what is free will? how sure are we that this condition exists? perhaps it is more of an optimism than a surety - that the physical laws that govern the universe are less than deterministic, or even probabalistic when applied to the structures of humanity. but is that arrogance? are we really free to decide anything? i mean is the sub-quantum fluctuation that started the big bang and ended eternity, for at least the span of time anyway, and is the root cause of everything, of every electron's movement, of every supernova, is it possible that the firing of synapses in our brains, the electrical current that twitches our muscles, is already determined the moment the universe started expanding?

the stars don't do random things. can we? i guess since we don't, and probably can't, know what happens below the planck scale we will never know if the universe is really as ordered as it appears, or if random truly exists. we think we can approximate random, but again, only to the extent governed by physical laws - which are not random. so maybe 'random' is as much arrogance as 'free will'.

or maybe the fundamental orderedness of the universe is what itself bestows upon us free will. because we can, and do, understand the physical laws that govern the whole of everything, we can exploit the lack of randomness underlying existence, and act of our own free will, in effect creating randomness out of thin air, as it were.

the notion of freedom - political, personal, etc. - depends on the existence of free will, and we take it for granted so often, yet at the same time we romanticize fatalism (ie look around hollywood, any religious organization you want) as if free will were some kind of burden to be thrown off our backs for the safety of knowing it's not our fault, it's part of some master plan.

If it's even logical. Perhaps the universe isn't as deterministic as we assume in our ignorance. Maybe the stars do do random things, just on a level we don't perceive. Everyone thought Newton's laws were the be-all, end-all until it was discovered that they only worked within certain confines. The same will be found about our physical "laws". Maybe the universe is one great mind where all the stars are atoms and the behaviour of the universe is the result of the free choices of this cosmic mind. Sounds kooky, but we rule it out based on our ignorance, not our knowledge. What I'm saying is that we just don't know as much as we like to think.

You are free as long as you have no will.

If you have a will, then you are not free.

Regardless of your apparent certainty in this matter, the fact is you don't know. If a ball could think, it would no doubt believe that it is choosing how to bounce, yet we maintain that its behaviour is rigidly determined by physical laws that no one can alter. The only difference with us is that our behaviour is so ridiculously complex that nobody has ever created a model to explain it (or ever will, in my opinion).

quote:

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Since we're programmed with the perception of choices, we have no choice but to think and act as if they were real.

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Ya gotta read it. I've had it out of the library about 5 times.