Well, these are old thoughts – I wrote this out at length on 6/22/13 – but I keep coming back to them. Some people say we lack free will, because everything we do is a determinate function of who we are and the circumstances we find ourselves in, and, further, who we are is a function of our history, including the chance formulation of our genetic makeup.
First, I question the word “determinate”. At the very least, I challenge the speaker to show me how to make the term operational. (Cf. Laplace’s demon 11/22/09)
But even granting, for argument, that our choices are determined, in some sense, by these things, all you are really saying is that I have a mechanism by which I make choices, and I will make the choice that the mechanism produces. How could it be otherwise? What would it mean to make a choice other than by some mechanism? Some physical/chemical apparatus, presumably, but even if I believed in a divine spark, doesn’t the spark have some sort of nature? Some process?
If choosing, based on the dictates of my own nature, how best to respond to the circumstances I find myself in is being “unfree”, exactly who or what is it that is not free? Am I seeking the freedom to choose something other than I want to choose? Well, I could – if I wanted to. (Oops…)
I conclude that the choices are accepting what we have as free will, or accepting that the question of free will is an undefinable pseudo-question. But this is a matter of semantics, not metaphysics. The conclusion “we lack free will” is not one of the alternatives.
Good stuff. I'm also irritated by the brain science folks who want to argue that the choosing self is an illusion because you can set up a test where you make some physical sign of having made a decision before becoming consciously aware of having made it. But a multipart self (a decider, a perceiver, an archivist, etc.) is not a lack of a self...
ReplyDeleteGood stuff. I'm also irritated by the brain science folks who want to argue that the choosing self is an illusion because you can set up a test where you make some physical sign of having made a decision before becoming consciously aware of having made it. But a multipart self (a decider, a perceiver, an archivist, etc.) is not a lack of a self...
ReplyDeleteAgree, Daniel, except I think the multi-part self is more tentative, and less neatly categorical than that; e.g., there are multiple "deciders", often working at cross purposes.
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