Stephen Fry Would Like to Remind You That You Have No Free Will
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Here, its an modal verb modifying “like” into the subjunctive mood.
Where it is a past tense of “will” its the other “will” (the modal verb expressing future tense or habitual action), not the active verb referring to exercising will (of which the past tense is “willed”, not “would”.)
Although I've seen a usage (though I think its either actually archaic or an affected archaicism) in which the modal-active combination “would will” expressing exercise of will in the subjunctive mood reduced simply to just “would”, so “would” is sometimes used a form of the verb “to will” in the sense of “exercise will”, but, still, not in the use under discussion.
What strikes me is that the folks arguing "No Free Will" appear to ignore the non-deterministic parts of classical physics.
I do not know is whether this born out of ignorance or whether these folks have an agenda when it comes to trying to convince others that they do not actually have "free will."
Like so many philosophical discussions, it quickly devolves into an argument about definitions. What exactly is "free will"? How would the universe and my experiences in it be different if I had it vs. if I did not? If we're not debating about testable, falsifiable things, then we're just arguing about definitions of words.
This is non-deterministic classical physics.
if a complex system can be disentangled to explain certain causes producing certain results, the system exhibits a form of laminar flow in time and space.
otherwise it exhibits turbulence. while certain forms of turbulence appear indecipherable at first, it turns out some of the turbulence can be predicted by identifying vortex patterns.
at the margin beyond those identifiable vortexes, lies the the volume in which entropy of turbulent flow goes asymptotic towards proveable non-decipherability.
thats where free will is.in that volume.
so free will might 'not exist' but still be comprised as an emergent property of provably undecipherable turbulence.
if we can prove that causation can NEVER possibly be found, then we can express this as free will. god of the gaps. free will of the gaps.
as such, even a bacteria may be found to have indetifiable free will in a number of studied circumstances. ypu may have to look in very fine detail to find it. find what? find the indecipherablr margin where the bacteria takes actions upon itself and its environment.
animals most certainly can be found to have free will.
the real question for human civilization is not whether we have free will.
the big question is how we follow a code of ethics to hold people accountable and responsible for their actions. that is the bedrock of faith in our way of life. individually and together.
Looking at psychology, in general we see people who feel like they have agency in their lives are happier, and people feeling like they have no agency are depressed. Our agency allows us to do great things, like spearhead interesting projects or just make our lives better with our choices.
Some people will link free will to the conscious experience, but I don't think that's quite right. We all know that we are 'aware'. But being aware, experiencing life consciously, doesn't make a difference to whether we are watching some great cosmic play being preformed.
In fact, the way things happen in life, all things being the made up of cumulative events from the past, it be strange if things weren't predetermined. To me personally, a bit of hypocritical belief is necessary to continue acting out the play.
If nobody can conclusively say anything about "free will" - if all we can agree on is that it's intrinsically ineffable - then it all starts to sound a bit like Russell's Teapot, or angels dancing on pinheads, and we should probably focus our energies on something more effable.
However, free will in the sense of a soul commanding a body separate from that body that is tallying up sins to be punished based on those decisions is hard to believe.
But to falsify a concept like "Free Will" it needs to first be defined. It's one of those things where you can get 1000 different definitions.
The problem is, this view really doesn't match with our experience of what it means to live as human beings. We experience deciding. We become convinced that things are actually true. We love and are loved. We know, from direct experience of living as human beings, that this is not who we are.
This leaves a dilemma. Either our experience is wrong, or our initial starting point is wrong. Either the laws of physics are not what is "furthest back" (in Francis Schaeffer's term), or else we really are determined and our lived experience is an illusion.
Choice is deterministic, but that doesn't make it less real - on the contrary, it gives your choices meaning! They have causes, reasons, justifications! It would hardly be preferable if your "choice" were the outcome of a fair dice roll, would it? What kind of choice would that be?
I think the problem arises from a confusion of of abstraction levels. At the level of atoms and chemical reactions, you are completely deterministic and "choice" isn't a meaningful concept. 10 stories up, at the level of thoughts and ideas, it is. This is no different than how "pressure" is a meaningful concept for a tank of air, but not a single air molecule.
If your view is that Brownian Motion is not deterministic then does that not contradict the idea 'that cause and effect holds in a closed system' as any sort of absolute?