Manuel,
Reductionism is necessarily balanced by contextualization. Thought is a thermodynamic feedback loop between the two. Nodes and networks.
Both free will and determinism are flawed concepts. If will were free of cause, wouldn’t it consequently be free of effect and isn’t the very definition of will to affect one’s context?
The problem of determinism is that our minds coalesce around and distill out patterns, but reality is more processes. As mobile, intentional organisms, necessitating sequential perception, which built civilizations out of the knowledge gained from narrating our collective experiences, we are deeply ingrained with the presumption of the point of the present moving past to future, which even theoretical physics codifies as measures of duration, but it really doesn’t take much common sense to realize that it is change turning future to past, Potential, actual, residual. As in tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Duration is this physical state, as events coalesce and dissolve.
The present is not so much a dimensionless point between past and future, as it is the physical configuration of this property called “energy.” Which is “conserved,” because there is no physical past for it to be left in, or future for it to arrive from. Its activity creates this effect called time.
There is no ”dimension” of time, because the past is effectively consumed by the present, in order to inform it. Aka, causality.
Different clocks can and often do run at different rates, because they are separate actions. Think frequencies, or metabolism.
Time is asymmetric, because action is inertial. The earth turns one direction, not either. What is being measured is a particular action, not the order of the system, so entropy is irrelevant.
Time is an effect and measure of actions, similar to temperature, pressure, color, etc. We could use ideal gas laws to correlate volume with temperature and pressure, but no one calls them the 5th and 6th dimensions of space, because they are only foundational to our emotions, bodily functions and environment, rather than the sequence of thought.
So energy and the forms it manifest effectively go opposite directions of time, as the energy goes past to future forms, while the forms come and go, future to past.
Processes and patterns. The processes are constantly churning along, past to future, while the patterns rise and fall, future to past. Consider a factory, where the product goes start to finish, while the production line points the other way, consuming material and expelling product.
As with life. Individuals go birth to death, while the species goes onto the next generation, shedding the old.
As with consciousness and thought. Consciousness going from one thought to the next, as these thoughts coalesce and dissolve. Though some get caught up in a loop.
As biological organisms, we have the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy driving us on, along with the central nervous system to process out the information necessary to navigate our context. Motor and steering.
Note that the emotions, instincts and impulses driving us are commonly associated with the heart and gut.
Note that curiosity, as a desire, is emotion.
The function of the nervous system is not so much to objectively determine the best course of action, as it is to referee all the various emotions and select which actions are the best fit. As such, we are ultimately driven by our emotions and it is which constitute our “will.”
Which is not deterministic, as only this physical present exists and it is a constant process of computing from myriad input, to determine the outcome. Much of which is traveling at the speed of light, so the input cannot be fully known prior to the event.
The resulting pattern might seem obvious in hindsight, but that is effect, not cause. Our will is part of that input, as energy and process.
The patterns generated do feed back into the process. Much as the success of a product will affect future products, or individuals will affect the future of a species. That is the effect for which will is the cause.
As Alan Watts put it; “The wake doesn’t steer the boat, the boat creates the wake.”
