It would seem that free will cannot coexist with the laws of physics. If all things behave according to a fixed set of laws, and all things are a complex interaction thereof, then there is no room for free will. The idea of Free will implies that events can be magically injected into reality rather than happening because of reality. Because so many people seem to believe in free will, the question of whose "fault" something is arises. If there are in fact a set of laws which define the behavior of everything in the universe, then all events derive their cause from other events and everything is the "fault" or result of everything ever.

That said, the concept of free will, like so many concepts, remains useful in day to day life so long as no one cares to ponder it too deeply or apply it too completely.

A lot of discussion in philosophy ends up in a free will debate. Determinism was brought by Newtonian physics, and determinism makes free will null and void. This is repulsive to me. I accept free will axiomatically. I know, I'm not supposed to do that, but it seems natural. I prefer Descarte's argument: "I choose, therefore, I have volition." Of course, that isn't enough. A whole lot of deterministic cause and effect could lead to the neuron firings in my head that lead to a particular choice.

However, I still have a problem with a world without volition. I choose to think about volition. I decide that it's a very important philisophical topic. If thinking about volition or philosophy is not caused by my choosing to do so, then philosophy would be pointless and irrelevant. It would be contrived. I know that this isn't proof, but there is something wrong here. Since asking questions appears to be an exercise in volition, I won't give up the idea of free will until someone can explain how a mind without volition can question whether it has volition.

An option in the popular computer game "The Sims". You can turn off the sim's free will as you see fit. Having free will on will allow your sims to move around and do actions that are necessary for its well being (i.e. go to the bathroom, sleep, eat).

I've always thought this to be a somewhat creepy thing. I don't know why. I mean, just the idea of one click, *bing*, no free will.

If man can Act against the will of God, then he must have free will. Otherwise, every act would have to be concurrent with the will of God. Consider: if I have free will and God decides that I shall live, but I demonstrate my free will and commit suicide, then God is not actually omnipotent; however, if God intervenes and prevents me from committing suicide, then I don't actually have free will.

The easy escape from this argument is that God never decides for us; he knows the future, but does not decide it.

Everything that happens in the universe (and our minds) depends on some combination of two things:

• A set of fixed, deterministic laws
• A purely random set of accidents

There is no middle ground. This is awkward for us as individuals who think of and speak of volition, will, and self-control. Few people will make the statement "My choice was wholly determined by internal and external forces I do not understand", however accurate it is.

Each one of our actions comes from a series of processes that take place within our minds. Some of them we happen to understand, but these are the small minority of what goes on.

But without free will, much of what is part of us and our society seems to crumble. Where is the place of praise and punishment when the action was a result of chance or something that was determined to be. It is free will that forms part of the judgment of good and evil. We feel virtue when resisting an evil temptation, but how much of that is our choice?

Through childhood we learn about various forms of coercion and compulsion and resent it when people use them to influence us. We as thinking beings want to make our own choices, even as a child. It is difficult for us to accept something that we cannot control being held as 'responsible' for all of our actions. There are more than a few people who become depressed about the futility of a universe of predetermination which is tempered only by chance.

The illusion of free will is an essential part of who we are as humans. The notions of responsibility, good and evil, self control and volition. Justice and punishment are closely linked to the question of free will - who are we to punish people who were destined to do as they did.

Probably one of the most hotly contested issues in science, philosophy and religion, the question of free will has plagued humanity in one form or another for thousands of years--at least, the portion of humanity whose basic needs are taken care of, and who have enough idle time on their hands to waste it sitting around discussing lofty philosophical notions. For the portion of humanity that spends their days making mud bricks or field-stripping their AK-47s the issue is of no immediate concern.

In the beginning, was the Word. The Word came in different guises, depending on one's culture. For the Jews, the Word came on an immense scroll called the Torah, to be lovingly reproduced and passed to future generations. For Muslims, the Word was the Qur'an; the Christians had their Bible.

In a society which has grown accustomed to the idea of the Word as absolute truth, to question free will makes little sense. When you take it for granted that God created you and is telling you how to live your life, it is only natural to make the minor jump to believing that God is directly controlling your life.

As the years passed, technology and science evolved from obscure tools of the literati to religions in their own right, and people began to ask: what's so sacred about the Word, anyway? At about this time a number of early scientists, known at the time as natural philosophers, tried to unify the ideas of God and Nature. Within a few hundred years of each other, Anselm, Aquinas, Kant and Paley all took a crack at it. Suddenly, the appropriateness of determinism was in doubt--because the idea of God's very existence was in doubt!

Then came a chain of radical new ideas, completely at odds with convention, that yielded Newton's laws of motion, and eventually, Rutherford's model of the atom and Freud's nurture-over-nature explanations for human behavior. Suddenly we were all living in a clockwork universe, our actions dictated by easily derivable laws, and it was only a matter of time until we understood the working of the universe down to the last subatomic particle. In 1906, the dean of Harvard physics was heard to remark to prospective incoming freshmen that physics was a very poor career choice for aspiring young men, because there remained only six unsolved problems in the entire field.

Within thirty years, those six problems had turned classical physics upside-down. The work of Bohr, Einstein, Maxwell and Heisenberg (among others) fueled a paradigmatic shift; in this brave new world the universe is random, chaotic and unpredictable. Alan Turing showed us that, not only are some problems unsolvable, but some problems cannot even be determined to be solvable, or unsolvable. In the brave new world of 20th-century physics, free will was suddenly on very shaky ground. The straw that broke the camel's back was the development of quantum physics, which buggered the entire problem by suggesting that things might be deterministic and unpredictable. In the end, nobody was sure of anything regarding free will, and a lot of people threw up their hands in disgust.

Not me, though. Growing up, learning the history of science and coming to think about the world from a modern point of view, I was always fascinated by the concept of free will. And, after a great deal of thought, I have come to a conclusion: the question of free will is irrelevant.

Consider:

• Before you have made some decision, there is no way to predict the outcome of your decision, because you have not made it yet. This is true whether or not free will exists.
• On the cusp of your decision--as you are making it--there is no way to prove, or disprove, that your decision is the result of your own free will.
• After your decision has been made, the outcome has been decided. Because the outcome can never be changed and the decision can never be exactly repeated, there is no way to determine whether a different outcome was possible.

In other words, having or not having free will makes no difference in your day-to-day life. Your best bet is to act as if you have free will, and not to fret about what might be coming in your future if you don't have free will. The future is impossible to predict, irrespective of free will. The past cannot be changed, irrespective of free will. Worrying about it isn't going to make a whit of difference.

Here is how I see the relationship between free will and quantum physics

Define free will in terms of what it would mean to not have free will: To not have free will would mean that if somebody has exact knowledge of your body (and your surroundings), he will be able to predict what you will do next. So to have free will means to be unpredictable.

Now, it is very likely that the human brain is essentially a quantum system, like a quantum computer, which means that quantum physical effects are necessary for its operation

But in quantum physics it is not possible to obtain exact knowledge of the state of a quantum system, because the act of observation will necessarily affect the state.

It is not even in theory possible to obtain exact knowledge of the state of a person's brain, which means he has free will.

Like Richard Feynman said: "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics"

Be careful of what you're talking about. Here are some of the meanings that I see used above, and a few I've heard elsewhere.

Free will is _____

1. Will that is free from physical input.
2. Will that is free from causality.
3. Will that is free from God (the dude running The Sims, if you want).
4. Will that is unpredictable by yourself.
5. Will that is unpredictable by other people.
6. Will that is unpredictable by God.
7. Will. (Strongly related to volition)
8. Will that is free from the future.
9. Will that is free from everything.
10. Will that acts based on both physical input and some kind of trancendental/spiritual/metaphysical input.
11. Random will.
12. Spontaneity.
13. Some of the above.
14. And many many more...

So, one good question to ask when free will is mentioned is this: What the hell are you talking about? But more importantly, Can you please be careful enough to not keep changing what it means?

I advise that you avoid using the phrase if you are trying to make a rational argument. Too many meanings are associated with it, so it just muddles understanding. For example, free will is the false bridge between the ideas of quantum physics and God's omnipotence.

As xriso writes, there are manifold definitions of free will.
Most of them boil down to one of these, and here are some of the problems with any/all of these definitions.

1. Random will, in other words, the ability to choose completely independent of any cause. By this definition a photon has free will. Experimentally, at a slit a photon may choose to go right or left and no one can know which way it will go before it does.
2. Unfettered will, the ability to choose completely independent of a frame of reference. Such a definition wouldn't even support itself, a choice by its nature exists within a frame of reference. You must choose something over something else. Even choosing not to choose would exist within a system where choice exists.
3. Causality-free will, the ability to choose without being influenced by past decisions. Such a form of free will would render the act of choosing moot. If your choice cannot affect the future, what is your choice affecting?
4. Will undirected by God, the ability to make your own choices independent of what God wants you to do. This depends entirely on the definition of God one chooses to use. An All-powerful All-encompassing singular God implies a lack of this kind of free will. Even if God let you act against his/her wishes, you would still technically be fulfilling his/her wishes to act as you chose. Of course such a definition of God leads to many other paradoxes as well.
5. Insanity as free will. if you yourself cannot determine your actions, then you have no choice at all.

Free Will

Voltaire (1694-1778)

Translation by H.I. Woolf, New York: Knopf, 1924

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EVER since men have reasoned, the philosophers have obscured this matter: but the theologians have rendered it unintelligible by absurd subtleties about grace. Locke is perhaps the first man to find a thread in this labyrinth; for he is the first who, without having the arrogance of trusting in setting out from a general principle, examined human nature by analysis. For three thousand years people have disputed whether or not the will is free. In the "Essay on the Human Understanding," chapter on "Power," Locke shows first of all that the question is absurd, and that liberty can no more belong to the will than can colour and movement.

What is the meaning of this phrase "to be free"? it means "to be able," or assuredly it has no sense. For the will ''to be able '' is as ridiculous at bottom as to say that the will is yellow or blue, round or square. To will is to wish, and to be free is to be able. Let us note step by step the chain of what passes in us, without obfuscating our minds by any terms of the schools or any antecedent principle.

It is proposed to you that you mount a horse, you must absolutely make a choice, for it is quite clear that you either will go or that you will not go. There is no middle way. It is therefore of absolute necessity that you wish yes or no. Up to there it is demonstrated that the will is not free. You wish to mount the horse; why? The reason, an ignoramus will say, is because I wish it. This answer is idiotic, nothing happens or can happen without a reason, a cause; there is one therefore for your wish. What is it? the agreeable idea of going on horseback which presents itself in your brain, the dominant idea, the determinant idea. But, you will say, can I not resist an idea which dominates me? No, for what would be the cause of your resistance? None. By your will you can obey only an idea which will dominate you more.

Now you receive all your ideas; therefore you receive your wish, you wish therefore necessarily. The word "liberty" does not therefore belong in any way to your will.

You ask me how thought and wish are formed in us. I answer you that I have not the remotest idea. I do not know how ideas are made any more than how the world was made. All that is given to us is to grope for what passes in our incomprehensible machine.

The will, therefore, is not a faculty that one can call free. A free will is an expression absolutely void of sense, and what the scholastics have called will of indifference, that is to say willing without cause, is a chimera unworthy of being combated.

Where will be liberty then? In the power to do what one wills. I wish to leave my study, the door is open, I am free to leave it.

But, say you, if the door is closed, and I wish to stay at home, I stay there freely. Let us be explicit You exercise then the power that you have of staying; you have this power, but you have not that of going out.

The liberty about which so many volumes have been written is, therefore, reduced to its accurate terms, only the power of acting.

In what sense then must one utter the phrase - " Man is free "? in the same sense that one utters the words, health, strength, happiness. Man is not always strong, always healthy, always happy.

A great passion, a great obstacle, deprive him of his liberty, his power of action. The word "liberty," "free-will," is therefore an abstract word, a general word, like beauty, goodness, justice. These terms do not state that all men are always beautiful, good and just; similarly, they are not always free.

Let us go further: this liberty being only the power of acting, what is this power? It is the effect of the constitution and present state of our organs. Leibnitz wishes to resolve a geometrical problem, he has an apoplectic fit, he certainly has not liberty to resolve his problem. Is a vigorous young man, madly in love, who holds his willing mistress in his arms, free to tame his passion? undoubtedly not. He has the power of enjoying, and has not the power of refraining. Locke was therefore very right to call liberty "power." When is it that this young man can refrain despite the violence of his passion? when a stronger idea determines in a contrary sense the activity of his body and his soul.

But what! the other animals will have the same liberty, then, the same power? Why not? They have senses, memory, feeling, perceptions, as we have. They act with spontaneity as we act. They must have also, as we have, the power of acting by virtue of their perceptions, by virtue of the play of their organs.

Someone cries: "If it be so, everything is only machine, everything in the universe is subjected to eternal laws." Well! would you have everything at the pleasure of a million blind caprices? Either everything is the sequence of the necessity of the nature of things, or everything is the effect of the eternal order of an absolute master; in both cases we are only wheels in the machine of the world.

It is a vain witticism, a commonplace to say that without the pretended liberty of the will, all pains and rewards are useless. Reason, and you will come to a quite contrary conclusion. If a brigand is executed, his accomplice who sees him expire has the liberty of not being frightened at the punishment; if his will is determined by itself, he will go from the foot of the scaffold to assassinate on the broad highway; if his organs, stricken with horror, make him experience an unconquerable terror, he will stop robbing. His companion's punishment becomes useful to him and an insurance for society only so long as his will is not free.

Liberty then is only and can be only the power to do what one will. That is what philosophy teaches us. But if one considers liberty in the theological sense, it is a matter so sublime that profane eyes dare not raise themselves to it.

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The Philosophical Dictionary: http://history.hanover.edu/texts/voltaire/volfrewi.htm

Free will (?).

1.

A will free from improper coercion or restraint.

To come thus was I not constrained, but did
On my free will.
Shak.

2.

The power asserted of moral beings of willing or choosing without the restraints of physical or absolute necessity.

 

© Webster 1913.