Consciousness is described as the executive function and that is what it is. Its function is not so much to react, as to process information, in order that future actions are better informed. Much of what goes on around us is at the speed of light, or only slightly slower, so processing should be minimal.

The issue of free will, as reaction to determinism, is muddled. For one thing, what is it supposed to be free of? Cause? Then it would be equally free of effect.

The problem with determinism is that as mobile organisms, we have a sequential thought process, in order to navigate our environment and built civilizations out of the collective knowledge gained from narrating our experiences to one another, so the linear, past to future effect is foundational to our perception, but it is change which turns future to past. Potential, actual, residual. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.

As the 1st law of thermodynamics observes, energy is conserved, meaning it is always and only present. Consequently it is the changing configuration of this dynamic which creates time.

So while the narrative effect of time seems deterministic, as one event inexorably leads to the next, with time as an effect, it is a process of selection, as potential is reduced to actual, then residual. The input into any situation often travels at the speed of light and consequently cannot be known prior, so it is in the present state where the actual computation of this input occurs. Even if the laws dictating this output are absolute, it cannot be known, if the input cannot be known. As Alan Watts put it; “The wake doesn’t steer the boat, the boat creates the wake.”

Our minds evolved to take some of the “selection” from “nature.” We have a digestive, respiratory and circulatory system processing the energy driving us on, with the central nervous system processing the information created by this dynamic, in order to navigate. Basically motor and steering functions. The emotions, desires and instincts driving us on are naturally associated with the heart and gut. The mind is not so much separate, as where all these impulses fight it out, narrowing our preferences down to that singular chain of thought necessary for a mobile organism to chose a path through its environment. Otherwise we would be disfunctionally schizophrenic.

Political systems have the same conflict, between all those organic desires and causes, versus a system having to preference some over others, given available resources, situations and prior events informing those current choices. Liberals versus conservatives.