Do we have free will?
When we say "I believe in free will" or "I don't believe in free will", then obviously we are not talking about free will in the everyday sense. Nobody is concerned about whether the choice to eat an apple or an orange for lunch is illusory. When we ask "do we have free will?" , it 's shorthand for the question "If the universe started with the big bang, and everything has evolved according to basic laws of physics, then doesn't that mean the universe is deterministic, and in a fundamental sense, all our apparent free choices are the inevitable result of the initial conditions of the big bang? When we refer to free will in this way, we might even call it Free Will.
It seems to me that the whole issue only comes up because we seem to think it is necessary to add some 'evitability' to what looks like an inevitable set of outcomes starting from the big bang.
This can be dealt with by saying, for instance, that we have an immortal soul, separate from the physical inevitability of the universe. Someone else might deal with it it by saying that consciousness is a fundamental part of that same physical universe - the part that ulimately makes some of our choices "evitable" - thus building some evitability into the very structure of the physical universe. Some look to quantum mechanics to add the element of indeterminism and probability, and conclude that might be the way we escape an apparantly deterministic outcome. Yet others (eg me) might deal with it by questioning whether the physical laws do necessarily result in a deterministic universe, but even if they did, would think that evolution has produced a high degree of individual 'evitability' (ability to choose locally, with a high degree of freedom) - by the evolution of the brain, which has provided the humans with the ability to assess their environment, make predictions on likely outcomes and take actions based on those assessments.
This means that for me, the search for some ultimate basis for free will, (by calling it "Free Will", is unnecessary. Looking for a full and complete causal understanding of everything is not likely to help us find a meaning to our lives, and I don't think it can. More importantly, we need to be thinking about how human beings should live, what we should make of ourselves - ie what is the meaning of our lives.
So do I believe in free will? Yes, in the everyday sense. Do I believe in Free Will - meaning some extra thing, (in an ultimate, fundamental sense) about the universe which avoids the inevitability of the laws of physics starting from the big bang? No. The laws of physics have resulted in the evolution of creatures who have enough choice about what they do for it to be meaningful in a practical sense, and that's all we need.
When we say "I believe in free will" or "I don't believe in free will", then obviously we are not talking about free will in the everyday sense. Nobody is concerned about whether the choice to eat an apple or an orange for lunch is illusory. When we ask "do we have free will?" , it 's shorthand for the question "If the universe started with the big bang, and everything has evolved according to basic laws of physics, then doesn't that mean the universe is deterministic, and in a fundamental sense, all our apparent free choices are the inevitable result of the initial conditions of the big bang? When we refer to free will in this way, we might even call it Free Will.
It seems to me that the whole issue only comes up because we seem to think it is necessary to add some 'evitability' to what looks like an inevitable set of outcomes starting from the big bang.
This can be dealt with by saying, for instance, that we have an immortal soul, separate from the physical inevitability of the universe. Someone else might deal with it it by saying that consciousness is a fundamental part of that same physical universe - the part that ulimately makes some of our choices "evitable" - thus building some evitability into the very structure of the physical universe. Some look to quantum mechanics to add the element of indeterminism and probability, and conclude that might be the way we escape an apparantly deterministic outcome. Yet others (eg me) might deal with it by questioning whether the physical laws do necessarily result in a deterministic universe, but even if they did, would think that evolution has produced a high degree of individual 'evitability' (ability to choose locally, with a high degree of freedom) - by the evolution of the brain, which has provided the humans with the ability to assess their environment, make predictions on likely outcomes and take actions based on those assessments.
This means that for me, the search for some ultimate basis for free will, (by calling it "Free Will", is unnecessary. Looking for a full and complete causal understanding of everything is not likely to help us find a meaning to our lives, and I don't think it can. More importantly, we need to be thinking about how human beings should live, what we should make of ourselves - ie what is the meaning of our lives.
So do I believe in free will? Yes, in the everyday sense. Do I believe in Free Will - meaning some extra thing, (in an ultimate, fundamental sense) about the universe which avoids the inevitability of the laws of physics starting from the big bang? No. The laws of physics have resulted in the evolution of creatures who have enough choice about what they do for it to be meaningful in a practical sense, and that's all we need.
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