Illusion of Free Will
Over the past months I have been pondering over the concept of free will. Not mealy on the religious terms but in life itself. I don’t think I have fully grasped the concept of what I am going to try to articulate but bare with me.
Merriam-Webster describes free will as the following.
1 : voluntary choice or decision
2 : freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention
I call free will the Illusion of free will for two simple concept reasons.
The first part “illusion” is made of “the past can predict the future”. This means that your past actions can if known predict what you may do. Simple enough example would be the following.
My mother knows me very well I think and if there were three items in the fridge. Let’s say 1 bottle of beer, 1 bottle of water and 1 glass of milk. Which would she say I would take? My mother would with most certain say I would take the milk.
Free will would depict that one can change their mind. So even though I would choose the milk. Free will would allow me to change my mind or move out of my normal role and say take the beer.
So the first part can predict our future but since we can change our minds. Which changes our future which has not happened yet then free will could exist in that adaptation.
So this Illusion of Free Will states to me that even though my past can predict my future. It won’t always be able to tell what I would always do because the future has not happened.
Now if you move onto some of the religious documents on free will. Then you may, I think have a problem. If we take the judeo-christian god who is suppose to be omniscient. Then what we have here is that there is a god who knows every variable in our path. Who knows what road we will take or better yet knows all roads that are available and what is down each road. To me this comes as a problem for then it is not technically free will.
Another concept of religion is that god has a master plan and guides us to that plan. This by definition defeats free will. If a path is already chosen by someone or something else. Then it is not free will. You may go along with this plan freely but to me that does not make it free will to have something decided for you that you simply go along with.
So we have the illusion because we can predict our actions from our past but can change our minds since the future has not happened.
What are your opinions my friends?
