canceled TV show iZombie, btw, was about fully conscious zombies.

It's for people who who can't deal with robotic free will.

Robots do exist and are "evolving" in some sense of the word. They may evolve free will, or they may not. Science fiction is full of that speculation.

Zombies do not exist and are purely inventions of imagination-- so everyone is free to invent zombies with or without. I prefer zombies without free will, so my zombies don't have it. Yours might.

It would have to have some means of experience pain, hunger, pleasure etc. But it wouldn't need a chattering monkey brain. There are meditative techniques that either try to quiet the monkey brain, or just let it chatter while attending to other experiences such as breathing or visualizing quiet spaces.

You eat because you feel hungry, but hunger doesn't force you to eat. Rather, you can choose to delay eating for any number of reasons. But the longer you delay, the worse the hunger gets, increasing the likelihood you will eat. This experience is not part of Voltaire's chattering monkey brain, but it is a conscious experience. So a creature that felt hunger but had no mind chatter, would have free will.

But if it didn't feel hungry, how would it know when to go to Starbucks? What method would it use to determine whether to go to Starbucks or a chinese restaurant, or just wait for dinner?

If a being is not self-aware, it can react to stimuli, but it can't (consciously) choose its action.

We may want to distinguish between types of zombies. From wikipedia:

before making a big decision, that unconscious decision making process is not an act of free will?

I don't usually make decisions in my sleep; although I can't say it never happens. But, my guess is that any such decision is not a free, willful act. Believing that people have free will does not mean that you believe every decision is a free, conscious act.

I do believe that sleeping on it can clarify some issues involved in making a decision. My understanding is that the brain does process information while we sleep. When I sleep on something, I don't normally make the decision in my sleep, but do often find the decision easier to make after a night's sleep.

is unconscious processing. It is exactly what my zombies do all the time. It is also anecdotally how many brilliant breakthroughs in art and science have occurred.

So back to my question: are unconscious decisions that our conscious processes learn about after they have been made, acts of free will?

The question, as stated in post #17 was:

Your new question is:



You may not realize it, but the question is ambiguous. So, I'll give a two-part answer.

First, certain decision can be made unconsciously, without any conscious input. For instance, stepping into the street and glimpsing a nearby car speeding directly at you. In that case, we can decide to jump out of the way without any conscious processing. Such a decision is not an act of free will.

On the other hand, some decisions may be contemplated consciously, calling various arguments to mind and weighing them against each other. For instance, I get my paycheck, I am going to go to dinner with some friends later in the week, and I have to decide how much money to put in the bank and how much cash to keep on hand. I consciously consider my financial situation and the likely cost of the dinner. The actual decision is made via unconscious neuronal processing based on input from conscious processes. You might say that the unconscious made that decision; but, in this case, given that it's based on input from conscious processes, I would call that an act of free will.

Do animals have free will?

Do all humans have free will? Do they have it from birth, or does it emerge over time?

I often suspect that what is referred to as free will isn't found at the same levels in every human, and may not be an unbridled good thing.

What's the opposite of free will? Acting entirely according to nature and instinct? Subjugation to another's will?

Who among us isn't subject to some other will?

And does it matter if animals don't have free will if they don't realize it?

It is odd. I agree that when you try to pin down a definition the concept collapses.

as Jim described in 20.

Alternatively, they believe they could have made a different choice and there is no reason given why they could not have. Personally, this is why I believe in free will. I am suspicious of theoretical arguments that say I could not have made a different choice in that moment, and I can't think of an experiment that could reproduce conditions so exactly that I would have to make the same choice each time it's done.

People who don't believe in free will may present theoretical arguments as to why someone actually had no other choice, but these theoretical arguments are unrelated to the actual experience or act of choosing.

There are also theoretical and empirical arguments that show that the feeling of love is just neurotransmitters in the brain, but these arguments do not change the experience of love.

You're asking the same question.

Somehow I don't think so.

But to answer the question, I think you have to have your monkeybrain functioning at some level in order to have free will.