section_path: Topics/Mind and free will
section_name: Mind and free will
paragraph_text: Mind and free will
  
  Mind encompasses phenomena like thinking, perceiving, feeling, and desiring as well as the underlying faculties responsible for these phenomena. The mind–body problem is the challenge of clarifying the relation between physical and mental phenomena. According to Cartesian dualism, minds and bodies are distinct substances. They causally interact with each other in various ways but can, at least in principle, exist on their own. This view is rejected by monists, who argue that reality is made up of only one kind. According to idealism, everything is mental, including physical objects, which may be understood as ideas or perceptions of conscious minds. Materialists, by contrast, state that all reality is at its core material. Some deny that mind exists but the more common approach is to explain mind in terms of certain aspects of matter, such as brain states, behavioral dispositions, or functional roles. Neutral monists argue that reality is fundamentally neither material nor mental and suggest that matter and mind are both derivative phenomena. A key aspect of the mind–body problem is the hard problem of consciousness, which concerns the question of how physical systems like brains can produce phenomenal consciousness.
  
  The status of free will as the ability of a person to choose their actions is a central aspect of the mind–body problem. Metaphysicians are interested in the relation between free will and causal determinism, the view that everything in the universe, including human behavior, is determined by preceding events and laws of nature. It is controversial whether causal determinism is true, and, if so, whether this would imply that there is no free will. According to incompatibilism, free will cannot exist in a deterministic world since there is no true choice or control if everything is determined. Hard determinists infer from this observation that there is no free will while libertarians conclude that determinism must be false. Compatibilists take a third approach by arguing that determinism and free will do not exclude each other, for instance, because a person can still act in tune with their motivation and choices even if they are determined by other forces. Free will plays a key role in ethics regarding the moral responsibility people have for what they do.