orathaic and Chrispminis - I got a chance to read through both of your posts, so I will comment on two things.

First, on the whole broken joystick thing - what I said is entirely consistent with what you wrote about that Chrispminis. When things get disconnected, odd things happen. Kind of like if you tried to steer a plane with a "combined" joystick that control the rudder, ailerons, and elevators with one control and some of the wires are disconnected; some pretty odd behavior results. I would also add that our overly deterministic view of the brain (that you described) has led to a massive increase in the percentage of our population that is now diagnosed with some sort of neurological disorder (depression and ADHD come to mind) that seems to require drugs. While there are obviously some people who have real problems, I think it is quite likely (and the scientific community is starting to think this as well from what I seem to recall reading lately, though not phrased as I put it) that, instead of acting as though people have a real will to do things, we assume everything is purely biological and thus must be "fixed" with drugs rather than by making different choices. The worst is probably with children on psychological drugs (since they used to survive without them well enough), but that is enough on that topic.

With regards to the proximate free will topic, if you want to describe our will as the sum total of the actions of the subatomic particles that make up our being, I guess you can do so. I will still argue that this is fundamentally no different (though more complex) than say a tree has a will or my computer has a will. Using your definition of will (which appears to me to just be the sum total of the interaction of our subatomic particles which produces some sort of output in response to stimuli), how does not every living thing, or even everything for that matter, not have a will? Is it just the complexity of the interactions within humans? Is there some sort of threshold of complexity at which somethings goes from not having a will to having one? If so, what exactly is it? That does not make any sense at all.

'instead of acting as though people have a real will to do things, we assume everything is purely biological and thus must be "fixed" with drugs rather than by making different choices.' - how to teach people to make better choices is a difficult question, and i do think that the brain can change it's own chemistry without neccesarily needing drugs - however i also think drugs can be helpful for getting the brain into a state where the changes are easier to make - that doesn't mean i don't think drugs aren't over-proscribed by some doctors/psychiatrists - but then if they DO work clearly these people are going to advise that people use them - any other methods of retraining the brain (and i'm thinking about forming life-habits which leave you feeling good about yourself and not depressed) are more difficult in my humble expierence.

Do animals have will? i mean compared to trees, i know certain pets who can follow commands, who will go fetch a ball when you throw it. Aretehy just following their instincts or are thethinking about playing with their owners?

"That does not make any sense at all." - we have brains. I mean really Trees do not have brains, they respond in a different way, we wouldn't say they have a will when talking about how they react to things (though the chemical reactions they exhibit do serve mostly to protect them when that is possible) In the same sense our brains on a basic level function to keep our hearts beating - automatic functions which we don't control - we have many different functions, and if you want to call all of them will then go right ahead.

The point i was tying to make about complexity is that you can't just look at the rudimentrary parts - the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

The whole of a human brain (when properly developed) has an emergent behaviour - which you can't describe just in terms of the molecules - please find out what emergent means and read some examples of it - it is really cool anyway - A dog's brain and will creates a different emergent property which we might call by a different name if it didn't tick all the box which we have decided human 'will' amounts to - it would still be categorised as a type of consciouness.

@Broken joystick - If you looked at the video you will see it is a medical exmpale of a person who has two sides of their brain (the cockpit in the scheme you propose) one side can draw, the other can talk, both can see things (because we have two eyes - one wired to each side of the brain) in the experiment it was clear that the side which could talk knew different things to the side which could write. (they were dissconnected surgically to prevent epileptic fits)

It is like the cockpit is split in two, and each side can get input from the outside world, but can only do a limited number of things - however your pilot seems to be split in two, as if one is driving each cockpit - is there two souls at work? Or is it one soul somehow inhabiting both sides of the brain but not able to communicate information between either sides (because of the surgery) except when he draws something with one half and then the other half looks at it and can talk about it...

That doesn't make much sense unless the pilot is split in two aswell. (again caused by a fairly simple surgical procedure)

"Is there some sort of threshold of complexity at which somethings goes from not having a will to having one?"

We have only really studied complexity since some time in the 60s (se: http://complexity.orconhosting.net.nz/) We don't current measure some threshold of complexity - but if i describe 'will' as an emergent phenomina then it is just that, a property of certain system - it only occurs when the system exhibits it - complex systems are really hard to breakdown into their composite parts and then say logically - 'oh this bit makes that happen, which leads to thing B, which means that the bit over the looks like it had free will'

So we can't go - anything with over 20 billion billion atoms, and 30 million connections between each atom has free will - we have instead to go 'this whole thing exhibits this behaviour' - now you can do really good science by comparing similar systems and there is cool stuf relating to complex foams and the stock market and how humans behave en-mass, along with neural networks - but this is still a very new area for science to be going into and explaining...

"Science generally uses a system called reductionism to investigate our world. This means breaking down anything being examined into the parts that make it up. Reductionism proposes that if we understand the parts, we will understand how the whole system works. If you take a mechanical clock to pieces, you can see what each part does you can find out how it works. Some things, however, can't be investigated in this way. There is much to be learned by dissecting a rat, for example, but in dissecting it, we kill it and cannot learn what gives it life.

Sometimes we need to stand back and look at the whole system to understand how things work, rather than break it into pieces."

orathaic - I looked over emergent behavior a bit. All it says is that simple parts work together to make something more complex that has an order to it. Not much more. This in no way addresses my earlier argument. Our inability to understand how something works does not mean that it is not understandable, just that we don't undertand it. You mention the stock market as an emergent system, and I don't think anybody would say it has a will even though we can't predict how it works.

Also, to say that something has a will because it exhibits having a will is to not really say anything. That essentially defines something as having a "will" if we can't figure out how it works. Since the presence of a will in something either is or is not (regardless of our understanding), it can't be dependent on whether or not we understand how it works.

"That essentially defines something as having a "will" if we can't figure out how it works." no, i didn't say the stock market has a will because we can't figure out how it works.

And it is not that we can't figure out how it works an emergent system has properties which you wouldn't think or understand FROM the basic underlying rules - if you look at a flock of birds, their behaviour appears to be directed - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH-groCeKbE - but it can be shown that it doesn't need a master bird in charge directing all the others, each one is just keeping it's own distance and flying close to the same direction as the others... - in this case http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8eZJnbDHIg&feature=related - the flock of birds reacts toa predator's attack. again the only communication each bird needs is local, no master control, each sees it's neighbours movement and the approaching predators (if it is close enough) and the whole flock moves as if it is one.

"to say that something has a will because it exhibits having a will is to not really say anything." - that's right, but if we think of the birds you could say they have a communal will, but it is an emergent phenomenon built out of individual interactions - that is waht we are saying will is in humans - an emergent phenomenon built out of the individual interaction of neurons.

We don't say the birds have a 'will' we say they exhibit flocking behaviour - which is just a description of the behaviour - you can't describe it in terms of the individual interactions - if you just describe the interactions then you need to go and simulate a group of them to see what their macroscopic behaviour is ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu8Cz0mDiy8 )

So i'm not saying we don't understand this emergent behaviour, just that we can't describe it in terms of the behaviour of the simple parts which make it up - we can only describe it in terms of what it does on the macro scale - so something which exhibits the properties of will has will - that's just our definition of will.

"Tt doesn't need a master bird in charge directing all the others" - just as there doesn't need to be a master 'will' in charge of our brains - it is just all the parts working together.