Is free-will an illusion?

First my dear Osso I think of myself as just a tad smart dog...not worried I am what I am in a generally dumb species in the galaxy no one wants to talk to...

Second, on dualism, please note that I am not a materialist, although what I believe in, through logic has a lot of common points with materialists...the fact of the matter is that no one knows what matter exactly is and energy is even worse, even more mysterious....a modern account rather speaks of information and if nothing else at least that is a new interesting take on the issue, a breeze of fresh air into the fraiming of the problem. What is the point I am trying to make ? Well if you are a sort of spiritualist whatever that means you do not need to be a dualist either...the point is ONE substance is enough to account for reality and its mechanics...having TWO is what does not make sense as it brakes down conection between sequences of events or phenomena. Two substances fundamentally different would not interact. Have a nice day/evening wherever you are.
Best regards Filipe de Albuquerque.

I just seek coherence. If minds are not important or existent, then why do you personalize everything?

Call it "common sense" all you want. You and exist, evidently enough to talk, so enough with this futile searching for holes in the cogito.

"You" or "I" just like anything else is a concept, a cultural "social construct", or better a cultural "artefact" that flows from experiencing with a pov a frame of reference. That which "we" naively call the "I"...Whatever and in what form Experiencing "materializes" here n there with different povs flowing from the Whole is irrelevant to the fact EXPERIENCING itself cannot be Universally denied as first order Reality without dissolving and denying the very epistemic problem we raised. In simple form, that is to mean, you cannot say Reality is an illusion is Real...its a contradiction in terms...something has to give somewhere.
If Experiencing itself was a construct, an illusion of some sort, then epistemic problems would not validly exist. This in turn REQUIRES LOGICALLY one cannot deny experience without unravelling and completely dissolving the epistemic problem itself.

We may debate all the afternoon whether the "I think therefore I am" of Descartes is a complete account of the problem...its pointless as the "I" is as mysterious as anything else....Jumping to an upper level of reasoning we have to stick with something that goes beyond the multiple perceptions of "I's" and self identities...we stick with experience. Experience is the World.
In that sense we come full circle back to Realism again with a small twist. Reality being whatever it is, even if beyond our epistemic limitations is nonetheless True in the same way a true illusion is still an experienced FACTUAL illusion. The phenomena is happening. While you cannot finger where it fits in the order of things because its "illusory" you CAN nonetheless say its occurring and in itself is a pov with validity of existence.
If I dream of a flying pink elephant then its true I dream of a flying pink elephant.

True; our experience IS our reality.

Why in hell would the mind be more "mysterious" than a plate of pasta? The mind is a useful concept that organises "perceptions" into sets or sub-spaces within which "perception" is shared and combined somewhat freely in the pool of consciousness. I don't know if you noticed, but there's more than one mind in this universe. "Perception" seems structured, cut in sets that can't read each other's "mind", but within which information flows freely.

Each of these "perception-sharing spaces" that we call "minds" appears to coincide topographically with individuals of the species Homo sapiens. One homo sapiens seems like attached to one "mind". In order to communicate these "minds" have apparently domesticated the mouth of the homo sapiens with whom they "coincide" to make funny noise, and their hands write little scribble on paper or screens... Did you notice all that?

When one homo sapiens individual dies, his mind can't communicate anymore.

All this is sooo freakin mysterious, right?

Excuse my French but do analytic philosophers really needs to belabor any single micro micro baby steps? Gime Descartes any day.

Now you switched to talking brains instead of consciousness and minds ?
Who's to say minds are not an organized sub product of a set of information all related in an ecosystem that gives you the apparent experience of free will and choice and your perception of self is valid ? Where is exactly the "I" in the brain, eh ? Latest Neuroscientists talk about elaborate tricks in perception and how we come to experience consciousness. From my standing pov you are just an elaborate rock. A computer debiting its algorithms along with the environment around...the idea of "I" and "self" a bi product of your tricked and deluded "brain" (whatever that is out of our own self concept) in its clock working march in History. On the other hand you may say confidently experiencing with specific povs is happening. That fact is undeniable. Who, or better, what, is the author of the clock working ? Its not A or B, its Reality at large. Its a top down structure that sets you perceptually in "march" within spacetime. As a modern version of Parmenides would put it, in a out of spacetime pov you are just a sum of information, a sum of 3D frozen pictures in a big cosmological movie, he called it BEING, as opposed to that which is not and will never be...things don't come out of thin air from nothing. A NOTHING that refutes itself of existence....(cant help but laugh) BEING must be atemporal/timeless and complete as a whole....Spacetime are just the lenght of is algorithmic ORDER...what is left of the perceived "I" in that frame of view, eh ? Its less then a microbial, less then a white globule, less then a chunk of matter...its a sequence of information an algorithm within a complex system frozen in BEING. Oh what the hell I am way ahead of what you will find palatable and digestible, I will just leave it here. Later Olivier !

Off-Topic side note:

The Internet has a big merit among many. It has confronted humanity with its brute force massive stupidity !
We are freaking looking ourselves in the mirror and the picture ain't pretty !

Stupidity annoys me because it reminds me I am in it. Stupid people are my close cousins when they belong to the same species I do. If I see a stupid person immediately I see myself just a tid bit less stupid... I tell ya, its freaking scaaaaary !

Like when I was in the service, I always knew not to be the first or the last. That 'policy' has kept me out of trouble and provided me with the opportunities during my working career.

Well, if you are less than a white globule, I suppose I can forgive you for being as dumb as a rock...

But why can't YOU go over your fellow globules' lack of intelligence? Why would you expect any white globule to be any smarter than you are?

There’s an old joke about a rabbi who prostrates himself in the synagogue during the High Holy Days, crying, “Oh, Lord, before you I am nothing!” The cantor likewise prostrates himself and cries, “Oh, Lord, before you I am nothing!” The janitor, watching from the back of the synagogue, gets caught up in the fervor of the moment and joins in. “Oh, Lord,” he cries, “before you I am nothing!” The rabbi, taking note of this, nudges the cantor and whispers, “Look who thinks he’s nothing!”

As with many jokes, this one tells its own kind of truth; in this case, that even self-abasement is not entirely free of one-upmanship.

Source: http://www.godwardweb.org/lookwhothinkshe'.html

Lets get a twist on this shall we...
Are free needs an ilusion ?
Wills like needs dont pop out for no reason...
The phrasing is nonsensical...just think about what "free needs" entails in logical terms...

Why would a determinist care about logic at all? If the mind is an illusion, so is logic...

Thats because you antropomorphise Logic into logic....
I don't pretend to situate experiencing in any place as a mind as for Logic it is just the order and patterns of experiencing. No Law giver, no great mind, just REALITY !

Says who?

There is only human logic, as far as WE humans are concerned. WE have no direct intuitive access to the essence of reality and to its Logic; we're not even certain that there is ultimately any logic to it all. Even that is an hypothesis that WE postulate or play with.

That's why the mind hypothesis (yes ultimately the mind is an hypothesis like everything else but it's a useful one) is important: It allows us to situate thought in a perspective, with its episteme, its biases and vantage points. To ask questions such as "Says who?" A question that everybody can ask but you.

"Human" is a concept...for all that I know something might be "dreaming" of humans....now what ? How can you prove your claims beyond experiencing happening eh ?

Well, i can see some places but not all the places as a universal mind would do. I'm evidently local. Somewhere. In the same general place as this BODY which I feel, and can apparently move, etc.

I can only go by my personal experiences and observations. At 80 yo, I've seen more of this world than most people; been to 90 countries, all five continents, and have friends in many parts of this planet. If all that have been an illusion, I'll be happy to get more of it.

Do you know the game SIMS ?
How about you jump ahead and bring the question to a SIM AI bot ? Hey look your local reality is an illusion, you are just part of a holistic process in a program computer...how can you fully refute that ?

Now, lets not get confused here....a SIM avatar could always claim back that even if he cannot quite place the finger on what he is, or what is actually happening, his EXPERIENCING is a real experience, in the same sense dreams are REAL dreams, which by extension is a part of the full ultimate reality even if he is just an AI Avatar with the illusion of self and awareness.

My point is that we can deny any concept including self or even consciousness as somewhat obscure on what they convey but we cannot deny experiencing. Moreover I don't confuse experiencing with consciousness because consciousness tries to entail self and free will...I am not sure about any of those. I rather believe in information and communication...which to an extent are proto parts of what people call "consciousness"....so modestly I stick with a much more abstract coinage, EXPERIENCING for me suffices.