I was told by someone on here that in order to be a Communist, I must "believe" in "Free Will." Somehow, I doubt this is truly a prerequisite, but if it really is the case, then so be it.
Before getting into "Free Will," there is no good evidence that human beings possess an immaterial “soul” that thinks, chooses, or survives bodily death. All available evidence indicates that what we have hitherto called a “person,” is an activity of a living brain in a living body. Mental states reliably track brain states; damage the brain and you damage memory, personality, judgment, and agency; destroy it entirely and the person disappears. No additional essence remains.
Human brains are biological systems governed by physical law. They are extraordinarily complex, adaptive, and self-modeling, which produces the powerful
subjective experience and
outward appearnce of "authorship" and "choice," but nothing in neuroscience suggests that brains initiate actions
independently of prior physical causes. Also, introducing indeterminism or randomness does not rescue “free will” in the libertarian sense, since randomness adds noise, rather than control.
The popular notion of "Free Will" as an uncaused, self-originating power of the "soul" or of the brain, in more secular accounts of "Free Will," is therefore unsupported. What exists instead are constrained decision-making processes embedded in biology, development, and environment. Responsibility is
not metaphysical; it is a
social practice invented and enforced by humans to shape behavior while brains are still alive and responsive to incentives.
There is no evidence that accountability survives death. When the brain permanently ceases to function, the person is gone. What remains is matter, not an observing subject.
These conclusions are not radical inventions of modern science. The dependence of mind on the condition of the brain has been observable since antiquity through injury, disease, and degeneration, and has been progressively
clarified by advances in biology, chemistry, and physics. What is new is not the insight itself, but the precision.
Resistance to these conclusions is understandable. They undermine comforting narratives of cosmic justice, personal exceptionality, and ultimate moral reckoning. Many cultures have developed religious and metaphysical systems that posit souls, absolute free w
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