RE: Is free will real?
December 22, 2014 at 9:09 am
(This post was last modified: December 22, 2014 at 9:11 am by bennyboy.)
(December 22, 2014 at 6:50 am)Alex K Wrote: @bennyboyGood question. My resolution to this question is to accept that supervenient systems are not dependent on their parent systems for context.
What does existence even mean, in your use, for abstract things such as "meaning"?
So in other words, what is true in a human life does not need to be rooted in any of the determinism (or indeterminism) of the atomic or subatomic worlds. It is true, for example, that a hammer is a solid object with a single, continuous surface. That it is composed of 99.9999999% empty space means little-- it still hurts when I hit my hand with it.
My "Mom" is real-- as a comfort-giver, as a loving supporter, etc. But you'll find no comfort or loving support anywhere in the subatomic world, and you won't even find "Mom-ness" in the arrangement of the brain and other organs. They are qualities that exist only in the context of our waking human lives.
"Free will" is no less real than ideas about Mom. In our human experience, free will is incontrovertible. We exercise it constantly, every day, by thinking about our desires and making conscious decisions. That you can't find free will in the (supposedly) deterministic processes of a functioning brain means little to me, because that is not the context in which free will means anything.
This is a mistake people make-- trying to fit the context of waking life into the context of atomic or subatomic structures. Their order in the chain of supervenience has nothing to do with their meaning in their OWN contexts.
