The Unsolvability of the Mind-Body Problem Frees the Will

The mind-body problem is analyzed in a reductionist perspective. By combining the concepts of emergence and algorithmic information theory in a thought experiment employing a basic nonlinear process, it is shown that epistemically strongly emergent properties may develop. A comparison with the significantly more complex neural network of the brain shows that also consciousness is epistemically emergent in a strong sense. Thus reductionist understanding of consciousness is not possible; the mind-body problem does not have a reductionist solution. The ontologically emergent character of consciousness is then identified from a combinatorial analysis relating to system limits set by quantum mechanics, implying that consciousness is fundamentally irreducible to low- level phenomena. In the perspective of a modified definition of free will, the character of the physical interactions of the brain's neural system is subsequently studied. Due to the neural complexity, consciousness is found to be ontologically indeterministic in relation to the deterministic low-level processes of the brain. Thus high-level processes of consciousness may independently play a role without violating causality. We argue that this leads to freedom of the will