Free will re-redux

That, for me, is the crux of the matter (excuse pun).

I'm not up to the intellectual-philosophical back and forth and I had to look up the meaning of "pedetic" but "emergent orders" speaks to me. In my imagination, that requires some form of knowing, whether that comes from the material particles involved or some external, omniscient presence is unclear but my favoured conjecture would be that matter and motivation are indivisible: they are aspects of the same thing and it is only our limited perception that divides them into different entities. Of course, materialists will hold that only the particles exist but then observations such as this one quoted above need to be explained.

Oh I think Nail might be using a definition of pedetic that differs from most anyway.

But yeah I think if even a materialist rejects the idea of a random/deterministic exclusive dichotomy there's not much reason for those of us who aren't materialists to worry about it barring some really good proof being presented here.

And it seems he isn't the only one. Here's physicist George Ellis on this question:

From chaos to free will

Physics enabled what took place in your head and body, but didn’t determine it; your mental interpretation of the event did.

Learning and memory offer another example of how downward causal effect shapes the underlying physics

And perhaps more in line with Nail's conception of Pedesis is the physicist Lee Smolin's Principle of Precedence ->

Precedence and freedom in quantum physics

A new interpretation of quantum mechanics is proposed according to which precedence, freedom and novelty play central roles. This is basedon a modification of the postulates for quantum theory given by Masanes and Muller[4].

We argue that quantum mechanics is uniquely characterized as the probabilistic theory in which individual systems have maximal freedom in their responses to experiment, given reasonableaxioms for the behaviour of probabilities in a physical theory. Thus, to the extent thatquantum systems are free, in the sense of Conway and Kochen[1], there is a sense inwhich they are maximally free.We also propose that laws of quantum evolution arise from a principle of precedence according to which the outcome of a measurement on a quantum system is selected randomly from the ensemble of outcomes of previous instances of the same measurement on the same quantum system. This implies that dynamical laws for quantum systems can evolve as the universe evolves, because new precedents are generated by the formation of new entangled states.

The physicist Marko Vojinovic concludes his essay Farewell to determinism with:

Such a conclusion, in addition to being fascinating in itself, has a multitude of consequences. For one, it answers the question “Is the whole Universe just one big computer?” with a definite “no.” Also, it opens the door for the compatibility between the laws of physics on one side, and a whole plethora of concepts like free will, strong emergence, qualia, even religion — on the other. But these are all topics for some other articles.

So, again, someone else who doesn't think free will is incoherent.