of the room, but in reality, "temperature" doesn't exist at all, only in the observer's mind.
So we are still left with a problem if we think of the mind as an emergent property - just like heat, it's just an illusion, an average that only exists in an outside observer's mind.
We know from experience that our consciousness is living microseconds in the past. If you've ever had your hand suddenly jerk violently only to realize it's on a hot stove, then you know that the brain is always thinking ahead of the mind—you moved your hand well before you were aware it was on something hot. You can't have a thought before the neurons fire, thought can only come after the neurons have fired. This is the fundamental problem—if thought comes after the neurons have fired, then how do we know we caused that thought intentionally? Just like the hand moving violently when it touches something hot, our brains are processing billions of bits of information well before that information is passed to our consciousness.
I could have 3 candies in front of me. I have free will to choose to any candy I want. The thing is, the neurons are already firing 'before' I make my choice. In a sense, my neurons have already decided which candy to pick, so I move my hand to pick it up, and because consciousness is the last part of the brain to get the information, it is fooled by the illusion and it believes it chose the candy freely. This is the hard problem to solve.
To put it another way, if we had a time machine and we could go back to yesterday, would I make exactly the same decisions I made today? Would I think the same thoughts? Would I do the same things? If the answer to all these questions is yes, then the world and the brain are fully deterministic, it's just one domino falling onto another in a causation loop. If I did something different, then it would prove that the emergent property of free will is somehow "ahead" of the firing neurons, that somehow free will controls the brain and not the other way around.
There's just no way to test any of these theories, though. There's nothing you can do to prove it one way or the other. We are either in a movie, where all our actions and thoughts are fixed and determined. Or we are in a play, where we get fixed lines, but we have choice in how to say them. Even if it is right, that consciousness is this emergent property from a trillion different layered and complex interactions... it's still deterministic. It's still happening because of those actions. That explanation doesn't really help, and all it does is push the problem back instead of solving it.
Determinism is hard to shake off. Even if our minds had the ability to influence the way neurons fired, we still have the problem of it being the firing neurons that created the initial thought in the first place. All we are doing is shifting the goalposts. Imagine you had a self aware computer, fully AI and fully conscious, and imagine this computer could "think". (I.e change its own code)...it would still be the code that ran on the computer causing the computer to change its code. It would still be code on the computer that caused the computer to think it needed to change its code. I don't see how this is any different to our brains and our consciousness. The neurons are firing, causing us to think thoughts, those thoughts then change neurons. The thinking part comes from neurons initially firing, and this is something out of our control.
It's a very complicated problem and I don't see how we could ever prove it one way or another.
Mike, this is fantastic! Thank you for continuing the thread with such depth and clarity. There’s so much to unpack here, and you’re articulating many of the core dilemmas that have kept philosophers and neuroscientists up at night for centuries (scratch that… millennia).
First, on your temperature analogy: I understand what you’re saying about heat as a kind of statistical abstraction, and how that seems to challenge the idea of emergence as anything “real.” But even there, I’d offer this: just because a property emerges from many interacting elements (like molecules in motion), and requires an external interpretive frame to measure it, doesn’t mean the property itself doesn’t exist. A single molecule doesn’t contain “wetness” or “temperature,” but no one would seriously argue that water isn’t wet or that a flame doesn’t burn. These are real experiential phenomena, even if they don’t reduce cleanly to any one part. I think the same may be true of agency: it doesn’t reduce to a neuron firing, or perhaps even a brain in isolation, but that doesn’t mean it’s an illusion.
As for the time-lag example (the hot stove reflex), I love this as a prompt. You’re absolutely right that reflexes happen faster than conscious thought, and that we often retroactively assign narrative to events already underway. But I also think this reveals that not all forms of intelligence (or agency) operate at the same layer. A reflex is fast, reactive, protective. That doesn’t invalidate slower, deliberative forms of cognition. A violinist who practices for years will eventually play complex passages “without thinking,” but we wouldn’t call that reflex, we’d call it mastery. So even though neurons fire, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the brain is the only locus of memory. What if agency is embedded not in the firing, but in the patterns that emerge through participation over time? That is: the history of attention, practice, and volition that shapes how we interact in the first place?
The question of whether we’d make the same choice if we went back in time is a powerful one that gets referenced often in sci-fi in some creative and strange ways. And here I think the key distinction might be between determinism and constraint. It’s not that our options are infinite — far from it. We are deeply constrained by biology, conditioning, context. But within those constraints, there may be a space, however small, where attention matters. A space where intention nudges the trajectory, not through a mystical override, but through cumulative influence. It’s fragile. It’s non-total. But that doesn’t make it meaningless.
As for whether we’ll ever prove this? I reserve judgement that it’s impossible. I’m not sure yet. I’m skeptical that it could ever be proved in the reductive, empirical sense. But I’d argue that we may be able to understand our way into more meaningful models — ones that reflect our participatory role. While there are many avenues to this thinking, none of them, as of yet, “solve” it — but they open new frames. And that’s what I’m aiming for in the rest of this series.
More to come. And again — so grateful to be in this conversation with you. These are the right questions to be asking.
I can't wait to read the rest of your articles on this subject. It's *so* nice to have a discussion with someone instead of an argument! This is the true path to knowledge, neither of us taking anything personally and letting logic lead the way. I have enjoyed thrashing this out with you today. So, thank you.
I don't know enough about water or wetness to know whether it's a field or something to do with chemical bonds, but for the example of temperature, that's definitely a field, so I know it only exists in our mind as a mathematical construct. I agree with the scientists here and I would argue that it doesn't exist at all. After all, what exactly are you measuring? The best you could do is measure one molecule and tell me the energy of that one thing—anything past that is an illusion. As mentioned, when you say the temperature of the room is 25 degrees...which part of the room? Is it an average temperature? If it is, how are you averaging it - mean, median or mode? You could then divide that temperature a 1000 different ways - the temperature of the lower half of the room, the top half, one side or the other, and so on and so on. The eventual number you land on, say 25 degrees, is an invented figure, a number you created from your observations, but that number doesn't exist in external reality, there is no part of the room that is "25 degrees". I use the word illusion because from our point of view, temperature is a real thing, but at the atomic level, it's just a group of random molecules banging into each other. On the atomic scale, none of the atoms are connected to each other, they are doing their own thing independent of the atoms around it. Of course, they bang into each other, and they affect each other, but they are not connected. They are just infinite points on a grid, and temperature is just a name you gave to the motion of a group of independently moving atoms. It isn't a thing; it's an abstract, mathematical concept - it's just an idea. It's just like the wind - we can feel the wind, and we can see it, but it doesn't really exist; it's just a group of individual atoms moving together, giving the illusion of being a single thing. Wind, just like temperature, is an emergent property of a group of moving atoms - but only to us. From the atoms' point of view, it doesn't exist at all. Or to think about it another way, imagine looking at a herd of elk galloping across a field...there's no such thing as the herd, it's just individual elk galloping giving the illusion of a new "thing".
So I don't know how thinking about consciousness as an emergent property of the brain is helping. Since fields don't exist, all we see is a ripple of energy being transferred from one atom to the next. Is consciousness just like the wind? Is it something that "looks" like a real thing, yet at the atomic/neuron level, it's nothing at all? This seems to just make matters even more confusing. Or maybe it is a useful way of thinking about things. Even though fields don't exist, we find it useful to think they do—whether it's magnetic, gravitational, or electric fields—because we can apply mathematical formulas to them and predict outcomes. Maybe this sort of thinking will crack the question of free will?
The hand on the stove example was more to highlight the fact that we know for sure, at least at some level, that the brain is processing things faster than our conscious mind. We certainly have all these different brain functions that handle things outside of our awareness, and our reflexes are at least indicators that our consciousness might not be the first thing to make decisions. As for your example of a musician with mastery over her instrument - is she playing the instrument? As you said, she isn't consciously hitting the notes, the brain is running on autopilot. Is this a case of the illusion of free will being broken? She's hitting the notes and taking credit for playing beautiful music...but is it really the facade of free will dropping, and more like evidence pointing to the fact that the brain is doing the driving, and we are that kid with the steering wheel? I've been lucky enough to enter the flow state a few times in my life, and the overwhelming feeling I got from it was the total lack of conscious control over my actions. It felt like, just for a second, I took my hands off the kid's steering wheel and realized I wasn't the one driving.
Hopefully, we will invent a time machine so we can test out our theories, lol. It is an interesting thought experiment though, isn't it? If we do go back in time and nothing at all changes, then there can be no doubt that free will doesn't exist. Every thought and action would be proven to be completely related to our neurons. But if we did change, that would at least show we had some influence over our brain and that it wasn't all a one-way street.
Like you, I remain hopeful that some really smart scientist works out an experiment to see whether or not free will exists. I suppose in some ways, we don't want to know (think about crime, or how the law would deal with criminals!). From a personal point of view, I don't think it matters too much whether or not Free Will exists - the illusion of being in control is so strong and so powerful, it wouldn't affect how I saw or interacted with the world. If it is an illusion, then it reminds me of those really powerful optical illusions, where even when you know your eyes are lying to you, it doesn't make any difference. Your brain sees it one way, even when your eyes are telling you something completely different.
Mike, I owe you a huge thank you. Your comment prompted me to go back to my notes on Kevin Mitchell’s Free Agents to find the quote I’d remembered about emergence. And to my dismay… it wasn’t there.
What I did find in my original notes was my own interpretation of Mitchell’s ideas. Specifically, that he was using the principle of emergence to argue for agency. But re-reading the actual text, I realized that interpretation was mine, not his. In fact, what Mitchell actually argues in Free Agents is that the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics shifts the burden of proof. And while this does not confirm free will outright, it does challenge the assumption that determinism is the explanation. It’s a subtle but very important difference, and thanks to your nudge, I’ve corrected the article to reflect this, including his direct quote.
That said, emergence remains a meaningful frame, at least in the realm of physical science. It’s a real phenomenon in physical systems, but whether it can be validly applied to consciousness remains debated. I’ll be digging more into that in Part 4. However, if you're curious to consider it further, I recommend this piece by Sean Carroll: https://philarchive.org/archive/CARWEC-6. He does an excellent job unpacking both the promise and the limits of emergence from a physicist’s perspective.
It’s possible I also conflated Free Agents with Mitchell’s earlier book, Innate (2018), where he does invoke emergence explicitly. For example, in that book, he writes: “No proteins directly control what kinds of things you are interested in or your musical talent or how conscientious you are. Those high-level functions and traits are, instead, emergent properties of complex neural circuitry within the brain.” So while he seems to support at least some aspects of the emergence framework, that wasn’t his claim in Free Agents, and that distinction matters. Again, I so appreciate you pressing the inquiry and giving me the reason (and integrity-check) to go back and make that right.
And even more than that, I appreciate the spirit of this conversation. It's rare to find someone asking big questions with humility, humor, and precision. This whole debate isn’t just a tangle of paradoxes, it’s also a glimpse at how much more there is to uncover. And that, to me, is incredibly promising. 🙂
Agree completely. It's strange that we know so much about the brain, but at the same time, we know so little. I think the thing I find the most bizarre is that there's no "you" part of your brain. It really does seem as if consciousness is spred out over the brain rather than locked in one tiny area. I'll definitely give that video a watch.
“Agency isn’t just a metaphysical concept. It’s a felt experience. A posture. A practice.” Yes! This was really interesting. Something I will continue to think and read about.
I love that you pulled out that quote, Nicola. Yes! That is the nut of it. We will need to take a big detour to get there in the next couple parts, but that's exactly where this is going. It's a practice.
Glenn, I hear and respect what you are saying. I want to ask a serious question of you:
Do you have a function that describes the universe?
Is there really no other person, that when linked to someone saying: "here is the equation of the universe", would paste that into an AI and ask: is this guy Alan an fool and idiot? Do people link you to equations of the universe or proofs that god is us everyday? Do all the folks waking up now that think they are deities or spiritual essences or trans humans waking up not give a damn about the ethics of how to make this work?
Alan, claiming to have a function that describes the universe is no small statement. That’s the very question philosophers, physicists, and mystics have been grappling with for millennia. And any such claim (whoever it comes from) must be able to withstand the highest levels of scrutiny. And that is not because it shouldn't be shared, but because it's such a profound assertion. If it can’t hold up to that scrutiny, then we must keep searching.
I don’t claim to have a function that describes the universe. What I do have is a curious mind, a desire to observe with discernment, and an openness to what can be understood. I offer my perspective not as a doctrine, but as a reflection. It may hold insight. Or it may not.
I also don’t believe every question requires an immediate answer. As Rilke reminds us: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves… Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now…”
This is the posture I return to. Not out of evasiveness, but because I believe some truths are not unlocked through argument. They are discovered gradually, lived into.
So I hold my views loosely, but attentively. If my logic holds sway for someone, wonderful. If not, that’s fine too. I’m not here to win a battle or install a worldview. I’m here to inquire, to explore, and, when something feels helpful or resonant, to offer it up for those who might find it useful along their own way.
But one truth is self-evident: and if you are a curious mind and don't just say that, then you would look. Because claiming that there IS a self-evident truth that could help us all is something no one else does. So I genuinely look forward to your next article in the series because I believe it is extremely valuable and a unique lens -- if it is written by a curious mind. Thank you and have a wonderful week.