Re-conceptualizing free will for the 21st century: acting independently with a limited role for consciousness

Free Will as Defined by the Constrained Disorder Principle: a Restricted, Mandatory, Personalized, Regulated Process for Decision-Making

The concept of free will has challenged physicists, biologists, philosophers, and other professionals for decades. The constrained disorder principle (CDP) is a fundamental law that defines systems according to their inherent variability. It provides mechanisms for adapting to dynamic environments. This work examines the CDP's perspective of free will concerning various free will theories. Per the CDP, systems lack intentions, and the "freedom" to select and act is built into their design. The "freedom" is embedded within the response range determined by the boundaries of the systems' variability. This built-in and self-generating mechanism enables systems to cope with perturbations. According to the CDP, neither dualism nor an unknown metaphysical apparatus dictates choices. Brain variability facilitates cognitive adaptation to complex, unpredictable situations across various environments. Human behaviors and decisions reflect an underlying physical variability in the brain and other organs for dealing with unpredictable noises. Choices are not predetermined but reflect the ongoing adaptation processes to dynamic prssu½res. Malfunctions and disease states are characterized by inappropriate variability, reflecting an inability to respond adequately to perturbations. Incorporating CDP-based interventions can overcome malfunctions and disease states and improve decision processes. CDP-based second-generation artificial intelligence platforms improve interventions and are being evaluated to augment personal development, wellness, and health.

Toward a Psychology of Consent

Consent is central to many of today's most pressing social issues: What counts as sexual assault? Whom are the police allowed to search? Can they use people's data like that? Yet despite the fact that consent is in many ways an inherently psychological phenomenon, it has not been a core topic of study in psychology. Although domain-specific research on consent-most commonly, informed consent and sexual consent-is regularly published in specialty journals (e.g., methods and sex-research journals), consent has been largely ignored as a generalizable psychological phenomenon. This has meant that consent has been mostly excluded from "mainstream" psychology as a core topic of study. This omission is particularly striking given that psychologists have paid broad attention to related constructs, such as compliance, obedience, persuasion, free will, and autonomy, and that scholars in other fields, such as law and philosophy, have paid considerably more attention to the topic of consent, despite its uniquely psychological qualities. In this article, I argue that psychologists should embrace consent-in particular, the subjective experience of consent-as a core topic of study.