From Jetse de Vries
John Searle’s argument on free will fails to see the elephant in the room. Seeking indeterminism, he looks for it only at the quantum level. This assertion grossly neglects the findings of chaos theory and complexity theory.
These have demonstrated, over and over again, that life is full of complex systems that have deterministic rules at the lowest levels, but whose large-scale conditions are intractable. Their future states are indeterministic, and a small variation in initial conditions causes a huge difference in the outcome.
Thus, a macro-scale system such as our brains can – and most probably will – have indeterministic states, even though deterministic rules govern its lower constituents. There is plenty of room for free will in such a system.
Den Bosch, The Netherlands
