Free Will

I believe in free will, or perhaps Free Will would be more appropriate. That is, I believe that our actions are not pre-determined simply by the state of the universe at any given time. Perhaps random, non-deterministic effects influence our conscious choices, or it may be that consciousness itself is special (though I am not aware of any particular reason to think so).

Some people complain if you associate free will with randomness, or even assert that free will arises from randomness. However, I think this is basically just a semantic problem. In order for free will to be “free” there must be some built in capacity for selecting different alternatives. Randomness is the only way to objectively qualify such a selection process. If the process is non-random at some point, it is deterministic, and if it is not deterministic, it is random. The main objection people have with the word “random” is that they conceive of randomness as some unthinking entity making their choices for them from the outside. This is absolutely not what I mean. To any objective observer free will may (or even must) appear random at some point, but each of these “random” choices is made by the ‘chooser’ in every way that it makes any sense to talk about. It may be a “random” choice objectively speaking, but the choice is still your choice.

On the other hand, I also think it quite likely that the set of all possible choices is deterministic. This is because I believe that the “many worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics makes sense. In this interpretation all possible universes exist. At any point where a “choice” might be made all the possible choices are taken, in one universe or another. The laws of physics can uniquely determine all the decision points, and all the possible outcomes, but which universe you end up in is your choice.