Several years ago, I encountered an interview with Sam Harris by Dave Rubin (this may be the interview, but I'm not 100% sure), who made a rather convincing-to-me (at the time, at least) case that there's no such thing as free will. He talked about determinism, how quantum mechanics isn't enough to save us from that determinism, and that even if we had a "soul", that soul is still telling us what to do -- so we have no free will whatsoever! He then insisted that if we just embrace this, we can be more forgiving of everyone around us, and in general, live a happier life.
It wasn't "convincing" enough to me to agree with his conclusions, but for a week or so, I kept catching myself thinking "I have to do this because I do not have free will" or "I can't do this because I have no free will" and I started wondering -- what the heck was going on? Apparently, if free will doesn't really exist, I need the illusion of free will just to function! When I accepted this, I was able to function normally.
Over the next several months, after encountering others who made similar cases (some of whom I respect to one degree or another), I continued to reflect on what happened that week. As I tried to puzzle out what happened ... I noticed a certain free will strawman that opponents of the notion of free will fall back on, to discredit the entire notion. "No one has free will," they say, "because everything is determined by the laws of physics, and so no one can do anything random, and thus free will is impossible."
Just how is this a strawman? The problem rests in the fact that no one sits down and defines "free will". Most people generally think of "free will" colloquially as "the ability to make choices" -- and these opponents of free will observe that everything is determined from the beginning of the universe -- and then they conclude that, because we can't do anything random, we have no free will.
But this deserves a little more delving into. What do people generally mean when they say "the ability to make choices"? Do they really mean "the ability to act at random"? I would propose that the answer is "no" -- that most people, when they intuitively think about "free will", are generally thinking that people have the ability to take in their environment, logically think about it, and then make conclusions on how they can alter their own behavior.
Granted, the "logic" involved here might not be the best -- we're naturally pattern-seekers, after all, and our logic isn't always sound -- and we nonetheless have things we cannot do, due to our circumstances -- for example, I cannot sprout wings and fly, nor can I regrow a leg if I lose one, or walk afterward -- but I do have the ability to think about how I might make wings, or create a prosthetic, or get a wheelchair, and then think about how I might use these things, and then act on it. To the degree that we can do this, limited only by the physics of this world, is the degree we have free will.
For example, a female ferret doesn't have free will when it comes to mating: if she doesn't mate when in heat, she dies. That doesn't mean, however, that she has no choices. She can be trained to do things, if she decides she wants the offered rewards, and if given things to play with, she can investigate them and try them out.
As a human, I have much more free will, because I can sit down and think about mathematics, or work out a story, or sit and think about the conversation I had the other day trying to figure out what I did right or wrong ... and I can seek out help when I need it from others, to fulfill goals I set out for myself. I can also take the advice of others, and think about how it might apply to me -- and I may try it or not, to see if I like it, or I might recognize something about myself that allows me to conclude the advice is nonsensical for me.
Do computers have free will? The underlying silicon does not -- the silicon very strictly follows the laws of physics, which have been forced to process electrical signals in certain ways. I have spent some time trying to justify the idea that a thermostat has free will, but now that I realize that free will needs both behavior and the ability to change it, I realize that thermostats don't have free will -- and that silicon of a computer has as much free will as a thermostat. Software, however, can have behavior, and the behavior can even be emergent -- but I cannot help but see hints of free will, with the fairly recent report that the algorithms set to process satellite images for Google Maps will generate random photos to fit in to a deadline given by the software engineers. I don't think we can purposely "give" a computer free will -- but I think we'll see it as an emerging property in any system that has sufficiently complex behavior.
It is a mistake to assume that determinism means we cannot have free will: if we cannot depend on ourselves to make the decisions we like, can it really be said to be free will? We need a predictable universe in order to have at least somewhat predictable outcomes so we could figure out our own preferences -- and we cannot do that if we act randomly for every decision we have to make! And what's more, there's likely a certain amount of randomness built in to our behavior, anyway: after all, discovering our preferences requires numerous trials and comparisons to figure them out -- and when we see the frequency of randomized trials will decrease over time, we do so only because we have learned the lessons of the experiments, and will choose accordingly. After all, how many times do I have to try peas to know I hate them with the passion of a thousand suns? Free will doesn't disappear with this lack of randomization -- on the contrary, developing preferences over time is at the core of free will!
Thus, contrary to the notions of opponents of free will, determinism doesn't cancel out the possibility: it's a requirement!
So go, follow the advice that free will opponents paradoxically seem to always give, after they make their case: go do good things, for yourself and others, knowing that you can make a difference in the world! And don't necessarily expect to be able to change others, for good or ill -- they also have free will, even if they don't see the wisdom of your suggestions!
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