From Andrew Smith
It is logically inescapable that free will, as usually defined, is an illusion; yet John Searle thinks it is odd that evolution would produce this illusion when it has no survival value (13 January, p 48).
The ability to carry out “what if” mental simulations is clearly an advantage to the higher animals. But this creates a design problem: two sets of mental processes need to co-exist. One attends to the here and now, and the other periodically roams around a simulated mental world.
The sensations involved in sight and sound are therefore needed to avoid confusion between real and simulated experiences. Hunger and pain are similarly needed to focus mental energy on real problems rather than being dissipated in unnecessary simulations.
The feeling of free will when a simulation process produces a decision is real enough, but the simulation is determined – as is everything else in our lives.
Advertisement
It may seem a mystery that the ability to carry out parallel mental simulations leads to actual awareness and sensations, but how else would mental processes be represented in a simulation of mental processes?
From David Fremlin
Free will is an experience, one which nearly all of us share. It is so important that absence of the experience is not only intensely distressing but is taken as a symptom of mental ill health. One has to suppose that the experience, like hunger, has a neurobiological counterpart; for all I know, there are identifiable neurons which are active when I feel that I am exercising my free will.
I do not know whether dung beetles have synaptic processes which can be called an experience of free will, though any sympathetic observation of these extraordinary animals must suggest the idea. Why should there not be beings as intellectually superior to us as we are to dung beetles?
Colchester, Essex, UK
From Brian Adams
In discussing the paradox of free will John Searle gives an example based on a choice of two items on a menu in a restaurant. Perhaps the answer is that both choices are made and the “consciousness” making the choice bifurcates into two closely parallel universes. This gives the illusion of choice but supports the hypothesis that free will is an illusion.
Liss, Hampshire, UK
Shrewsbury, Shropshire, UK
