[MD] Free Will (footnotes to Plato)

[Ham Priday]

Hi Mark and All --

Here is the follow-up of my previous message which quoted Murray's 
'Hiddenness' essay.

 On Tues, Apr 19, 2011, at 2:06 AM, "118" <ununoctiums at gmail.com> wrote:

> Free will can be considered a personal choice, although there are
> those who claim we have been determined to believe in free will.
> On the other hand we are free to choose determinism.  The latter
> is like electing a ruler who changes the constitution so that he never
> leaves power, the other is more like an ever changing democracy,
> so long as one side does not take complete control.
>
> Me, I choose free will.

[Ham commented]:
> To be "predetermined to believe" in something makes no sense to me, and 
> I'm amazed at how many MDers resist the idea of man as a free agent. 
> There can be only two reasons for this, in my opinion: 1) they are 
> persuaded that the 'self' is some form of being, hence must be controlled 
> by the deterministic laws of the physical universe, and 2) they refuse to 
> accept the principle of an uncreated source in the belief that it is a 
> throwback to theism which is "anti-intellectual".

Returning to issue 1): the belief that because the mind or 'self' is a 
product of evolution, it must  therefore must be controlled by universal 
laws.  The question is one between absolute determinism on the one hand and 
the absence of determinism (free choice) on the other.

A philosopher who believes in determinism will find himself paradoxically 
denying that it is in any way meaningful to strive for a better life, avoid 
accidents, punish wrongdoers for their crimes, or otherwise behave as if 
there is anything to gain by choosing an initiative for action.  He will 
instead have to concede that when he makes an (apparent) decision, wants to 
punish criminals, etc, this is also a result of the predetermined makeup of 
the universe.  Although it is logically consistent, most people find this 
fatalistic system deeply disturbing, if not emotionally destructive, and 
man's concept of social justice would never accommodate it.

The best known argument against Free Will was formulated in the 19th century 
by Simon Laplace, who proposed that if there existed a mind that knew, to 
the minutest detail, everything about every particle in the universe at any 
given point, then that mind would also be able to predict, with absolute 
accuracy, what would happen in the future.  Given the knowledge of all that 
is, we would know all that could ever be. It thus follows that the entire 
course of the universe was laid out at its inception. There is, in this, no 
room for a free will.

But this argument is flawed, whatever the calculation used to support it. 
For even if it were theoretically possible to know in advance what you will 
do tomorrow, you would then have no free will.  If I have a crystal ball 
that tells me you will have fried eggs for breakfast tomorrow, and the ball 
is 100% reliable, the fact that I choose not to look at it would still mean 
you cannot choose to have any different breakfast.

Such arguments posited by philosophers and intellectuals seemingly doom 
humans to live under the  illusion of having free will.  All of existence is 
a theatre.  Even though we actually feel we make choices, this is an 
illusion.  When you choose A, be it such a trivial thing as what to eat for 
breakfast or a more life-altering decision, there is no possibility for you 
choose B.

Although we generally consider the naturaI world deterministic, quantum 
mechanics has experimentally confirmed that, on the quantum level, the 
universe is not at all deterministic.  Events happen according to a 
statistical distribution that comes out of quantum equations.  It's 
inherently impossible, for example, to determine with certainty how a 
sub-atomic particle will behave, other than by statistical probabilities. 
While Einstein and some contemporary physicists argue that there must be an 
actual underlying deterministic system to quantum mechanics, no such system 
has ever been found and there is little evidence that it will.

The deterministic argument against free will can also be refuted at another 
level: it prevents the exercise of free choice.  But it's a 
misunderstanding to say that nature constrains human choices.  The "laws of 
nature" only describe what happens, and that includes every action you make. 
The "law" is merely an inductive generalization of the past, and it is based 
on the unfounded premise that because the universe has behaved in a certain 
way up to now, it will continue doing so.  Every time you make a choice and 
act on it, you create another tiny subset of a universal "law of nature". 
To even talk about "breaking the laws of nature" is absurd, since these laws 
describe everything that takes place in the universe, including what you do.

In summary, the evidence suggests that Free Will is not an illusion, but 
that we really are able to make choices.  That there are situations in life 
where we can genuinely choose between either A or B affirms that we have a 
free will.

 Valuistically speaking,
Ham