I really recommend Douglas Hofstadter's "I am a Strange Loop" (which is a quasi follow up to Godel, Escher, Bach). There is a section where he discussing how he handles the sudden passing of his wife, from a naturalistic view.

In his view (and my), who we are is the result of patterns in the brain. While this may seem rather unromantic and bleak, there is some comfort in it. As these patterns are formed through experience, the more shared experiences one has with another, the more someone understands another, the more those two people meld together. So if one of those persons passes on, much of their identiy, personality, and (really) self continues on in the other. To quote Hofstadter in the book:

"Along with Carol's desires, hopes and so on, her own personal sense of "I" is represented in my brain. Because I was so close to her, because I empathized so deeply with her, co-felt so many things with her, was so able to see things from inside her point of view when she spoke, whether it was her greatest joys or fondest hopes. Carol survives because her point of view survives...in my brain and those of others."

When we share stories and memories of lost loved ones, we aren't simply remembering them, we are breathing life into their very essence.

Very sorry for your loss. I hope maybe you can find some comfort in this.

> "Conscious experience exists."

The appearance of it certainly does. What remains an open question is the nature of consciousness and what, if any, casual power it has. Many theories feel that consciousness doesn't drive anything but it a by-product of neural activity (ex. illusionism, identity theory, etc).

You absolutely are making a (big) assumption if you want to treat consciousness as the driver behind decisions rather than the brain. (And need to address some serious questions such as how can an emergent property push around neurons such that "decisions" turn into physical actions.)

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> "the properties of the little parts of the brain are not anything like the properties of the whole person."

I don't understand how this addresses my point. I'll try to be direct - when we change the "little parts" you change the behaviour of the whole person. So the "little parts" are crucial to the discussion and cannot be hand-waved away.

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> "Free will involves conscious decisions."

I disagree and I explained why. Conscious decisions (which I called deliberations) are not "free" if the elements are constrained. I don't think you addressed that.

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> "Anything else would be like failing to find the conscious experience"

Conscious experiences arises from the sum of the "little parts" of the brain and when you change the "little parts" you change the conscious experience. So you can't just ignore the "little parts" and say they are irrelevant when they give rise to and shape the conscious experience.

I don't follow your reasoning.

Dopamine receptors alone don't produce a decision. But make changes to them and it will impact the decisions/behaviour of the person. (ex. chronic overstimulation leads to needing to chase bigger "highs" to get the same level of response.)

The VPMC alone doesn't produce a decision. But remove it/damage it/restrict it's interaction with other parts of the brain and it will impact the decisions/behaviour of the person. (Ex. leads to less emotionally driven decision making, difficulty developing and maintaining friendships/relationships.)

Oxytocin levels alone don't produce a decision. But increase or reduces them and it will impact the decisions/behaviour of the person. (Ex. higher levels lead to more trusting, less aggressive to in-group people (family, friends) but less pro-social to strangers.)

Yes, of course no single element in the brain produces a decision on it's own. But each (that is active for a given decision) does influence, to varying degrees, the ultimate decision. It is the sum of those elements that is ultimately responsible for the decision. And the sum of those elements is usually called the brain.

I agree that it might not be useful or appropriate to talk about the level of VPMC activation when talking about me choosing between soup or salad for lunch, but that doesn't mean you can handwave away the mechanical elements of the brain and assume some special property emerges when you consider the brain as a whole.

(Also, are you implying strong emergence or weak emergence?)

Thanks for sharing! I really enjoyed reading arguments from a position that differs from my own. Maybe unsurprisingly, I didn’t find them compelling enough to change my view and I’ll briefly touch on why.

One of the central aspects of your argument is scale – ignore the micro-level interactions and just discuss things at the relevant level. And you decide “agents” is the relevant level. As you put it “The little mechanical parts that make up a human body are not the relevant sources of those decisions.”

This ignores the undeniable link between brain chemistry and decision making. Hungry? High cortisol levels in your mother during pregnancy? Just dropped acid? Damage to the VMPFC (…or any part of the brain)? Tired? Chronic overstimulation of dopamine receptors? Stressed? You cannot say that the brain is irrelevant to decisions, as decisions are produced in the brain.

The fact we deliberate is also not evidence of free will. Deliberation is taking into account available options, weighing them against some decision making criteria and selecting a decision. Computer programs do the same thing – we just call it calculations instead of deliberation. The difference is we assume deliberation has some “freedom” somewhere in it, whereas calculations don’t.

But where is that “freedom”? The available options are limited by my external environment and my decision making criteria is based on my brain state at the time and history leading up to that point. Past decisions that impact my current situation or brain state would be met with the same issue. We can following the chain back in time to a point where we obviously have no control (i.e. dictated by external factors or when we hit our “first” decision which would be based on our brain state we had no control over forming – genes, in utero environment, situation we were born into, etc).

We certainly make decision that are our own and unique to us. We have “personal will” but I fail to see where the “free” part enters in. Assuming “the agent” as the level to discuss free will and ignoring the neuroscience (that is responsible for it) just begs the question.