Reply #12: i remember that article from a while back. but that doesn't mean free will doesn't exist. [View All]

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delayed awareness of decision-making processes isn't proof that free will doesn't exist, it only means that the real decisions are made on a different level than we currently conceive.

on the other hand, i agree that a delayed awareness would be consistent with free will being a mere epiphenomenom of our instincts, programming, and accumulated memories and so on, much as a hollywood clone or robot might be convinced he is alive and human and real.

personally, i think free will probably doesn't exist, that it's merely our way of putting our actions into context. certainly if you look on a big enough scale, humans are manipulable and predictable just as bees and ants and amoebas are. somehow we are convinced that lesser animals lack something we have, even though there's remarkably little difference we can point to that would explain such conceit.