Have you went down any internet rabbit holes only to come out with a deep set existential crisis? If so, what are they?
Free will.
It’s hard to accept, but free will is just not compatible with reality. It’s like geocentrism. It seems obvious on its face because of our limited perspective, but nothing else in the universe makes sense if it’s true. We live in a mechanistic universe and cause and effect doesn’t suddenly stop when the atoms are part of a human.
I freaked out for about a week once I came to realize how much of our society is based on a scientific impossibility. Redesigning justice, ethics, healthcare, the very concept of blame, etc. to account for this is a daunting fucking prospect.
Subatomic particles act in insane ways that are absolutely not mechanical or predictible. A very limited size of object behaves “normally”. I think believing that the universe mostly acts like our everyday objects is the skewed perspective.
Our current understanding is not enough to state that with confidence. We used to be so confident with classical mechanics and even claims that physics is almost complete. God knows how long our current probabilistic model will last before we find another better model. It may be probabilistic, or it may not.
Random behavior of subatomic particles doesn’t make free will any likelier either though.
If they act at random on a makro level their randomness would average out to zero. And that actually checks out, since the mechanical forces of the atomic and molecular level are known, observable, and provable. An apple drops from the tree to the ground, every time. Causality is still a thing, even if not observable at the subatomic level.
The only way to imagine a subatomically based free will would be some mechanic over which we, at will, could change the randomness of subatomic particles to behave in a predictable pattern and on a scale that’s grand enough to make the proverbial apple fall upward. Or at least make or synapses do something that they physically speaking wouldn’t have done otherwise.
Free will is as likely as magic. In fact it would actually be some form of magic - a volitional breach of causality itself.
on a scale that’s grand enough to make the proverbial apple fall upward
Not necessarily. An apple teetering on the edge of a cliff requires no grand change in initial conditions to have two very different journeys. If “you” are a metaphysical entity capable of altering the signals in your physical brain, your brain could deterministically amplify and enact your will, like gravity does to the apple on the cliff. If you have a metaphysical existence, this is a pretty reasonable mechanism for it to work.
Not being predictable by us does not mean they offer free will.
The preconditions are so precise that you’ll never be able to get exactly the same results from trying to do the same thing twice - you’ll never be able to do the same thing twice. But that doesn’t stop cause and effect determining the outcome. There is no place where free will can enter in to any equation at any micro or macroscopic level and just having unpredictable microscopic events doesn’t give you control of your own destiny. This is totally separate from your own perceptions of having choices you make. Personally I find myself doing things I didn’t consciously choose to do. Once you start noticing them you might find more and more.
Here’s the thing, though: it’s doesn’t matter if free will is real or not.
Well, it does if our entire justice system is based around the concept of free will.
But we never could have designed it any other way (assuming no free will)
But if we are truly deterministic beings, the factors determining our environment are incredibly important. Even (not freely) acknowledging that free will doesn’t exist we could very well (not freely) decide that we need a justice system in this society because we (not freely) want less crime, and people will (not freely) do less crime in a society where such a system is in place.
In the end it doesnt matter if people act based on free will or entirely predetermined. Or society developed as we are, and we put systems into place that seem to work. Sure, someone robbing a bank might do so for reasons that were predetermined in his brain and surroundings, but getting prosecuted for it would in turn become something that codetermines every future moment of his life.
The only think determinism really changes is perspective. It enables us to say: Okay I understand why I/they/you acted this way, or maybe I don’t understand, but can assume that there were reasons. That’s it. It lends understanding; it doesn’t have to chance anything.
That also does not matter. Spinozan Determinism can be summed up as:
“If it could have happened any other way, it would have.”
Why do people always stop one step too short?
If there is no free will, the concepts of justice, blame, etc. still survive funtionally intact. If “chemical you” commits a crime, “you” are only not responsible if “you” is a metaphysical entity separate from (and that cannot control) the chemical you. But there’s no evidence that “you” aren’t simply the “chemical you”, and therefore fully responsible for your crimes. If “you” are a metaphysical entity separate from the chemical you, then “you” do actually have free will.
This is only not true if the metaphysical you exists but cannot control the chemical you, which seems reasonable but like… you can move your arm right now, by willing it to be so. Either metaphysical you has free will, or your conscious experience is the chemical you. Either way, your conscious experience is either the same as or commands your physical form, and therefore is responsible for the actions that you take, and can be blamed and given justice.
I dislike the conception of Free Will that asserts will is only free if it is not deterministic. Any system dictated by the law of Cause and Effect will necessarily be deterministic, given knowledge of First Cause. Together, those premises imply that the only way to be truly free is in a chaotic universe, i.e. one without a relationship between Cause and Effect, where decisions are completely arbitrary and have no predictable outcome anyway.
The fact of the matter is that you’re already free to do whatever you want, even if that’s shooting yourself in the foot or refusing the choice entirely and running off to live in the woods, and that’s freedom enough for all practical meanings of the word.
There’s a really good Kurzgesagt (in a nutshell) about this topic. (Also their videos are excellent in general, highly recommend their YouTube channel).
My thoughts on this are: we may not have free will but it still feels like we make choices so I will continue to choose to do things which matters to me and enjoy my time in the universe.
Robert Sapolsky agrees.
Sapolsky’s perspective ignores reality to generate talking points.
Just because a person has a limited set of choices, mostly determined by upbringing does not mean that we can predict any future action based on previous actions.
At best you may be able produce a chaotic model that gives probabilities of potential actions in any situation.
You know, there’s a very, very strong emotional incentive to feel agency, and endless aspects of experimental psychology has shown that you stress people or frazzle them or give them an unsolvable problem, and they get a way distorted sense of agency, at that point, as a defence.
Most philosophers think free will and determinism are compatible.
