A short article for your reference

Hello Michael,
Thank you for your consideration.
The model offers an explanation at a fairly abstract level and I can understand the difficulty in reading and understanding it in the terms of the existing discussion.
However, to your questions:
1. Life certainly includes plants and animals.
2. In living things (the characteristic of life) there is an urge to act, even if it is random. At the cellular level, there must be some molecule that has a tendency to produce a reaction, even if it is random. Fortunately, since the beginning of life, the urge has been controlled by a quasi-attentional mechanism that allows the expression of the urge only in the presence of an appropriate stimulus. My guess is that it is a molecule associated with an enzyme. I don't know how to relate this urge to existing knowledge, but this is exactly the definition of life in relation to inanimate matter, what to do. No, I don't need to answer the question of how this happens. I am just stating the simple and trivial fact that it happens. This is a basic ontological distinction. It is indeed difficult to explain it, but the solution is not to deny its existence.
3. I definitely distinguish between free will and freedom of decision (a distinction you do not make in your book, by the way): As far as I am concerned, there is a random impulse to act, an impulse that does not depend on anything. Whoever wants to do so can call it free will, and indeed there is a certain overlap between the concepts, even if not complete. Decision, on the other hand, is not at all free, since it is entirely controlled by the quasi-attentive Magnon.

In general, the article turns the question of free will on its head: assuming that there is a random impulse to act, which is not present in inanimate objects, what model of life derives from it? Does the model, however abstract, explain various phenomena? Is it vulnerable to refutation? What is factually incorrect in what I wrote? Does the model provide testable hypotheses, at least in theory? And is the model heuristic?

And regarding randomness and quantum: Even the quantum level of explanation does not provide an answer to why in inanimate matter randomness converges to a classical macro-exponential, while in living matter, if the random impulse is truly quantum in origin, why does it create a different phenomenon?

Best regards and thank you for your response

I didn't understand your answer to my main argument: Are you a vitalist? That is, do you think there is no reduction of biology to physics and chemistry? This is a very strong argument that almost no biologist today agrees with, and therefore the burden of proof is on you.
I don't know the ’fact’ that you mention, as if there are impulses without stimulation in plants and animals. Where did you get this from? You write that it cannot be denied as if there were a fact here. But as far as I understand, there is no such fact.
Because of the above reductions, I suspect that biologists also don't know this ”fact” (I'm a physicist), since physics and chemistry don't have it and most of them believe in reductionism.
Of course, if you mean quantum randomness, which of course exists in physics, then even if there is a reduction of biology to physics, it is possible (although unlikely because in large systems the quantum synchronization between the phases disappears). But then I return to my last comment: you are confusing randomness with free will (because quantum is randomness and not free will). At most, you are claiming the existence of randomness, not of will.
As I wrote to you, if you claim the existence of randomness, then I am not sure that you are right, but as far as I am concerned, this is an uninteresting question. Even if there is randomness in biology, it does not concern the question of free will.
And finally, there is nothing free about an urge to act (unless this urge is created without stimulation. And I do not know where you got this from. We are back to the question of the ”fact” above). This can only be another deterministic mechanism. If I create this urge out of thin air out of discretion or choice, that's free choice. To see that as the definition of life, that means plants and animals have choice. That's a really strong claim and I'd love to see evidence for it.

Rabbi Dr. Michael Avraham,
Don't be offended.
The ’fact’ is the distinction between life and inanimate matter, which is denied by determinism.
For me, freedom is defined by randomness. Will is an impulse. Together, a random impulse. Indeed, our definitions are different.
The important question for me, and the one that the article answers, is: “Given a random impulse, how does life still survive?” Why do you think this is not an interesting question?
Therefore, if we adopt the terms you use, determinism is not sufficient either, but so is free will that is not random as you define it. What is predictably free? Free from spirit? Free from matter? Free from social influence? And so on.
By the way, I believe that a random impulse exists at all levels of the living system.
Thank you for your comments.

I'm not angry, and there's no need to calm me down. I hope you didn't understand my words that way. 🙂
As for the matter at hand, just one last comment: Determinism doesn't really deny the difference between inanimate and living. At most, it argues for the reduction of biology to physics (and even that isn't necessarily agreed upon by all materialists. There are approaches of strong emergentism).
All the best,