RE: If free will was not real
August 3, 2016 at 8:33 am
(This post was last modified: August 3, 2016 at 8:50 am by bennyboy.)
-edit for brevity-
Okay, let's say I buy an ice cream. Am I compelled by a chain of deterministic events starting with the Big Bang, and buying the ice cream is my destiny? Maybe, in a sense, though I don't think that's proven or provable. However, at that moment, it is I who reach out, seeking that ice cream due to my nature as a person. If the ice cream is a compulsive force, then I'd be jockeying for position with 1000 other guys, drawn by its bewitching siren's call. But nope. I see a mother and her kid walk right past that ice cream as though it doesn't even exist. The ice cream, it turns out, does not have the power of compulsion-- it's just a food. I am forming an intent and reaching OUT to the ice cream, and it is not imposing itself INTO me. I'm exercising my free will.
Now, let's say I'm walking down the street and a cop tasers me. I fall to the ground. Then another guy walks by, and he gets tasered, too. He also falls to the ground. There was nothing about our personhood, our intent, or our will which had anything to do with either of us falling in pain. We are not acting with any kind of will at all.
No, let's take a heroin addict. He forms intent, on his own, and seeks out heroin. Does his addiction compel him, or is it a part of his nature, and thus his intent and its expression as behavior free will? This is the hardest case, along with the intent of schizophrenics and other dyfunctionals. Is crazy something that happens to you, or is it what you are? Does medication that normalizes your behavior give you BACK free will, or prevent you from forming intent as a free agent? These are the interesting questions-- not whether free will is real, but how we should define the self. In the end, I'd say it's not the free will that will likely turn out to be illusion, but the sense of the self as a thing, and ALL that means-- love, responsibility, etc.
Okay, let's say I buy an ice cream. Am I compelled by a chain of deterministic events starting with the Big Bang, and buying the ice cream is my destiny? Maybe, in a sense, though I don't think that's proven or provable. However, at that moment, it is I who reach out, seeking that ice cream due to my nature as a person. If the ice cream is a compulsive force, then I'd be jockeying for position with 1000 other guys, drawn by its bewitching siren's call. But nope. I see a mother and her kid walk right past that ice cream as though it doesn't even exist. The ice cream, it turns out, does not have the power of compulsion-- it's just a food. I am forming an intent and reaching OUT to the ice cream, and it is not imposing itself INTO me. I'm exercising my free will.
Now, let's say I'm walking down the street and a cop tasers me. I fall to the ground. Then another guy walks by, and he gets tasered, too. He also falls to the ground. There was nothing about our personhood, our intent, or our will which had anything to do with either of us falling in pain. We are not acting with any kind of will at all.
No, let's take a heroin addict. He forms intent, on his own, and seeks out heroin. Does his addiction compel him, or is it a part of his nature, and thus his intent and its expression as behavior free will? This is the hardest case, along with the intent of schizophrenics and other dyfunctionals. Is crazy something that happens to you, or is it what you are? Does medication that normalizes your behavior give you BACK free will, or prevent you from forming intent as a free agent? These are the interesting questions-- not whether free will is real, but how we should define the self. In the end, I'd say it's not the free will that will likely turn out to be illusion, but the sense of the self as a thing, and ALL that means-- love, responsibility, etc.
