Re:Shades of Daniel Dennett (Score 1)

"I normally am not a proponent of Occam, but this is one of those cases where it's just so apt. What possible explanatory purpose is served by adding or removing free will?" The statement of addition of free will or removal of it could come into play in explaining higher dimensions. If you state that higher dimensions are like having our universe along with all the other possible causes for our universe, and all other ends or paths to the ends of universes, free will becomes important in determining the size of that sample space. Obviously it would be a large number if free will is involved because the simple effect of you not doing something or not could ripple into the future changing many things for all time and eventually messing up everything, or keeping it from being messed up. If there is no free will, however, and all things just play out according to a time line, then we have a much smaller set of possible universes. I would say that this number would be on the magnitude of the number of possible starts of the universe. Since the only thing that could change is how things started, it would be the only variance in those universes (aside from possibly the laws of physics, etc). If there is no free will action A will always lead to action B, and so on. So then, a vast majority of our work is done in calculating alternatives to our universe since we only have to figure out the possible rules and starts and we have all the possibilities. I would say it is a rather large purpose to explain with the presence of free will.