Fate, Free Will, and Sarda being a jackass

[The Wizard Who Did It]

Originally Posted by Fifthfiend

What I'm getting at here is process is irrelevant because whatever the process is, that's self. If that's your brain taking in sensory input, gathering reactions from an assorted shit-ton of neurons and hormones and chemicals and whatever all else is in there variously representing instinct, appetites, needs, reflexes, consciousness, beliefs, morals, and whatever, then that's what self is. If the brain takes in sensory input, runs it through all that other shit the brain has chugging along in there, and then hands that off to the brain-pilot who does whatever it is he does with it and then comes to the same conclusion that is whatever thing I ultimately end up doing, then that's what self is.

What I'm getting at here is that I'm defining self as something which can make choices beyond physical and chemical laws, and by extension our choices are not by products of some ball of mass exploding trillions of years ago.

Because to me, there's no free will if what you do is the by product of concrete physical laws. It's almost exactly the same as mentioning that there's no free will if some God or whatever forces you to do some action.

Actually, I guess that's a decent example to my overall point. Let's say Aphrodite puts a spell on Medea to fall in love with Jason. Now whenever she has a choice to help Jason get the Golden Fleece or to not help him at all, there are certain processes that go on in her brain, and are indeed a part of her "self". However, those processes are being regulated by an outside force, specifically the spell put on Medea. Because of this spell, Medea decides to help Jason, leave her father, dice up her brother, and in the end gets royally screwed over.

Does she have free will? I say no, because even though the choices got passed by her self, there was some external force that had complete control over what decision she made. To me, the laws of physics are an external force to this choice-making system. You seem to disagree, and that's fine.