Some musings on Free Will.

[speaks]

C.S. Lews supposedly said "You ARE a Soul you HAVE a body." Basically this suggests that the soul is the important bit and the body, while nice, doesn't matter overly much in the long run. It is going to be worm food anyway. I have always liked this as a notion of free will. Biology only determines so much, your soul decides what type of person you

Comments

[logiphage]

I like the idea of magic too, I read SF and F fiction for a reason;) But I don't believe in it.

There is nothing inconsistent with areligious, aspiritual, or athiestic people who find in favor of free will.

And I do. We know we can learn, not just facts, but modify our brain chemistry, the way we feel about things. If I convince you that you cannot change your life, you are less likely to do so, but if I convince you the opposite, or you get tired of feeling impotent you are more likely to change your life.

I don't think the computer you worry about can exist at least not perfectly accurate, due to quantum indeterminacy. However that doesn't really answer the question of free will either way. Further I don't think the matter can be known either way, whatsoever. You can know what decisions you made, and the reasons you did, but you can't ever know what your decisions in the future will be, or else you would certainly never agonize over them:)

So since I suspect the issue is not knowable I think it's one of the very rare cases where you should judge the 'truth' by results. What happens if you believe you have no choice vs that you have choice? What happens to society if they believe they have no choice vs if they have choice? Or more selfishly, which makes you feel better?

It's in my opinion counter to human reality to think we have no choice, since we spend so much our our experience considering choices.

I can also say with confidence, in an evolutionary sense, that we are descended from those who spent effort making the best choices they could. Anyone who thought all was foreordained would have been less likely to expend that effort and thus don't figure strongly into our genetic heritage.

So I think I can safely assert that from an evolutionary standpoint people who think they have free choice are at a strong advantage. Evolution itself is largely about choosing. So either evolution is, in a sense, a consequence of free choice, or else we have been tricked by evolution into thinking we have free choice because that is a more successful strategy, but the latter seems intuitively wrong to me.