Does Free Will Exist?
I was thinking the other day. Does natural free will exist?
If everything in the universe is governed by law of physics including the tiny building block atoms in what way do we have free will. Isn't a decision just a result of neurons firing and atoms acting as a result of these physical laws? What does it really mean to make a decision?
People are often saturated with the illusion that making a choice is a conscious effort of the mind, but sometimes fail to realize all it is, is a combination of neural connections. So are we really making a decision or are atoms just moving and behaving like they are supposed to thus making the illusion that we are making a real decision? Isn't just an illusion that you are the one really making the decision?
In theory, we can predict what one will decide and how the universe formed by just analyzing all the atoms. Of course this is in theory, not instrument could ever do just a thing in the near future.
Here's a few quotes regarding Free Will and Determinism:
Peter van Inwagen
J.J.C. SmartIf determinism is true, then our acts are the consequences of the laws of nature and events in the remote past. But it is not up to us what went on before we were born, and neither is it up to us what the laws of nature are. Therefore, the consequences of these things (including our present acts) are not up to us.
Max PlanckDl. I shall state the view that there is "unbroken causal continuity" in the universe as follows. It is in principle possible to make a sufficiently precise determination of the state of a sufficiently wide region of the universe at time to, and sufficient laws of nature are in principle ascertainable to enable a superhuman calculator to be able to predict any event occurring within that region at an already given time t'.
D2. I shall define the view that "pure chance" reigns to some extent within the universe as follows. There are some events that even a superhuman calculator could not predict, however precise his knowledge of however wide a region of the universe at some previous time.
For the believer in free will holds that no theory of a deterministic sort or of a pure chance sort will apply to everything in the universe: he must therefore envisage a theory of a type which is neither deterministic nor indeterministic in the senses of these words which I have specified by the two definitions DI and D2; and I shall argue that no such theory is possible.
("Free-Will, Praise and Blame," Mind, July 1961, reprinted in Dworkin, 1970)
"Let us ask for a moment whether the human will is free or whether it is determined in a strictly causal way. These two alternatives seem definitely to exclude one another. And as the former has obviously to be answered in the affirmative, so the assumption of a law of strict causality operating in the universe seems to be reduced to an absurdity in at least this one instance. In other words, if we assume the law of strict dynamic causality as existing throughout the universe, how can we logically exclude the human will from its operation?... "Recent developments in physical science [viz., quantum indeterminacy] have come into play here, and the freedom of the human will has been put forward as offering logical grounds for the acceptance of only a statistical causality operative in the physical universe. As I have already stated on other occasions, I do not at all agree with this attitude. If we should accept it, then the logical result would be to reduce the human will to an organ which would be subject to the sway of mere blind chance."
(Where Is Science Going?, Ox Bow Press, 1981 (1933), p.101-105)
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