Question

Hello, honorable Rabbi,
What is your opinion of Dan Dennett’s claim regarding free will? I’ll briefly quote his view from an article by Nir Menussi:
“The human brain, according to Dennett, operates in a way similar to computer software. Although the brain is only material,
it is a machine built with a hierarchy of levels of organization, in ascending order of complexity, where each
level relates to the level beneath it the way software relates to hardware. In principle, it is possible to carry out
a reduction of every level in the hierarchy to the neurophysiological level, and ultimately to the physical level, but in practice
this reduction is impossible. Therefore, we have no choice but to adopt, even with respect to ourselves, the intentional
stance… The top level of the hierarchy is our cognitive level. On this level our conscious thoughts take place,
where we weigh our steps and plan our course. From the heights of this upper level, it is simply impossible to see
the lower levels, which lie far below. On this level, entities like neurons have no role at all; they do not intrude into it and do not limit our actions; they are not relevant to this level, just as physical units are not relevant to biological discourse, and just as a computer’s hardware is not relevant to conducting a game of chess. On this cognitive level, our elbow room is as large as we like: we are free to act as we wish, exactly as we would be free if we lived in a non-deterministic world and had genuine free will. The question of whether we ‘really’ have free will or only seem to have it dissolves, because the result is the same in both cases… The fact that, theoretically, it is possible to reduce all our cognitive processes to mechanistic neurophysiological processes does not diminish our freedom of will at all. Adopting the intentional stance toward ourselves does not mean denying the mechanistic nature
of the brain, nor does it mean that our free will is merely an illusion. Since it is the only stance that can rationally be adopted with respect to ourselves, and the only one within which claims have meaning, therefore thanks to it, in every sense, we have free will.”
In other words, there is here a kind of comparison between the relation of the physical model to the biological model, for example, and our mental properties to the levels beneath them. Even though there is a direct and necessary connection, it cannot be explained because of the “complexity,” and it’s better not to try. Is his claim really any different from the other claims against free choice?