Descartes made the mind the locus of freedom. For him, the body is a mechanical system of tiny fibres causing movements in the brain, which then can pull on other fibres to activate the muscles. This was the beginning of the physiology of stimulus and response, or reflexology.

In modern times some philosophers and scientists have proposed interactionist models and have also attempted to locate specific parts of the brain, for example at the synapses between neurons, where quantum effects might be important. The neuroscientist John Eccles and philosopher Karl Popper considered such models in articles and books over many years.

All the attempts to use the mysterious properties of quantum mechanics to explain the mysterious problems of consciousness and psycho-physical relations between mind and body have been just that, explaining one mystery with another mystery.

Information Philosophy sees the Mind as an information processing system that operates on two levels.

At the Macro level, the mind/brain is adequately determined to make its decisions and resulting actions in ways that are causally connected with the agent's character and values. It is everything that determinist and compatibilist philosophers expect it to be.

At the Micro level, the mind/brain leaves itself open to significant thermal and quantal noise in its retrieval of past experiences. This generates creative and unpredictable alternative possibilities for thought and action. This is our best hope for a measure of libertarianism.

Our mind/brain model emphasizes the abstract information content of the mind. Abstract information is neither matter nor energy, yet it needs matter for its concrete embodiment and energy for its communication. Information is the modern spirit, the ghost in the machine.

Because it is embodied in the brain, this mind can control the actions of a body that is macroscopic and thus unaffected by its own quantum level uncertainty.

Thus our mind/body model explains how a relatively immaterial "free," unpredictable, and creative mind can control the adequately determined material body through the determinate and responsible actions selected by the will from an agenda of alternative possibilities.