Graham Priest has several books on the topic which challenges Aristotle's Law of Non Contradiction

Do they also not challenge Aristotle's Law of Non Contradiction?

Well, I wouldn't give up that easily! The default assumption should be that there's an underlying consistent reality, that paradoxes are in the map, not the territory (as was the case with the simple "mirror paradox" above). Assuming that an apparent contradiction is fundamental ought to be the last resort.

Think about free will for a while— focusing on what the act of choosing feels like, and also on what it might actually consist of— and then check Eliezer's proffered resolution. It's much less naive than you're expecting.

(Note: this comment is a reply to this comment. Sorry for any confusion.)

Sereboi, I think once again we're miscommunicating. You seem to think I'm looking for a compromise between free will and determinism, no matter how much I deny this. Let me try an analogy (stolen from Good and Real).

When you look in a mirror, it appears to swap left and right, but not up and down; yet the equations that govern reflection are entirely symmetric: there shouldn't be a distinction.

Now, you can simply make that second point, but then a person looking at a mirror remains confused, because it obviously is swapping left and right rather than up and down. You can say that's just an illusion, but that doesn't bring any further enlightenment.

But if you actually ask the question "Why does a mirror appear to switch left and right, by human perception?" then you can make some progress. Eventually you come to the idea that it actually reverses front and back, and that the brain still looks to interpret a reflected image as a physical object, and that the way it finds to do this is imagining stepping into the mirror and then turning around, at which point left and right are reversed. But it's just as valid to step into the mirror and do a handstand, at which point top and bottom are reversed; it's just that human beings are more bilaterally symmetric than up-down, so this version doesn't occur to us.

Anyway, the point is that you learn more deeply by confronting this question than by just stopping at "oh, it's an illusion", but that the mathematical principle is in no way undermined by the solution.

The argument I'm making is that the same thing carries through in the free will and determinism confusion. By looking at why it feels like we have choices between several actions, any of which it feels like we could do, we learn about what it means for a deterministic algorithm to make choices.

I don't know whether this question interests you at all, but I hope you'll accept that I'm not trying to weaken determinism!

Any shown tangible research that an agent can manipulate and control with little effort their subconscious mind.

It's that "little effort" part that makes this an entirely different question. I don't use the term myself but "Free Will" is not always used to imply that things are easy.

Please just show me a shred of evidence, supporting the fact that we have real control over our subconscious minds in order to make choices freely.

Under your definition of free will, then what observations, if true, would be evidence for its existence? That is, what would free will (as you understand it) actually imply about empirical reality, and what would its absence imply?

@ orthonormal

you said- I agree. But I think that there is actually some feature of the (deterministic) act of choosing which leads a person to falsely believe that their choice is nondeterministic, and that by analyzing this we learn something interesting and important about cognition.

Very true. so what do you make of reconciling the two? Do we castigate them both in hopes of finding something out that is hiding in the shadows? The nexus of the matter is "belief" and in order to have a sound belief one should know as many facts about the subject as possible. I listened to a long discourse given by Dennet who is a avid compatibilist, he presented an extremely weak argument with nothing to back up his claims, now when i read "the illusion of free will" by wegner its nothing but proof.

Now of course we can poke holes all day in theories derived from test studies. But by what else can we as humans deduct solid reasoning if we don't take what evidence is available to us. To me discussing this topic is not about fascination, its about getting the truth. I might be that crazy to think it's available.

@Thomblake sorry about the message thing. Im still getting used to how this site works..

You substantiate analogies with proof. Basically im saying that your analogies don't hold water perhaps i'm using confusing vernacular.

Let me say one thing before moving on. I hate debating just to debate, for me when i involve myself in a debate it is to gain more insight. So i am totally open to your point of view if it sheds some light on this subject, the bottom line is if someone has a solid angle that i'm missing than i welcome it.

Ok that being said. it sounds like your actually mostly agreeing with me.

You do however trail off with more questions. Like

"If the things we perceive as "choices" are "not really choices", then what is really a choice? What do we mean by "choice"? The problem i have is that if you hold a firm position on compatibilism then you should be able to explain it to a laymen by using real proof.

My question to you is how is proof that our "will" is not really controlled by us as ideal conscious agents irrelevant?

It's absolutely relevant.

"free will" then becomes some untestable enity that is open to all kinds of conjecture and speculation. Reason and philosophy but they can only go so far when answering real life questions. So i stack up the data the best i can and make an intelligent decision based on those facts and my own empirical life evidence that i have lived through, but i will stay out of personalizing the problem.

Please just show me a shred of evidence, supporting the fact that we have real control over our subconscious minds in order to make choices freely.

Thanks.

Calm down! I'm not saying what you think I'm saying.

First off, I suggested you go and introduce yourself on the welcome thread in part because that's usually good for a few upvotes, and that avoids the annoying feature where people with negative karma can't comment more than once every 10 minutes or so. I think there should be a buffer, because getting a comment downvoted isn't such a rare or awful thing on LW, but in lieu of that it's worth it to make an effort to get some karma at first.

Again, the downvotes are more about style than substance. We don't run our arguments here the way they happen elsewhere on the Internet, and because of that we have fewer flamewars and more real arguments. If you want to discuss things with us, you might have to adopt a different style than usual. I know that's an asshole thing of me to say, but that's how it is.

Finally, I'm not at all arguing against determinism, and I'm not defending the current post. Determinism holds without exception, and the idea of free will as most people think of it is incoherent. However, just stopping there isn't actually sufficient: it remains to ask why we feel that we have free will— are those feelings an illusion, and if so, why do we have them in the first place, or are they a reflection of something that actually goes on within the deterministic mind, and if so, why do they feel to us like something incompatible with determinism?

Those questions are a lot more interesting, and don't just go away once one realizes that the universe is deterministic in nature.

Ok i finally get the etiquette thing of this system. :)

Sorry i am a straight shooter. I will work on my wording, however i still stand by my claims of conjecture vrs facts.

Sereboi, welcome to Less Wrong! Be sure and hit the welcome thread soon.

By the way, I notice you're getting downvotes on the comment (not by me); it's probably the tone rather than the content. Like any community, we have our norms of etiquette, and they're usually signaled by voting.

More substantively, I think you're answering the question without properly dissolving it, which is necessary in the case of something like free will that genuinely confuses many intelligent people. (I'm not supporting the current post against this comment, just pointing out that your comment by itself won't dispel people's confusion over free will.)