Most people simply assume we have free will. It certainly feels like we do if we are healthy and the goals we seek are feasible. We want to do something possible and then we do it. It feels like we choose it freely and then simply do it. To define realistic and practical free will, the caveat on healthy function is necessary and the goals have to be possible or have some degree of feasibility. There are many conditions from paralysis to obessive/compulsive disorders which can prevent or impede the exercise of autonomous function (the basic medical definition of free will).
However, there may be some problems in our self-assessment of our own condition of free will. The first problem is the assumption that feeling you have something proves you do have it. Many people feel they have a soul. Many other atheist or agnostic people in today's secular, scientific world do not consider that souls (or the metaphysical or supernatural in general) exist. Thus they clearly don't feel they have a soul in the religious or metaphysical sense. Free will could be one of those kind of illusions (if it is an illusion) where we strongly feel we have something so we simply assume we do have it. Strong feelings can be deceptive and often unrelated to objective truth.
Going back one step. Is consciousness an illusion? I would argue "no". In being conscious we can be self-reflectively aware of being conscious. So consciousness (the simple argument would go) can be a valid self-proving identity in logical terms. Consciousness proves and affirms its own existence in this sense, as Descartes wrote. "I think therefore I am."
Free will does not quite have that self-proving quality in logical terms. It is more that we feel we have free will so we assume we do. If we expand Descartes' rubric we arguably get: "I think subjectively therefore I exist objectively." Subjective consciousness can become its own object and thus prove its own existence objectively by a kind of self-proving identity. More precisely, self-reflective consciousness of consciousness is a subset of consciousness. Consciouness is broader than just language based self-reflective consciousness.
When we try this manoeuvre with free will, it at first appears to work. "I will therefore I act." This would be closest in argument, I think, to Descartes' method. But this is just a feeling that you exercise will and an assumption that willing precedes acting. The feeling of willing may be co-temporal with the acting or even come some milliseconds after it, as some experiments claim to show. (I can come back to that.)
Before going further, let us look at how free will could arise. Assuming physicalism, which means only the physical or material exists, free will must have a physical mechanism. What could this physical mechanism be? Basically, we would have to find the mechanism in determinism or indeterminism. I suspect you can already see the problems that arise here.
How could free will arise in a mechanically determined world? Every chain of causation is determined in such a world, including the chains of chemical and electrical interactions in the brain. Where can free will exist, intitiate or intrude in such a setup? Does indeterminism save the theory of free will? Again, no. In an indeterministic or non-deterministic world, the "free will" is not free but stochastic (random). The scientific evidence is that there are both highly determined (if not absolutely determined) events in the world (think of chemical reactions) and non-determined (random) events in the world, with the latter most prevalent at the quantum level.
With regard to human free will, so-called, manifesting as human complexity and unpredictability, some scientists theorise that it could arise because there are structures in the brain of a scale where quantum events could impact the initiation of sequences in the brain. But such "free will" would be more of the nature of pseudo free will, in roughly the same sense that computers can generate pseudo random numbers. The human brain (and other complex brains at least in mammals) could be regarded as evolutionarily developed to harness quantum indeterminism to generate complex and not fully deterministic behaviours (which actually make some animals fitter to survive and reproduce than being totally programmed and predictable).
I theorise that we have evolved to feel we have free will (when in fact we don't) and that that feeling, though unfounded, is an important aspect of remaining sane and happy, if we can mange that feat. The feeling that we have agency and free will is evolutionarily necessary. Otherwise, we could alternately feel like we were fully determined and constrained biological robots and/or we would feel like we are random and out of control biological robots. Some first person, subjective, descriptions of some forms of mental illness episodes do carry this flavor of the person feeling not just detached, dissociated or "impersonal" (not a real person) but actually controlled by (assumed) outside forces not under his/her control. This may rather be an endogenous perception of the internal control of themselves by non-willed determinisic or non-deterministic forces inherent in material nature. They may be experiencing a breakdown of the necessary illusion of free will.
This is just a theory of course and it starts from a premise of phyicalism or materialism. I wonder if those interested in philosophy might find it interesting. @dailyinsanity
However, there may be some problems in our self-assessment of our own condition of free will. The first problem is the assumption that feeling you have something proves you do have it. Many people feel they have a soul. Many other atheist or agnostic people in today's secular, scientific world do not consider that souls (or the metaphysical or supernatural in general) exist. Thus they clearly don't feel they have a soul in the religious or metaphysical sense. Free will could be one of those kind of illusions (if it is an illusion) where we strongly feel we have something so we simply assume we do have it. Strong feelings can be deceptive and often unrelated to objective truth.
Going back one step. Is consciousness an illusion? I would argue "no". In being conscious we can be self-reflectively aware of being conscious. So consciousness (the simple argument would go) can be a valid self-proving identity in logical terms. Consciousness proves and affirms its own existence in this sense, as Descartes wrote. "I think therefore I am."
Free will does not quite have that self-proving quality in logical terms. It is more that we feel we have free will so we assume we do. If we expand Descartes' rubric we arguably get: "I think subjectively therefore I exist objectively." Subjective consciousness can become its own object and thus prove its own existence objectively by a kind of self-proving identity. More precisely, self-reflective consciousness of consciousness is a subset of consciousness. Consciouness is broader than just language based self-reflective consciousness.
When we try this manoeuvre with free will, it at first appears to work. "I will therefore I act." This would be closest in argument, I think, to Descartes' method. But this is just a feeling that you exercise will and an assumption that willing precedes acting. The feeling of willing may be co-temporal with the acting or even come some milliseconds after it, as some experiments claim to show. (I can come back to that.)
Before going further, let us look at how free will could arise. Assuming physicalism, which means only the physical or material exists, free will must have a physical mechanism. What could this physical mechanism be? Basically, we would have to find the mechanism in determinism or indeterminism. I suspect you can already see the problems that arise here.
How could free will arise in a mechanically determined world? Every chain of causation is determined in such a world, including the chains of chemical and electrical interactions in the brain. Where can free will exist, intitiate or intrude in such a setup? Does indeterminism save the theory of free will? Again, no. In an indeterministic or non-deterministic world, the "free will" is not free but stochastic (random). The scientific evidence is that there are both highly determined (if not absolutely determined) events in the world (think of chemical reactions) and non-determined (random) events in the world, with the latter most prevalent at the quantum level.
With regard to human free will, so-called, manifesting as human complexity and unpredictability, some scientists theorise that it could arise because there are structures in the brain of a scale where quantum events could impact the initiation of sequences in the brain. But such "free will" would be more of the nature of pseudo free will, in roughly the same sense that computers can generate pseudo random numbers. The human brain (and other complex brains at least in mammals) could be regarded as evolutionarily developed to harness quantum indeterminism to generate complex and not fully deterministic behaviours (which actually make some animals fitter to survive and reproduce than being totally programmed and predictable).
I theorise that we have evolved to feel we have free will (when in fact we don't) and that that feeling, though unfounded, is an important aspect of remaining sane and happy, if we can mange that feat. The feeling that we have agency and free will is evolutionarily necessary. Otherwise, we could alternately feel like we were fully determined and constrained biological robots and/or we would feel like we are random and out of control biological robots. Some first person, subjective, descriptions of some forms of mental illness episodes do carry this flavor of the person feeling not just detached, dissociated or "impersonal" (not a real person) but actually controlled by (assumed) outside forces not under his/her control. This may rather be an endogenous perception of the internal control of themselves by non-willed determinisic or non-deterministic forces inherent in material nature. They may be experiencing a breakdown of the necessary illusion of free will.
This is just a theory of course and it starts from a premise of phyicalism or materialism. I wonder if those interested in philosophy might find it interesting. @dailyinsanity
