Yesterday I mentioned free will. One of the regular readers of this blog asked me the other day what I thought about this subject. I am sticking my neck out in the hope that someone will produce some stunning and persuasive reason why I am wrong. And if they do, I will promptly sink into a total lethargic funk and decide not to make any more effort at anything anymore.
Some scientists, and, probably, some philosophers, have been asking whether we really have free will, or whether we are programmed from birth to act as we act. For what it is worth I strongly believe that we do have free will, and this is why:
1. No one has yet come up with a smidgeon of proof that life is pre-ordained. In medicine researchers talk about genes producing a pre-disposition towards certain diseases, but genes don’t normally determine the illness. Likewise, maybe one’s genes give you a pre-disposition towards being, for instance, anti-social or the ability to become a lawyer, but they don’t determine one’s choice or predestine you, one way or another. They may have a role in depression, or in your intellect, or your energy level, but they do not remove your freedom of choice. Nor do I know of any other organ or series of thingumijigs in the body that can be candidates for pre-ordaining our actions.
2. If someone, something, somehow, somewhere is arranging our lives so that we are simply pawns in some obscure game, then no criminal is answerable for his crimes, no murderer can help murdering, and no politician can help lying; and I had to start this blog because the “Thing” told me to. This, if true, makes life wholly pointless, and removes not only the fun of it, but any incentive to make an effort.
3. Choice and free will go hand in hand. For instance, years ago I met my (now) wife on a walk in Italy. For reasons I won’t bother the reader with I voluntarily and very happily asked her to marry her, leave my country and my family, and go and live with her in a foreign country. I had a choice. I could have stayed where I was and our friendship would have taken a different course. But instead I readily emigrated, having met her totally by chance. No great, magisterial power had fun arranging it; it was totally a matter of choice. To suggest I (or she) had no free will in the matter is preposterous.
We all believe we have free will, or at least, sufficient to free to be able to make decisions for ourselves and not blame anyone or anything else. So be it.
I have written this of my own free will.
Proof that we don’t have free will? I think that there’s virtually no chance that someone is going to come up with evidence that there’s no such thing as “free will.” I suppose that one could pound the definition of “free will,” into “free-ish will” and have a go. I think that your post is realistic and safe from assault,
Great post! Thank you so much. And I totally agree, of course we have free will. The fact that our environment influences the choices we make doesn’t mean we have free will; the environment may make some choices more likely than others, but it doesn’t make anything inevitable.
The either/or characterization of free will or free choice distorts the nature of how and what we decide. Choosing runs along a spectrum for almost random to fully constrained. Most of us who are able to deliberate fall somewhere in the middle. Our will is limited not free or coerced/compelled. We are predisposed to select one course and over others. This is more a tendency which can be ignored due to other influences. And regardless of our personality etc. we know when we are committing a crime. Some, though, are so much in the grip of environmental and biological forces that culpability is reduced. e.g., the brains of pedophiliacs are markedly different