Matter and Free Will
Suppose that there were certain human abilities—I decline to call them merely mental, lest all the problematic assumptions of the Cartesian philosophy be imported at once—by which the gathering of thought and concentration and will might move matter, with the addition of only one further condition. This condition being not the familiar (though inexplicable not only to the dualists but inadequately captured by the idealist and materialist philosophers as well) realization of will in the movement of the human body (my will raises my arm, my arm raises my glass), but instead that condition of fully sincere and passionate belief: one’s will (here I cannot say “mine,” as I have never discovered such an ability in my own experience) raises one’s glass into the air directly, no more defying gravity than does an arm and hand, but countering force with force, here that force formed by an adequate strength of belief, rather than muscle.
A short story by Ben Roth.