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polymathwannabe comments on Is Determinism A Special Case Of Randomness? - Less Wrong
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Why do you want to rescue free will?
I don't have an attachment to free will I think its a mental construct like time. What I think is that we make decisions and we seem to arbitrarily change the course of things, even if they are physical processes, I think there must be a component of randomness in physics that enables this.
Rescue it from what?
From the reduction of human brains to subatomic particles. Vitalism is a hard beast to kill.
Why does reduction imply determinism?
What does vitalism have to do with free will?
Explaining mental stuff in terms of non-mental stuff implies that we are atoms and nothing more, and are under the same laws that govern all physical events, so I am no more free to choose to close my eyes than a photon is free to bounce off a half-mirror.
Having reduced mental stuff to non-mental stuff (atoms and interactions), the only way to preserve free will is to postulate the existence of some mental fundamental essence which inanimate things don't have, and that is a form of vitalism.
Under physical laws doesn't mean under deterministic physical laws.
Who told you that? Naturalustic libertarians reduce free will to specific combinations of physical determinism and indetermimism.
Yes, they do that. They're deceiving themselves.
Is that a fact?