What is free will?
If you've ever taken a philosophy course or engaged in chemically induced conversations about the world you've probably considered this question. The answer is not obvious. We all feel that we're free to choose between multiple options when we deliberate, this much feels obvious. It also feels obvious that although we went with option A we could have just as easily gone with option B. At this point some snarky individual (your professor probably) will happily point out that we live in a determined universe, what happens next is entirely dependent on what's happened before. If this is true then how can we possibly have been able to go with option B rather than A? The fact that we'd choose A was determined before we even began deliberating about it by facts about the universe that are beyond our control. At this point it may be tempting to say that there's nothing left worth calling free will. That's exactly the wrong conclusion because we started from the wrong place.
We began by asking what free will is. This question assumes that free will as a concept is coherent and we just have to think about it until we've hammered out any confusions that are associated with it. This is misguided. We use words to categorize reality in useful ways. Unfortunately, we're stupid monkeys so the categories we've picked to associate with our words will often confuse multiple distinct things, fictional concepts, or some combination thereof. Instead of asking what free will is we should instead look at the world and see what facts we'd like to associate with this sequence of two symbols. Since we're started with a naive concept that may be confused, or point at fictional things, this is difficult to get started. Whenever we're confronted with a conflict between our naive concepts and accurately describing the world the solution is simple. List our motivations for considering the topic, stop using the symbols associated with the possibly confused or fictional concept, and then let our motivations guide us in discovering facts about the world.
Applied to free will the solution goes like this. We find free will important because of the following--
1. We wish to be in charge of what happens in our life.
2. We clearly deliberate between options and we have very strong intuitions that we could have done otherwise after we've made a choice.
3. We may wonder whether things like punishment really make sense if a person could not possible have done something differently.
We'll now stop using the associated symbols because they may carry extra baggage and nothing important hangs on what symbols we use to categorize reality.
First, our desire to be in charge of our life. There's no reason this cannot be true in a determined world. Remember that in a determined world your identity is determined as well. There's no hierarchy of realities with physical and determined things happening in one while you guide the action from above. There are just determined events happening with you being one of them. This is counter-intuitive and it might be a good idea to stop using words like identity for the same reason we stopped mentioning free will. For our current purposes I will avoid doing this because it would require yet more digressions.
To continue; we've seen that our identity is determined just as the behavior of golf balls are determined. From here I believe we can define "in charge" as simply being a causal nexus of sorts. A point in the causal tree that has many branches. A human being with a distinct identity is clearly capable of shaping reality to fit his desires and goals. This happens in much the same way as a ATM discriminates certain inputs (being struck with a hammer vs having its buttons pressed for example) and performs a function in response. Of course human beings are vastly more complicated machines.
Notice that nothing about the world constrains a person to doing anything he does not wish to do; determinism never straps us down and makes us murder a man when we have no desire to do so. We gather input from our surroundings, process it, and then perform whatever function our processing has deemed appropriate. Included in this processing are all the emotions and cognitive algorithms that make us who we are.
To sum up, human beings do what they wish to do in response to the environment and are not prevented from making decisions that match their wishes. Motivation 1 has been met, we're in charge of our lives.
Next time I'll finish up and explore why we have strong intuitions that we could have done otherwise and whether punishment makes sense in a determined world.
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