Free Will

Whether or not we humans have Free Will is an interesting topic that might be extremely consequential.  Then again, it might be merely a parlor game.  Whatever the case, you should not take my word for it. Like you (probably), I've given the question some thought over the years, and have even read about it.  I'm about to read about it again, but before I do, I thought I would summarize my feelings about it at this juncture of the space time continuum.  I would venture that my thoughts about it have not changed yet in just over 6 decades (including time contemplating the mystery in utero), but I pledge that in the event that the reading I'm about to do changes my mind in some interesting way, I will at least briefly acknowledge it in a later post (or a postscript).

It seems and has always seemed almost self-evident to me that the question of whether or not your will is free is, when you get right down to it, rather meaningless.  So much is constrained around any of the thousands of "decisions" that face me in a given day-- how did this particular choice get before me?; am I not limited in my options? ; what knowledge and prejudice do I have going in about any of my choices? how much control do I have over my inclination to choose one way or the other? am I really choosing or just trying to avoid the consequences of a bad choice?-- that if there is any wiggle room for freedom (could I have chosen otherwise?) it is itself highly bound by materialistic and probabilistic limits.  

On the other hand, who gives a shit?  It certainly seems like I have free will, especially when I least want to choose.  But in the cases where I am most aware of my apparent obligation to participate in a decision, my appreciation for the benefits of freedom if it only existed are probably at their lowest.  The question of whether what I ultimately choose is really my choice especially in the generally mundane cases that confront me most often seems like the domain of the pedant.  Not really my choice, you say?  Not really relevant!  Not really helpful!  But here's a cookie for you for recognizing it!

On yet another hand, if free will does not exist, is anyone (including me) responsible for the bad choices we make?  Is the effort to change someone's mind worthwhile?  If we're not responsible, do we deserve punishment for the decisions that hurt others?  Now it's interesting at least.  We seem rather bound as a species to punish the source of a bad choice as though there was agency and authorship behind it.  In the history of decisions about whether someone is guilty of a crime of choice, there are plenty of examples of minds being changed.  In deciding the punishment of a criminal by choice, at least in principle we are willing to lessen the severity if there is evidence that the person would now choose differently if they could choose again.   From my perspective, if criminal justice were to be suddenly predicated on an understanding that none of us is free to avoid the circumstances we find ourselves in, including those which all but guarantee that we will choose to commit crimes, and that we all thereby deserve a break for the sins we are bound to perpetrate,  that would be preferable to our present blind (unfree) devotion to seeking punishment for every transgression we are compelled to prosecute.

The mechanics  of what changes a mind-- of bringing about a mind that would choose differently-- are basically the mechanics of choice.  The fact that minds change is our primary sensory evidence that-- illusory freedom or not-- choice is the hinge on which human progress swings. Slavery was a choice that kept getting chosen for scores of years of our country's history, until it wasn't.  It seems at this stage, we are stuck in a rut of the worst choices at every turn.  But if choice one day becomes disposed to get me health care, peace in the Middle East and the restoration of the planet, let it be chained.