rationalskepticism.org

felltoearth wrote:The more I read this thread and the more I think about, free will without the capacity to retain or process knowledge would be a pretty poor survival strategy.
So then, does our capacity to retain and process knowledge mean that we possess free will or does our capacity to retain and process knowledge create an illusion of free will?

I think we process information and retain information all the time. The processing of information is the following of an energy gradient.

I agree that that the mechanisms in the brain are very different but the brain mechanisms do follow an energy gradient; of course the oil drop did not follow the pH/energy gradient freely.

So the free part is the lack of recognition of the strings (energy gradients) or simply subtly redefining free will so as to be compatible with the energy gradients. Of course we have to be careful in redefining free will otherwise all sorts of unintended objects will have free will.