[Interesting Ian]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

I'm not talking about nonconscious things. I'm talking about humans. If we have free will, what law says that all the free decisions we make have to be conscious ones?

To decide something is to choose. That which is non-conscious does not choose as any action is simply the playing out of physical laws.

The one where you decide which way to turn at the intersection when you're in the middle of a conversation with someone else in the car.

Now, if you're going to define choice and decision to require conscious thought, and call all the nonconscious decisions something else, then of course you will win the argument. But then it will be the case that most of the decisions you make in life are not free.

They don't need to be free. Nay, we don't want them to be free. Just think how tedious it would be if when walking from A to B we had to consciously decide to put one foot in front of another every step of the way.

No, it's not. It's just a question of your definition of decide.

What definition of "decide" do you have which allows a human being operating wholly according to physical laws to decide, but which doesn't allow other things operating wholly according to physical laws to decide?