Free Will. Something that has beguiled philosophers for a very long time. Strict Determinists who think you can predict the future if you know the past, believers in a soul, independent of the body and brain, that can direct the mind, many, many variations in between are all found, over and over and over.
So what can an alcohol-modulated philosopher like myself add to this debate? First guess, nothing. It’s been done, all of it, by some ancient and a very few more recently. Some have put together a synthesis on Free Will simply so that they may better understand what they think thereon, something like I’m going to do here.
My slant is that because of quantum indeterminism, the future cannot be predicted and therefore, strict determinism is probably wrong. My second point is that to the extent that humans practice decision making based on mulling over choices, this procedure is indistinguishable from the free will that might be practiced by an independent sentient entity such as a soul directing our choices.
There are caveats: First, the reason quantum indeterminism means that you cannot predict the future absolutely is that all changes in state have some element of randomness, more for really small objects such as subatomic particles, but much less for large objects such as a moving vehicle. An example of a deterministic change in state comes when you know the position and velocity of a traveling electron, photon, baseball, car, rocket or other object which allows the relatively accurate prediction of position and velocity of any of these objects at some future time such as one second later.
OK, you just said, “What is he talking about.”, so here’s a longer version, still with a lot of not easy to understand intuitively concepts. Admittedly, I don’t have a good understanding of the whys of quantum mechanics. However, some examples of quantum indeterminism are based on the Heisenberg uncertainty principle where there is a limit to how well you can determine both the position and momentum of, say, an electron or photon. In general, at the subatomic level, one can determine either the position or the momentum, but not both on the same particle, new ideas on quantum entanglement notwithstanding. Interference patterns of single photons show that somehow they interfere with themselves, but the action is random. Generated interference patterns depend on observing many photons, but individual photons will be more likely found at interference maxima from standard wave theory and less so at minima. This phenomenon means that it is not possible to predict exactly where any photon is going to be, even though there is a probability distribution for possible observed positions.
In this way, quantum indeterminism can have real effects not only with subatomic particles, but in atoms, molecules and in the function of biological molecules. Brain function depends on the interactions of a huge number of biological molecules and metal ions and since these have a random element in their action, there must be a random element in brain function and decision making.
Because of the large number of entities that may make random contributions to this process, there is probably a large random element in any decision making. So past memories of events and decisions come forward to consciousness in an unpredictable way where, given the same situation, some memories would appear one time and others the next, or the memories may come forward in a different order. In this case the decision made isn’t dependent just on past experience, but in the random way that experience is brought to bear on the situation at hand in which a new decision has to be made.
Because this randomness of process means that you can’t use the past to predict the future in an absolute way, it eliminates a few of the determinists’ lines of thought including strict determinism with its absolute predictability of the future, but it doesn’t eliminate determinism. The mix of the random with the non-random is still deterministic, because at the moment any random event happens, it still determines events for a while, even if it’s only for a very short while. Of course the collection of a huge number of random contributions may make it difficult to follow, but in the end, this collection has a result that, together with non-random causes, determines the course of thought. So, even though you can’t use the past to predict future thoughts with any precision, the process is still deterministic in a mechanical sense.
Deterministic non-random events must also affect brain function. Past experience, to the extent that memories thereof are not affected by quantum indeterminacy, a blow to the head injuring a brain area that is important for a particular type of brain function or understanding, and many other things may be more or less deterministic in affecting choices made.
If, in the strict deterministic sense, Free Will is defined as being able to make a decision independent of all possible past contributory factors, random and non-random, then the term is worthless. This rigid definition does not allow for any alternative, in which case it does not distinguish from any other possibility.
If, however, Will is defined for a sentient being presented with a situation, deciding on a course of action after evaluation of alternatives, then in that sense that Will is at least somewhat Free and the term Free Will may have some meaning that can be used in common discourse.
In what sense can Free Will have meaning? First, the decision is made by the individual and not by some outside controlling factor such as a powerful human exercising mind control, a powerful space alien, or a powerful god by whatever means. Presently, there is little evidence that any of these outside influences actually occur and can therefore be discounted.
Second, the decision is made over a course of time considering alternatives. This second criterion suggests that the “fight or flight” response is not a case of Free Will, but of a lower brain function that facilitates quick action in an immediately dangerous situation. There is probably a discontinuous spectrum of brain function among animal species that incorporates only reactive processes such as the “fight or flight” response, smelling and going towards a food source and reflexively responding to pheromonal signals from the opposite sex, and that which uses conscious decision making.
Third, the process is not predictable. No matter how much we know of a person’s past, we cannot predict their response with high accuracy. If it were possible to easily predict a person’s decisions, that would be evidence for obvious elements of the past determining the decision. Card players depend on being able to predict opponents’ moves with some accuracy while being refractory to opponents’ predictions of their own. But this is not quite what is meant by the lack of predictability of a person’s decision. That person may be inclined to stupidly bet on filling an inside straight, but his process in doing so would be different each time he encountered the situation, even if, in the highly unlikely event the cards were the same in a new case. So some predictability doesn’t mean that a person is not exercising Free Will.
However, it is not easily possible to predict the decision making pathway of a non-sentient being either, so the lack of predictability doesn’t mean the being is either sentient or has Free Will. Lack of predictability is just a necessary component of Free Will.
Finally, if you could imagine a universe in which there was some essence of decision making that was not connected to the events of that universe, that essence would constitute Free Will. If you compared individuals for decision making with the essence with sentient individuals from our own universe without the essence, it would probably be hard to come with a test to differentiate the two processes. [need to allow for some experience-based decisions here]. Therefore, beings who use our process for decision making, deterministic or not, would be indistinguishable from those who have a non-deterministic essence determining their Free Will. If our Will is the same as their Free Will, we, then effectively have Free Will.
