From Richard Wilson
by e-mail
If we were unable to make choices, to determine events, then the consequences
would surely be dire. For example, we couldn’t be held responsible for our
actions and due legal processes would be a nonsense.
Standard physics appears to rule out free will since it allows only strict
determinism or random events. But we know that it is incomplete and are unsure
as to the applicability of the “laws” of physics to complex neural systems. In
any case, why give more weight to theory than to our own everyday
experience?
The claim that free will is illusory is a conjecture that runs contrary to
the evidence but fits in with popular theories of mind such as epiphenomenalism
(we are merely spectators) and computational functionalism (we are merely
computers). Since intensive research is currently under way into the nature and
mechanisms of consciousness, I suggest that your correspondents are premature in
their pronouncements.
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David Concar writes: Of course everyday experience tells us that choice and
free will are real. In fact, for all practical purposes, including legal ones,
it makes no sense to define them as anything but real.
The important question is surely this: does the “real” experience of free
will begin life in the brain as a series of unconscious molecular/synaptic
processes? If it does, then there is a sense in which free will can be rightly
called illusory.
However, the illusion is perpetrated at such a deep level in the brain/mind
that one might as well ignore it. It is of no practical significance.
